Getting Your Small Business Online
by HostVoice.net

As people become comfortable being on the Internet,businesses are expected to be online or have some sort of web presence be itsimple email or a complete web store. If you’ve decided to take yourbusiness online, you need to know how. We’ll show you how over the nextinstallments of this three part series. Expect to be educated about:

Part 1   -           PlanningStage

            -           DomainNames

Part 2   -           DevelopingYour Website

            -           Managingand Maintaining Your Website

Part 3   -           PromotingYour Website

Let’s get started!

Part 1

Planning Stage

As starting any business endeavor, you need to plan. One ofthe most important issues to review is your reason.

Why are you getting online?

The public may want you to be online, but what precisely dothey expect? “Getting online” is a very loose term. Do they wantthe option to contact you via email, do they want to be able to research yourproduct at their convenience before purchasing, do they want to settle theiraccounts online, or do they want to buy online? Also ask yourself what you wantto achieve. Each results in different types of online presence.

There are many types of websites. Most websites fall intothese categories:

• Web store
• Brochure ware
• Customer service

Let’s look at each in detail.

Web Store

This is probably the most well known form of onlinepresence. For example, Handango.com a web store selling mostly software forpersonal digital assistants or PDA’s such as Palm and Pocket PC was fromday one a business run entirely online in the form of a web store. All its operations, from productcatalog to purchasing are conducted through their website. Web stores are veryexciting. You get to reach customers your store can’t, you get to giveyour customers flexibility of ordering at their convenience, you can also get apiece of the growing e-commerce pie and more.

This is sounds like a very attractive proposition for anybusiness but keep in mind, if you have a physical store, your web store shouldbe considered as a separate profit center. Maintaining, promoting and running aweb store requires many man-hours and certain amount of specialty knowledge.Very likely a small percentage of your existing customers will shop online.They know you and are comfortable with your physical setting. The web storewould be an added convenience rather than main shopping venue for themespecially if you allow in store pickup.

On the other hand, you’re likely to attract a new setof customers such as those out of town or state. They might also have differentincome or education levels compared to existing customers who’ll respondto different marketing techniques.

Once you decide on a web store, you’ll need to figureout the operations.

• Merchant Account
• Does your existing account allow for online payment processing?
• Order processing
• A suitable shopping cart although this can be further discussed when developing the website
• Order fulfillment
• Where do you route the order? Who packs and ships it assuming you have a physical product. How do you track order status?
• Delivery
• If a physical product, which shipping company should you choose? Should you enter into a contract or pay as you go? Should you have more than one company? Determine your shipping costs but don’t forget packaging costs too. If electronically delivered product, do you email or provide a download link? How would you minimize piracy? Should you have a unique key per customer?
• Customer Support
• Most online buyers expect to have some way to track their orders. How would you handle pre and post sale questions? Live chat, toll free number, email or help desk? Regardless of which you choose, effort must be made to respond quickly. Purchasing online by itself is a very impersonal process. Imagine how neglected a customer might feel if they’re made to hold or use automated response when they call. This is of utmost importance if your sole sales channel is done online.

Brochure Ware

Ford.com (http://ford.com/en/default.htm)is a type of brochure ware website. They don’t sell directly on onlinebut fill it with information to educate buyers and help find a suitable dealer.The website also serves investors, job seekers, press or anyone interested inthe company.  This is very typicalof companies who sell their products through franchisees, agents or dealers.

On first impression, brochure ware sites do not seem to be apowerful reason to be online. That was true of many early websites. Howeverbusinesses are realizing the Internet is a fairly inexpensive way to educatecustomers. Buyers also like the feeling of first hand contact with themanufacturer especially if the product is of significant value like a car.

More websites are also beginning to utilize their website asan outlet to gain feedback, announce jobs, post press releases, give investorsup to date information and even as a marketing channel. ConsiderM&M’s (http://www.mms.com/us/bw/).While they do have a web store, their main website has a lot of marketing/advertisingrelated activity such as games, e-cards, wall papers, screensavers all aroundtheir latest commercial, a clever way to increase an advertisingcampaign’s effectiveness.

Customer Service

These are websites that exist as a contact point for yourcustomer. Typically utility companies and software developers have such awebsite. These websites offer the customer a convenient way to review theiraccount, pay their bills, and ask for help or request a quote.

In most cases, a website will have a combination of theseelements. Usually, the main reason for a company to be online determines thewebsite’s theme.

After considering your reasons and responsibilities, you areready to assemble the parts and start getting your website off the ground.

