Establishing an Online Presence
In today's internet age, the Website has largely taken the place of the Business card. At the very least, it provides your company's name, image, and contact information for follow up. Beyond this, it can serve as a place for potential and established customers to engage your business, purchase products and services, and provide feedback. The nature of your business will in large part determine the scope of your web presence. Below are the major steps to take towards accomplishing this task:
Choose a Domain name and register - Although this is an obvious first step, it's not necessarily an easy one. The selection of your domain name will depend partly on your business's name, your brand image, and relevant domain names that are still available. As an example, let's say that you own a music recording studio named Music Mix Max, Inc. The obvious domain name choice might be "musicmixmax.com" or "mixmax.com," but what if these names have already been taken? You'll need to be a little more creative, while also considering what you want to convey to your potential client base. If you want to convey that your recording studio takes music to the next level, you may try "maxxedlevel.com" or "themaxlevel.com." Don't be afraid to get creative with your domain name. If you find two or three that you like and are available, register all of them. You will be able to have all of the names point to one domain name if desired.
Select a Hosting company - A domain name hosting company is the service provider who will contain your site on their servers and make your site available on the internet. In many cases you can buy a domain name from the same company that you choose as your domain hosting provider. While hosing plans start at about $10 a month, you'll need to determine the level of support and bandwith your site will need before choosing a particular plan. If your site could potentially draw 1,000,0000 visitors a month, for example, you'll want to make sure that the plan you select will provide enough bandwith to keep your site from crashing due to heavy traffic.
Determine how your website will be built - Once you've decided upon your domain name and who will host your site, you will be able to go about the process of determing how your website will be built. As with other facets of your business, the cost of building a site will depend on the scope of your business,
particularly how much you will engage clients or customers through your site and whether any business
transactions will take place through the site. Thankfully, the cost of building a multi-faceted website
has come down over the past decade. Your basic options are as follows:
- Select a domain host who also offers a site building feature: If your site will be bare bones, this may be a good inexpensive, do-it-yourself way to go. However, the customization options that may come with the domain host's site building package may be limited or not to your liking.
- Select a blog site or dedicated site building site: Blog sites such as Wordpress.com and blogspot.com offer many customizable templates which are easy to set up and work with. These sites are also intuitive and do not require any programming skills. For a little more customization, squarespace.com offers many of the features offered by the aforementioned sites along with a user interface which allows you to structure a full site to your likiing without web development skills.
- Select a Web development company: If your website needs are more complex, such as setting up a customized e-commerce site or a website with social networking capabilities, you may want to enlist the help of a web development company. While this option is the most expensive, you will be able to work with someone who can take your ideas and implement them in ways that you may not be able to on your own, while also offering ongoing support for your website.
Screencast >>
Establishing an Online Presence
Related Blog Posts >>