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How do I begin? or everything you didn't know you needed to know
The biggest step is the first one. Start with a basic site that alerts the world to your existence. Add sophisticated capabilities later. Decide what you want the page to accomplish and whom you want to visit it. Create an "experience" for visitors that will leave a lasting impression. Give them a reason to return.
You need a strategy for marketing
You need a designed Web page
You need an Internet Service Provider (ISP)
Strategy development: focus on customer needs, facilitate feedback, entertain & create an "experience"
Make customers welcome, you want them to visit often. New is always better. If you don't present current things all the time, customers will just drift away. Hold sales and offer special deals.
Pay attention to your competition. Visit other sites that involve your type of business for ideas, good & bad.
Stay in touch--make sure visitors can get in touch with you and make sure that you respond to emails and phone calls quickly.
Track down other sites that don't
compete with you and create partnerships.
Design development: you want an attractive, well-organized, intelligent site that displays your offerings and makes people want to buy.
Your site must be good looking, fast loading, and easy to use.
If you have a logo or good quality photographs, by all means include them in your site.
Design the "look and feel" your site will have. Professional graphic design services (such as those offered by Mussel Beach Productions) usually pay for themselves many times over. A Web professional will know just the tricks to make sure that your pages do what you want them to.
Decide on additional elements: animations, sounds, forms, photos and graphics. remember that each of these additions will require time to download. Again, a graphics professional will know how to minimize the size of files to optimize time re
Decide on the format:
--Static billboard,"brochure ware", simply takes your brochure, menu, rate schedule, or product list and displays it
--Dynamic billboard, the most common type of site, allows for changed content, visitor feedback, frequent updates
--Database driven sites require frequent updates of hundreds or thousands of records
--Storefronts offer customers the ability to make purchases online using credit cards
Who runs the company and who will do the work?--Look for people who understand both your business and the marketplace you serve. You want personal involvement at all levels.
How many different people will I have to deal with? Ideally, you will have a personal service rep to guide you through the process, answer any questions, and ensure your satisfaction.
How long have you been in business and who are your referrals? Any reputable ISP will be happy to provide you with referrals. Ask how many sites they represent and what their annual renewal rate is.
What kind of physical connection do you have to the Internet? Even though you may not know much about technology, make sure your ISP does. The core of the Internet is made up of about a dozen private "backbone" networks that swap data with each other very efficiently. Your host will send your data to one of those backbones, which will automatically allow the other providers access to your data as well. But your host might not send your data to the backbone directly--it might have a connection to a larger ISP which in turn connects to yet another "upstream" provider before your data hits the backbone. Ask potential hosts "How many hops are you to the backbone?" Ideally, you want the fewest number possible. Your best bet is a provider with a minimum of one T-3 (45mbps) line connection to the backbone. This is 28 times faster than the T-1's used by many smaller providers. (Nealcomm & LBInet has a OC3 connection--twenty four times faster than even a T-3--direct to the backbone)
Which server hardware and software do you use? Make sure the host you choose is using top-of-the-line hardware, preferably multi-processor server machines. And ask about "redundancy". You'll need to know what happens when the computer your data is stored on crashes. The best answer is for your host to tell you that they store back-up copies of your site files on other machines that are ready to kick in the minute your main server fails. You should also know about the operating system that your host uses, because some of the software you might want to use is friendlier to some operating systems than others. The most common operating systems for Web servers are Windows NT and UNIX.
Where and how will visitors find me and how will I know? Your host should register you with search engines. Do a search and see whose sites come up most. (LBInet, for example, consistently dominates most major search engine results). You should also have a counter on your site to record visits.
How much will all this cost? There are plenty of services on the Web that offer you a free Web page--you'll have to design it yourself, but they'll host it without charge. For online business, free services like this are worth exactly what you pay for them. You'll get little or no help when there are problems, no guarantees about the quality of hosting services, and little or no flexibility when it comes to using software. Many smaller site owners receive excellent service from their hosts for as little as $100 per month; large companies often pay as much as six figures per month. Here are a few ballpark figures to keep in mind. Expect to pay anywhere from $50-$150 for setting up a plain vanilla commercial account (LBInet charges no setup fee). Monthly or annual fees vary greatly. Nealcomm charges $320 per year for a basic site, $560 for a domain site, and $50 one time charge for each additional page.
There is a lot of information here. We hope it has been helpful. Please feel free to call on Mussel Beach Productions for additional information on Graphic Design, and visit LBInet for more technical stuff.
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