Domain name

Your domain name is like your online address. Domain namesneed to be registered through an ICANN accredited registrar such as GoDaddy.com(http://godaddy.com). Domain names costanything from $8.95 and up, depending who you register with.

How should you choose your domain name? Typically,businesses use their company name; example Microsoft.com that+ instantlyidentifies the business. Sometimes, your product or brand name is moreprominent than your business name so you’ll want to use the brand name.Or you could register it all. It could pay to register more than one domainname and routing them all to a single website. Doing this will ensure that youget maximum exposure and coverage, making it easy for your market to locate youonline with a name that they best remember about your business.

Some experts advise to register a keyword rich domain name.This means a domain name that is composed of likely words someone might usewhen searching for a product similar to yours. For example if you sell workboots, steel-toe-boots.com is a keyword rich domain. The idea is, searchengines are more likely to pick up and position your website fairly high in asearch. However, search engine technology is focusing more on website content.We’ll cover more about search engine positioning later.

Domain names are universal, meaning anyone in the world canregister a name and it is first come, first serve. Many common English wordsand terms have long been registered. Often, you’ll find the domain ofchoice is already taken. If so, you’ll have to modify or rethink yourname. You could try to approach the existing owner of the domain to see ifthey’ll sell it to you. This is however unlikely if the domain is ahighly desired one or is home to an active website. 

Another alternative is to look for expired domain names.These are names that have previously been registered but been‘released’ either due to closing of the website or failure to renewon time. Some believe if you find a popular existing domain name, you wouldjumpstart the hits to your website. Sometimes you’ll find gems amongexpired names but you’ll have to exercise caution particularly if thedomain is a misspelling or very close to a copyrighted name. A good place tosearch for expired names is DeletedDomains.com (http://www.deleteddomains.com).

Web Hosting

Just like your business needs a premise to operate from,your website needs to reside on a web server. There are numerous companies whorent out computer space to businesses and individuals to serve web pagestherefore known as web hosts. They provide and maintain the hardware andsoftware to run and present your website online. You can also host your websitefrom your own computers however there is extensive cost involved and rarely dosmall businesses benefit from doing so, especially if the website is new.

Many designers offer web hosting as a package. Remember, ifyou decide to change designers or bring it in house, you’ll have to relyon the designer’s good faith to access your website files while you moveyour website. Though not always a problem, moving web hosts can be stressful.Be sure to read our exclusive on changing web hosts (http://www.hostvoice.net/?art-move)and our article, “Don’t Make These Hosting Mistakes!” (http://www.hostvoice.net/?art-mistakes).

Finally, when ready to purchase web-hosting plans, you canquickly obtain quotes from several web hosts using HostVoice (http://hostvoice.net) free, interactiveservice. It works simply by submitting a quick one-page questionnaire aboutyour hosting needs and budget. This information will be channeled to theappropriate web hosts who will then contact you with a quote. You get to decidewhich company is best for you.

Now that we’ve covered the basics, it’s time todevelop the website itself. Join us in our next installment, when we’llgo through

• The development process
• Managing your website

Getting Your Business Online - Part 2

In Getting Your Business Online – Part 1, wediscussed

The importance of planning of your website, the reasonsfor getting online and the type of websites a business has.

We also discussed choosing and obtaining a domain name and

Web Hosting

This installment, we continue with

Developing your website and

Managing and Maintaining your website

Developing Your Website

This is probably the most exciting part, you finally seeyour website taking shape. Before jumping in, who’s going to build it?Getting your business online requires a certain amount of time, expertise andmoney. Most of us would rather have a hands-off approach and outsource the jobof creating and managing our businesses’ online presence. Cost is on theother hand important to small businesses. To save money most will try to do itthemselves. Each approach has it’s own plus and minuses.

In-House vs. Outsource

When you outsource to a web designer, you are bound bytheir knowledge and capacities of handling the job. Not all designers arecreated equal. Consider how much they know about e-commerce if that’syour plan. How much to they know about business in general? Some designers areexcellent in programming and design but fail to understand your business. Onedesign and development company to look at would be Design Velocity (http://designvelocity.com). Their teamconsists of designers and marketing professionals so you get to tap theexpertise of both.

Consider also how involved you want to be with yourwebsite. Do you want to be able to update it yourself such as news andannouncements? Do you want to be able to maintain your inventory yourself?There are many solutions out there that allow businesses to post news or updatetheir catalog without the need to extensively involve the designer. In thiscase, a good solution is to outsource work that is time-consuming and what youare not familiar with such as creating the website interface, scripting and theunderpinning software applications and website hosting.

