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Getting Online: Six Steps for Small Business
Owners
by
Jeanette S. Cates, Ph.D.
The Technology Tamer™
Putting your business online is not as easy as everyone says it
is. There are multiple decisions to make and questions to answer.
Things like:
- Do I need my own dot com?
- How do I get it?
- Should I create my own site?
- Should I hire someone else to create it and how do I decide
who to hire?
- If I already have a site, how do I know if it's working?
- How can I sell my products online?
- How much does it cost?
- How much should I pay to a web host?
- What is a web host?
These are just some of the questions often asked as business
owners explore the idea of creating a website. After all, everyone
says you need a website - but where do you begin? Basically, there
are six steps that everyone must go through when putting a business
on the internet.
Focus
As with any business goal you need a focus for your website.
You'll need to look at your business mission, your objective for
putting up a website, and how it will relate to your current
business. You'll need to know your audience and you have to decide on
what content you want on the site. Then you'll want to arrange that
content in a way that makes it easy to find. In short, you'll
determine the focus for your website.
Design
One of the best ways to decide how you want your website to look
is to look at other websites. You'll want to look at your
competitors' sites, large corporate sites, and small business sites.
As you're browsing, note the sites that you like. Print the page
designs you like and put them in a folder. Make notes of the ways you
navigate sites and what you like and don't like.
Capabilities
Based on the results of your focus and the designs you like, you
will decide what special capabilities you want. For example, do you
have products you want to sell online? Or do you just need to show a
catalog of products because your customers are going to call or fax
their orders? (There is a significant difference in cost.) If you
want to provide a message beyond text, do you need to offer audio or
video? Each of your decisions about capabilities impacts your
budget.
Creation
How are you going to create your website? If you plan to create
your own pages you will have to decide between learning HTML (the
language web pages are written in) and learning a web creation
software package. There are numerous software packages for this
purpose. They range from free to $10 to $2000. On the other hand, you
may decide to have someone else create the website. Again the cost
can range from free (that famous brother-in-law) to $10,000. And
then, you'll need to set some criteria for how to choose a website
creator. In order to do this, you need to learn enough about website
creation that you can make a wise decision.
In addition to creating your site, you need to find a service to
host your website. This service could be the same one you use for
your email (your ISP or internet service provider). However, a
business site should reflect your level of professionalism and have a
domain name. So in addition to finding a web host, you also need to
register your domain name. Many times your web host will do that for
you, free or for a small fee.
Maintenance
After you've put up your website you need to update it. Frequently
and regularly. Don't make the mistake of thinking that once it's up
it will remain static. Web visitors expect new content each time they
come to your site. If they visit several times and don't find
something new, they won't return. So the long-term survival of your
site depends on a good maintenance plan. Again, we're back to that
issue of who does the maintenance - you or your web designer? At what
cost?
Both creation and maintenance impact the budget that you set for
your website. At the low end you can use your current internet
service provider to host your site and create your own pages either
with a software program or a word processor. At the high end you can
turn over all of the work to a web design service and pay thousands
of dollars. In the affordable middle ground, you can plan to register
a domain name, get help in designing and creating your site, find a
low cost web host, then learn to maintain the site yourself. There
are an infinite number of possibilities.
Promotion
In the early days of the worldwide web you could put up a website
and anticipate a few people coming, just to see what you had. That is
no longer true. There are thousands of new sites going up every week.
In order to bring visitors (and buyers!) to your site, you need to
promote your site. You'll want to register it with search engines.
Add the website address to all of your print advertising, as well as
you business card and stationery. Offer special reports and other
reasons for coming to your site. Change your content often enough
that people want to come back.
As you can see, getting online is not a simple process. It may be
advertised as such, but there are hidden questions that you need to
answer. Here are some suggestions:
1. Take a class or find a knowledgeable person who can answer your
questions.
2. Start small. It is better to have a good small site than an
unused large site.
3. Plan to grow. It is easier to understand all of the issues in
creating and maintaining a website once you jump in and start doing
it.
Regardless of how you do it, it is important for your business to
be online. Use these six steps as the starting point, then grow from
there.
About the Author
Dr. Jeanette S. Cates,
The Technology Tamer, works with organizations who want to use their
technology more profitably and with professionals who want to reduce
their learning curve. She offers Blast into CyberSpace: A guide to
planning your website in one day. This website planning course is
available in a live seminar and as an online course.
© 1999 Permission is granted to reprint this article in print
or on your web site so long as the paragraph above is included and
contact information is provided to www.TechTamers.com.
To print this article, click here to
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