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Get more exposure for your business with a web page. A web page will
increase your visibility, expand your customer base and help you explore
new markets. And it doesn't have to be expensive. You owe it to yourself
to check it out.
| What
is involved in getting a web site up and running? |
One
of the things about the World Wide Web (WWW or 'Web') is that there are
many options. Below you will find an overview of some of the things involved
in getting a web site up and running and keeping it updated. We can handle
all or any part of any of these arrangements for you.
| Internet
Service Provider (ISP) |
You
may or may not already have an ISP (America On Line (AOL), MSN, for example).
You could actually have a web site and not have an ISP, but it would be
advisable for you to have one for a few reasons:
- To
have an e-mail address that visitors to your web page can use to contact
you and for you to be able to reply back to them.
- For
you to be able to get online and see what the competition is doing,
and to get ideas on how you can improve your site for your particular
business.
If
you decide to search for these services yourself, we would be glad to
give you some tips on things to watch out for, and to specifically ask
about, before making a commitment.
A
Web Host is a company that supplies you with space on their server (computer)
to store your web site, and handles all the technical aspects of making
your site available where the public can find it. Some ISPs offer you
free web space, but that is for personal web pages. They usually won't
allow you to put anything on it that is 'for profit'.
Web
Host services can run from basic to advanced. All packages would include
a certain amount of space to store your web site. A Basic package would
also inlcude some CGI programs (programs used for things like auto replies
to emails, hit counters, processing forms and guestbooks, etc.). An Advanced
Package would consist of everything in the Basic package, plus database
applications, online shopping and handling credit card transactions, etc.
Keep in mind that the costs of getting into an online store will be more
expensive.
Think
of a domain name as being similar to the a Trade Name Affadavit that you
may file to register your business name with your state government, only
for the World Wide Web (WWW or 'Web'). We believe it is crucial for you
to have your own domain name. You can have a web site without it, but
without it, finding you will be much more difficult, and not very professional.
Depending on who hosts your web site your web address and e-mail address
may also be tied to the address they assign you. So if you make changes
in the service provider, your addresses could also change. For example,
if you don't have your own domain name and you had your web hosting from
ABCWeb, the URL (the Universal Resource Location - in simple terms the
web address) could be 'www.abcweb/colorado/div7/space42.com'. That's not
very meaningful, is it? However, if your company's name was American Metrics,
and the name was available and you registered it, the URL to your web
site would be 'www.americanmetrics.com'. This is much more meaningful
and easier to remember, don't you think? Also, once you have your own
domain name, you will never have to worry about having change your web
address and having supplies reprinted because you change your ISP or web
host, which ultimately changes your web address . Also, your customers
won't have to learn a new address or lose touch with you.
Something
else this does for you is, if you use this domain name in conjunction
with your web host and get e-mail as part of your web hosting package,
you can have a stable e-mail address regardless of what ISP you are using
at any given point in time. Let us explain that. When you sign up with
some ISPs, you are limited on what you can use as your e-mail address.
You might only be allowed to make a choice where the first part of the
e-mail address is concerned. For example, if your ISP was AOL, your e-mail
address would be yournamehere@aol.com. You wouldn't be able use the e-mail
address of yournamehere@americanmetrics.com (which you could use if you
set it up with your web hosting package). This is okay, until the day
you decide to change your ISP. Then you have a new ISP and a new e-mail
address. This means not only to you have to have maintenance done on your
web pages to fix this and change the address on your business forms and
get them all reprinted, it means, more importantly, anyone who already
has your e-mail address in their address book, no longer has a valid e-mail
address for you. So, when they go to send you that $50,000 order, their
e-mail will come back to them as undeliverable, and they will probably
get irritated and find some place else to spend their money.
If
you get the proper combination of ISP and Web Host, you can pick an e-mail
address (or even multiple e-mail addresses) to go with your domain name,
and regardless of who is providing your services, your customers won't
see a difference, and they can always find you.
We
can handle this for you, or you can contact Network
Solutions directly to register a domain name. You will need to have
your web host chosen before you do this as there is technical information
that will have to be provided during the registration process.
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Now,
this is where we can really help. . .
Designing
and creating a web site can be done different ways. If you already have
a pretty good idea of what you want, you can keep your costs down. If
you want us to come up with all the ideas, obviously it'll cost a little
more.
| Layout
and creation of pages |
We
can either draft up pages per your designs, or we can do some research
and design some pages for you to choose from. If we work from your designs,
we will give you our honest opinion if there is something we think could
be improved.
| Publishing
pages to your server |
We
can either supply the pages to you on CD so that you can upload it to
your web host yourself, or we can handle all the uploading and maintenance
of your web site for you.
Until
your domain name is better know, most of your visitors will probably be
finding you through a search engine of some kind (Yahoo, Google, etc.).
To make the most of this, your pages will need to have some words imbedded
in the coding, that the search engines will use. These are called Meta-tags.
In simple terms, you put key words in your web page coding, which gets
loaded into the search engine's database and referenced to your web address.
When people use a search engine to find something, the words they put
in are run through the search engine database and they return a list of
web sites that contain those words. This is an important part of making
your web site effective. You would also want your web pages submitted
to search engines to make sure you are in their database.
| Is
anything else needed once it's all up and running? |
As
your business evolves, adds new products or services or changes its prices,
you will probably want to add or change your original pages. This is considered
maintenance, unless the changes are so vast that it would require redesigning
the entire thing.
| Things
to do to ensure success |
Keep
your pages and any links current.
- Respond
to all e-mail inquiries promptly.
- Make
your URL part of your advertising.
- Resubmit
your site to search engines periodically.
- Tell
everyone about your site.
- Keep
track of the competition and make changes to your pages as needed.
- Put
your web address on your business cards and advertising.
- Place
banner advertising on popular sites to help direct people to your
site.
- Once
your site generates enough traffic you can sell banner advertising
on your site to others to help defray your expenses.
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