If you choose to do it yourself, remember to factor in thecost of software and time to learn the application, time to install, build andmanage the website. Also time to learn about keyword optimization, security andother technical items. If you are familiar with them, chances are your timecost to do it yourself will be low. Otherwise the cost becomes more than itwould to outsource because it’ll take you away from doing what you dobest.

In almost all cases, it’s best to manage customerinteraction in house to build customer confidence. The rule of thumb is to letprofessionals handle the technical details of creating your online presence andkeeping in house your core business operations. Think of it this way. If youbuild a new store, you would hire a building contractor. In this case, your webdesigner would be your building contractor.

Site Map

In beginning the design process it’s best to draw upa site map to guide yourself. The site map relies heavily on your objectives(More on this in Part 1 - Why are you getting online?) and illustrates how yourpages link together. Decide what your visitor sees on the main page. Should therebe an introduction page, company page or a news and specials page? Regardlesswhat your focus is, your pages should be simple to navigate. A quick draft willgive you a bird’s eye view of the site and helps to pull the pagestogether.

This map should also be made into a page on your websiteto aid search engines as their robots visit the site. More on this in Part 3.

Design

Many times new websites strive so hard to achieve theirindividual look or design that they lose sight of the fact people online areused to finding what they want instantly. Unlike a brick and mortar business,there’s no one to help them as they enter the premises. Some key thingsto consider when designing your website:

Familiarity

Ease of Navigation

Speed

Familiarity

Many websites on the Internet have a common way to displaypages (Fig 1). If a designer gets too creative it disrupts the visitor’sexpectations. If they don’t find it in a few seconds they’ll leaveand the business loses a sale.

Fig 1

Ease of Navigation

If you have to make the layout drastically different, keepyour key links highly visible or available. Put the most important links ashigh up on the top of the page as possible because many people stilldon’t scroll.

Don’t clog your pages with advertisements, yours orothers. That is a major put off and just looks unprofessional. If youparticipate in affiliate programs, use your banners wisely; set a section inyour side bar for partners and affiliates. It’s easy to clog your pages;there’s so much to tell but remember to focus your website. Keep the mostimportant items the most visible. Review your objectives. What do you want thesite or page to achieve? Buy your product, read your article, buy youraffiliate product, give you their email?

Don’t make your fonts too small; the computermonitor isn’t conducive for reading. Don’t make it too largeeither. Use headlines to emphasize the most important points only.

Keep text length to a minimum. People don’t havetime to read through a web page where there’s endless scrolling to bedone. Learn how to write effectively for the website (http://www.webreference.com/content/writing/).Learn what the elements of good web design are. Vincent Flander’s WebPages That Suck (http://www.webpagesthatsuck.com/)is a great resource to help keep you away from what will hurt your business.

Speed

It goes hand in hand with ease of navigation. Despite thegrowth of high speed Internet access, the majority is still on dial up. If yourweb pages load too slowly, your visitors leave and you lose. The biggest way toensure your website loads quickly is less graphics, less audio or flashextensive website. Websiteoptimization.com (http://www.websiteoptimization.com/services/analyze/)has a very handy tool to help evaluate how quickly your website loads atdifferent speeds. It also gives you summaries about the size and number ofimages all designed to identify your speed blocks.

Managing & Maintaining Your Website

So! Your website up and running. Your work is far fromdone. A website is a live thing and requires a fair amount of maintenance.

New Content

The biggest thing to keeping a website alive is thefreshness. People are easily bored. If your content hasn’t changed in aslittle as a few weeks, they make the assumption they’ve seen all there isto see and won’t be back. Some ways to keep your site fresh new are

Adding new products

Announcing company news

Featuring one product per week

Give a new hint each week how to use your product

Technology & Security

As technology advances you’ll also want to adjustthe site so it will load properly. Hackers and viruses also unfortunatelyexploit technology advances. You’ll need to close the gaps or be aware ofthem. If you outsource your web development, the company you hired should takecare of software updates and security patches. If they don’t, you shouldconsider looking for one who does. Try HostVoice (http://hostvoice.net) to obtain quotes fromreliable web hosts. It only takes a few minutes and one form. If you use email,you’re open to all sorts of viruses pretending to be customers. Beinformed. Keep up with security threats and virus warnings even if you’vegot someone to handle it for you.

Customer Privacy

Keeping your customer information private is not only agood idea but also a must according to the law. If you collect customerinformation even a simple name & email database, you should have a privacypolicy (http://www.internetbasedmoms.com/articles2/privacy-policy-creating.html)in place.

