How do I create a website and get my Business Online?

Answer:

This is a great question and often asked by thousands

of small business owners. An online presence is a necessity these days. If you don’t have a website and your customers can’t get information about your products or services then you’re likely missing out on a substantial amount of potential business.

Getting your business online isn’t a difficult task. Once most find out just how simple it is hey can’t believe they didn’t do this earlier. Getting your business online can be done in two simple steps. The first step is to establish the presence and the second step is to market your presence.

Establish your online presence!
Establishing your online presence is a very broad process but can be simplified. You will need a domain name a web site and a hosting account to host the web site.

Domain Name – Your domain name is very important with regards to how people recall your company. If you have a unique company name such as BobbaGazoo’s BBQ then you could consider registering several versions such as BobbaGazoos.com, BobbaGazoosBBQ.com etc. Please note that characters such as apostrophes, question marks and exclamation marks are not allowed in domain names. You can have a hyphen or number in your domain name. You may also consider registering a descriptive domain name such as LosAngelesBBQ.com or alike. There are many extensions such as .net, .org, .TV, .US, .info and .biz however .com is the most common and memorable. So where do you get a domain name? Go to an accredited registrar to register your domain name. Most common registrars include ICANN Network Solutions , GoDaddy and ENOM . Browse these websites or search for domain name registrations in your favorite search engine. Usually, domain names are less than $15/year to register. Once you register it is yours forever or until you let it expire so be sure to renew for 10 years or more if possible.

So now you have a domain name, you now need a website to complete the online presence.

Website – Your website will say everything about your company. If you want certain characteristics like selling products or services online then you will need to hire a programmer to implement the merchant account or shopping cart features. There are lots of places to find affordable and professional programmers, web developers and web designers. Check out eLance.com or Guru.com for your outsourced needs. If you need a simple brochure or several page site explaining your offerings then try a template. Go to TemplateMonster.com and search for a template. TemplateMonster has templates for less than $50. Have someone modify the template to add your business logo and convert it into HTML. Having a design that needs some simple modifications is significantly less than having someone design a whole website.

So now you have your 5 or so page website all in .html files and accompanying images in an images folder. You need webhosting!

Web Hosting – You need to host your website. Web hosting is basically a server or computer that is connected to an impressive backbone of connectivity. At least some hosting providers are impressive. Do your research, find a web hosting company that hosts a lot of sites that has positive feedback from customers. WebHosting.info and WebHostingTalk.com have tons of reviews. You will need a basic shared hosting account to host your website. This should not cost you more than $5 or $10 per month at the most. Set up your account, you will need to go back to your domain name registrar and set up the name servers for your domain name to point to the name servers of your web host. Your welcome email from your web host should contain this information, if it does not look at the FAQs or contact their support. This brings me to another item. Be sure your web hosting company has free 24x7 365 days a year technical support. Phone support via an 800 number is also an important feature to consider when choosing a web hosting company.

So your domain name no resides on their name servers. Upload your .html and images folder to the local folder within your web hosting account. You’ll need FTP software to upload or transfer your files from your local computer to your web hosting account. Try SmartFTP or one of the other free ones available for download at Download.com. Using an FTP client like SmartFTP is super easy to use, you simply drag and drop files and folders from your local PC to your hosting account server.

Cost of online presence for 1 year
$15 Domain name registration
$50 Design Template
$100 Design Template Modification or Customization
$60 Web Hosting
$225 Total for the 1st year

For your 2nd year in operation you can subtract the template and customization so your online costs will be limited to approximately $75 per year. At these costs, you can’t afford not to have an online presence!

These are averages and each business is a little different but for a 3-5 page brochure web site these costs are easily attainable.

Now you have your online presence, you can put your domain name on your stationary, your business cards or even your products but what if you have a business that could benefit from receiving more online visitors? What if, you sold products or services online and more visitors meant more revenues? With the accessibility of Google Adwords and Yahoo! Search Marketing anyone can have access to unlimited visitors if you have deep enough pockets.

That’s right, in less than 15 minutes you can go from having clients to having your phone ring off the hook. You can go from being on the 1,750th result page to showing on the 1st result page.

It’s called Pay-Per-Click advertising and its name is essentially exactly what it is. Each time a human being searches on a search engine and clicks on a sponsor or advertiser link you pay the search engine that initiated the click. Prices per click depend on your industry and how broad or generic you’re willing to accept. I personally have seen PPC prices from 3 cents to $100 per click. If you’re considering pay-per-click advertising start out slow. Don’t set up an account with a huge budget and ridiculously high cpc’s. Start slow and low and work your way up. Eventually, you will find a happy medium in which you’re able to produce a sound return on your investment. At a later date I will really tackle PPC advertising but for now, if you were considering I would only use the large engines such as Google, MSN and Yahoo! as the other se’s tend to provide less than quality traffic. Additionally, get yourself a credit card that earns points. If you spend enough you may find the majority of your household items were purchased with AMEX points!