The Beginners Guide to Bringing Your Business Online

Introduction

This information is directed at those who are beginning out with an online business and is intended to provide information on what is needed at the beginning level. Contained within this article is what is required and helpful tips to avoid the pitfalls that so many new web businesses fall into.
So you've decided to bring your business on line. The Internet can be powerful tool and when used properly can increase your businesses exposure and increase sales of its products and/or services. It can open the doors for a whole new way to communicate with your existing clientèle and expose them to changes within your company in a timely manner and gain new clientèle for your products and/or services. This is limited only by your goals and the time and/or money allotted for your Internet presence. Quite simply if you put little into it you will get little out of it. If you place too much emphasis in one area and neglect other key areas it will be reflected within the end results. Building your business on the web is a total package and attention must be devoted to all key areas equally to be successful. The following information will concentrate on key aspects of starting and successfully running an online business.

The following topics are discussed:

• The Plan
• Choosing A Domain Name
• Web Design and Development
• Choosing Your Web Hosting
• Promoting and Marketing Your Website

The Plan
Bringing your business online effectively can be a valuable asset. Your online presence should/will reflect your company values, ethics, products/services, and professionalism. You must define your goals much the same as starting a brick and mortar business and be determined to succeed in reaching these goals. Too many businesses place emphasis on one key area or another, and neglect seeing the total picture of what is needed to be successful in reaching the goals and intents for their online presence. If you simply would like a business card on the web - this article is not for you. A simple business card web site will have the same results as the business cards you carry - if you don't literally "hand them" to someone, they will never see it.

To create and build your business on the web successfully you'll need to address the same key areas whether you are a international product-based business or a local service company.

Have you ask yourself how what are the goals of bringing your business on-line? We will assume that your goal is to increase business profits through online sales or contacts. Once you have defined your goals, made a commitment to be successful, and allotted a realistic budget that will accomplish these goals it is time to proceed to the other key areas of a successful online presence. These major areas include the researching your industry, choosing a domain name, site design and development, hosting of your site, content, communication, and the promotion of your web site.

Research
Research your industry online and it's online competitors. Online competition may be completely different than offline competition. The competition can change monthly and it will take a keen eye to see these changes and react in a positive way. Remember to set a initial budget, and a "ongoing" budget for both time and expenses.

Choosing Domain Names
I will not be covering this in-depth as this topic has been discussed many times elsewhere on the web.

The domain name is simply your address on the internet and consists of name and extension. Domain names can be a minimum of two characters and up to 63 characters in length plus the extension (.com, .net, .org, ....). Valid characters are "a-z" and "0-9" and the dash (-) as long as it is used as a separator and not as a leading/trailing character.

Domain names are also available with country specific extensions (.uk = United Kingdom, .ca = Canada, ...). Costs vary from country to country, extension, and registrar to registrar with normal length of purchase available being 1-10 years.

When choosing the domain name for your online business it is recommended that try to obtain your "real" business name or "product/service" name. The holy-grail is to pair this with the .com extension. Choosing your domain name takes research of what domains are available and how it fits your particular business model. Examples:

www.floridalawncare.com may be considered a very good domain name if your business was a lawncare company based in Florida. It would fit perfectly if the name of your company was Florida Lawn Care. www.discounted-toys.com may be considered a very good domain name if your business was selling toys online at a discounted rate.

Go to a domain registrar to research available domain names which are available and to obtain/purchase your domain. Compare pricing as this can vary widely between registrars. Check this site www.newhostingdirect.com as they offer free domain checking.

Continue to part II