Privacy policies are only a start. You need to ensure youdo all you can to protect your customers information. Again, you need to besure your web host or designer is up to date with website security issues andthey plug the hole in a timely manner.

Data Integrity

Last but not least, always prepare for disaster. Afteryou’ve worked hard to build your site, traffic and customer base, whathappens when you visit your website one day and find you cannot access it atall? Worst still, you’re told all data has been wiped out. You not onlylose business, you lost a lot of time and effort. Hackers, viruses, hardwarefailure, natural or unnatural disasters and so much more, can easily corruptdata.

The key? Backup frequently and don’t rely solely onyour web host’s backup. Learn how to make your own. If you hire adesigner, include in your service package a scheduled backup routine. Get acopy of that backup so you’ll always have two sets in two differentplaces.

By now you’ve thoroughly planned and built yourwebsite, it’s time to promote. Join us in our final installment when wecover the different ways of website promotion including:

Pay Per Click Advertising

Linking

Search Optimization

Newsletters

Banners and

Offline Advertising.

Getting Your Business Online - Part 3

In Part 1 and Part 2, we walked through

·        The importance of planning of your website, thereasons for getting online and the type of websites a business has.

·        We also discussed choosing and obtaining adomain name and

·        Web Hosting

·        Developing your website; doing it in house oroutsourcing it, good design practices and

·        Managing and Maintaining your website

As promised, in our last installment we’ll help youthrough the basics of Promoting your website using:

·        Search Engine Optimization and Linking

·        Pay Per Click Advertising

·        Newsletters

·        Banners

·        Articles

·        Offline Advertising

Search EngineOptimization

It’s every web master’s dream to be on thefirst page of a search result and rightfully so. Searching is one of the mostfrequent activities on the Internet (http://www.spiderhelp.com/)but most websites never make it near the top 5 pages. According to theAssociation for Interactive Marketing (http://www.interactivehq.org/industry/glossary.asp),Search Engine Optimization is “the process of choosing targeted keywordphrases related to a site, and ensuring that the site places well when thosekeyword phrases are part of a Web search.”

To do that, you’ll need to review (again) yourobjectives and your product. You might find there is more than one relevantkeyword or key phrase you think best relates to your website. That is ok butavoid ending up with a huge list. How do you narrow them down to the most relevant?This requires a combination of discipline, keyword research and good old trialand error.

Look at your list of keywords. Do they include typicalmarketing speak? Industry jargon? Leave them out. No one ever uses them andmarketing speak just doesn’t sell. Here’s a short and sweet articleat SearchEngineGuide.com about buzzwords vs. effective keywords (http://www.searchengineguide.com/goetsch/2003/1204_dg1.html).Think natural language. How they would express themselves if talking tofriends, family or someone on the street.

Once you cut out the tech and marketing speak, research itto find out how often the keyword is being used. The more often tells you thekeyword is popular and is a good keyword. On the other hand, it also means morewebsites are competing for the searcher’s attention. Many webmasters haveresorted to optimizing using a less than first place but still very popularkeywords.

Now you got some solid keywords, apply them in your Meta tags such as title tags, description and even Alttags. Also don’t forget to use the effectively throughout your content.Search Engine Watch (http://www.searchenginewatch.com/webmasters/index.php)is a resource to help get started on optimization and search engine submission.

Linking

Search engines today put a good amount of weight on links.Not links from your site but links to you. This is based on the popularityprinciple; the more people talk about you or find you interesting enough to puta link on their website, the more likely you have something really good tooffer.

Of course, your site has to be worth linking to in thefirst place. Then you need to find websites who are willing to link to you.Visit the sites and politely ask the webmasters if they’d like to tradelinks with you. Now you might think, there are so many out there! I’lljust harvest the emails and put them on a one shot mailing list. No go! Thiscould land you in a spammer’s list. Reciprocal link requests by email area very touchy thing because of so much spam going around. Spend time to visitand research the website and craft a personal email. This makes them morelikely to read your email and hopefully more willing to responding.

Beware of wrong ways to find link backs such as free forall pages and link farms. Spider Food (http://www.spider-food.net/link-popularity.html)has an excellent tutorial on this issue. Learn them lest you do your websitemore harm than good.

Pay Per ClickAdvertising

It might seem at this point optimization and buildinglinks takes a lot of hard work and time. What can you do if you need yourwebsite to be seen right now? As with most any promotion, paid placement canget you there. Pay Per Click Advertising (PPC) is paying to be included in asearch based on your keywords. Depending how much you’re willing tospend, you be very visible in a search result every time your choice keyword isutilized. Most popular search engines clearly distinguish these under a“Sponsored listing” section.

The best thing going for PPC advertising is you pay onlyfor visitors. It is assumed if someone searches for something they’re apre-qualified target, not casual surfer. The not so hot part is the mostpopular keywords such as “hosting” can cost $10 per click.It’s pretty much like paying a guy on the street $10 to visit your storeand he may not even buy anything.

So how could a small business afford this? For one, youmight want to use it as a kick-start campaign or seasonal according to theseason of your business, or holiday seasons. Another way is to buy thelesser-used keywords, those usually cost less or very specific key phrases thatonly a person who’s truly interested will use. Sound contradictory? Yesand no. You can use different keywords for optimization and pay per click. SitePoint (http://www.sitepoint.com/article/417)has some good points about building your PPC strategy.

You might also want to consider paid inclusion (http://www.spider-food.net/paying-to-play.html)but this can be very costly for a small business. If you do, choose the onesearch engine you think is most promising. Remember, a combination ofoptimization and wise pay per click strategy works better than relying on onemethod alone. For further reading, visit Pay Per Click Search Engines (http://www.payperclicksearchengines.com/search-engine-tips.shtml)

Other OnlineAdvertising

So far, we’ve concentrated on search engine relatedpromotion tactics. Some other ways to promote online are,

Banners

Probably the oldest form of online advertising. Bannershave been deemed distractive, ineffective even downright rude when it appearsas pop-up, pop-under, fly-in and every imaginary form that’s in your face.The demise of banner advertising has been predicted over and over but bannersstill command a huge section of the online advertising market (http://www.internetnews.com/IAR/article.php/3293321).

Since most small businesses don’t have a very largebudget, how do you maximize your banner advertising dollars? Don’tadvertise where it’s not relevant. It’s tempting to advertise onlarge popular websites or portals but you run the risk of casting your net toowide. In the end your ads fail to impress the viewer. Choose the sites wisely,such as those where your target is most likely to gather. You could also barterfor advertising space with other complimentary websites. Whether you use pop-upsor other interactive ads, keep in mind these usually frustrate viewers. Someeven see it as trickery because they happen to click on your ad as it pops up,not the link they wanted. Weigh the return and objectives of your advertisingcampaign carefully.

Newsletters

Again, be sure to choose the right newsletter, andconsider the readership. Also look at frequency and placement. Will one adbring you results? The placement of your ad is also important. Does thenewsletter cram all the ads in one section where it’s easy to skip overor is it well distributed over strategic parts of the newsletter? If thenewsletter is formatted well e.g. requiring readers to scroll to the bottom toobtain a weekly giveaway, then a lower placement can work yet save you money.

You might also want to find out the publication schedule.Using this, you can tailor your ad to the topic, increasing the ad’seffectiveness. Next, look at the number of ads per publication. The more thereare, the easier you get lost.

Articles

Contributing informative articles to newsletters orwebsites is a good way to get your name out there too. Not only is it easier onthe wallet it can establish your business as an expert. Do remember to writegood articles the reader can use and benefit from rather than making it soundlike a brochure.

This concept can even be carried a step further into aworkshop or tele-seminar.

OfflineAdvertising

Just because your website is online doesn’t mean itmust be confined there. Include your website as much as possible in other partsof your business. If you have a physical presence, display banners, signs andposters in store. Have your URL printed on promotional items, carry out bags,shirts, business card or on your vehicle.

If you advertise in the traditional media like newspapersdon’t forget to include your URL too. Be creative. Tie in your offlinecampaigns with your website for example giving an incentive for customers toutilize a feature on the website, encourage asking for help online, tellingyour customers you have a wider selection in your online store. You could evenhave web only specials. Do keep in mind; you’ll be limiting your reach tothose with Internet access in.

As we close this three part series, we hope we’vegiven you a meaningful kick-start to putting your business online. It is alarge project on all counts but with knowledge, research and perseverance,we’ll see you online soon.

This series is broughtto you by the team at EchoMedia Solutions, Inc. – a company that helpssmall business owners setup their presence online and market their services.Contact us at smallbiz@hostvoice.netfor free advice and assistance in design, hosting, promotion, and more. Ourteam is ready to answer whatever questions you might have at absolutely nocharge. If you are looking for a host, visit HostVoice (http://hostvoice.net), a free service thathelps people find a hosting plan based on their needs and budget.