Having your business online in the 21st Century is not an option. Change has been constant in today's business climate. Tweens and Teens live on the Internet. Computer usage among adults has skyrocketed. People are looking for information. And the credit and business crisis that began in 2008 will change the way consumers do business.
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Branding -- Okay, chances are good that your business name is not IBM, Home Depot or Coca Cola. Every consumer recognizes those names because of years and years of "brand advertising." Have you ever heard of Aubuchon Hardware, a retailer with over 140 retail stores in the Northeast? Probably not.
In 2002 Aubuchon Hardware decided to join the Internet marketing trend. They followed the keys listed below. Most important to their program was keyword research that allowed them to target over 400 non-branded keywords that people used when searching for hardware products.
Their research revealed that Home Depot, Lowes, Ace Hardware and True Value usually did not appear in the first three pages of search results for those keywords. With that information in hand, Aubuchon developed a web presence. Their online store now generates four times as many sales as their largest brick and mortar store. What are the keys?
Key 1 -- Plan your SITE NAME. Of course you will want the name of your site or page to be as close to your business name as possible. For example, ibm.com is the website for IBM, or International Business Machines. yahoo.com for Yahoo and so on.
Get a .com name. If people actually search for your business name on the Internet, only two or three will try extensions other than .com. Government offices use .gov or .us. Churches and other organizations use .org. Businesses with a .com main site use .net for a secondary site.
For instance, Comcast uses comcast.com as its sales site and comcast.net as its customer service site. While .com is certainly the best, it is not as important as it once was. Most people search the Internet using keywords for the information they want; it is rare for someone to search for businessname.com.
What name do people use when referring to your business? If you operate Billy Bob's Bar-B-Q, that's where you want to begin: billybobsbarbq.com or billy-bobs-barbq.com.
Key 2 -- Make certain you have a reliable hosting service. There are a lot of good hosts available. Some include domain registration in the fee you pay, and that gives you one less thing to worry about - unless you have problems. Personally, I prefer to register my domains in one place and choose a host based on what they have to offer.
I use GoDaddy for several reasons. I have all my site registrations in one account and can easily manage them. And, so far, customer service has been very good. Their prices for domain registration are among the lowest available. Click here for more information about GoDaddy.
Do not buy web hosting on the cheap. Most small business hosting is less than $100 per year. That would cover a majority of your needs. Web hosting packages have two important items that most people look for: how much storage and how much bandwidth is included in the base price?
Most reliable hosting services will provide far more storage space than you'll ever use. The same is true for bandwidth unless you are planning to use a lot of videos on your site. The next important question is this: will you be using PHP programs? Will those programs allow visitors to your site to upload content to your site? This is one area in which hosting services begin to differ.
In my opinion, one of the best hosting services with excellent customer service is Hostgator. I bought one hosting package for less than $150 per year and host three sites on that package. So that brings my hosting cost per site to less than $50 each. One of those sites has an extensive PHP program to manage and track sales. Installation of that program was easy, and I mean easy. Click here for more information about Hostgator.
Caution: Thinkhost is a web hosting service that caters to your heart more than your brain. They call themselves the "green host" because they generate their own electricity, etc. That is the only good thing I can say about them. Customer service is virtually non-existent, and there are stories upon stories of people trying to get refunds using the Thinkhost Guarantee that simply would make you cry. Avoid these people.
Video and Audio Hosting: If you plan to have a lot of videos on your site, Hostgator is still a good place. If you plan to have a social site and allow site visitors to add videos or audio recordings to your site, I would recomment Cirtex Hosting. These folks got ahead of the Web 2.0 craze, and they are ready to serve these needs. Click here for more information about Cirtex.
Key 3 -- Be customer-friendly. A few days ago my wife and I were visiting with friends who told us about a recent visit to a restaurant. After sitting for five minutes without being recognized, they left. Your Internet business has much less than five minutes to sell itself. Think about why people surf the Internet looking for goods and services: it saves them time. Time...time...time...time.
Show that your site will save them time right from the start. How fast does
your site load into their browser? According to statistics most people are just like me. If I hit a sight that says, "Please wait while page loads," I say "No, thank you." The site designer wants me to wait around and see some cool stuff he or she did. I'm not interested in their cool stuff; I'm interested in getting the information I'm seeking.
You are in business and you are trying to sell a product or service. Online visitors are less forgiving when looking for that type of information than when they are surfing social sites.
Provide a way for people to contact you. Have a privacy policy that states what you will do with any personal information posted by the visitor. Have a sitemap with links to it on nearly every page of your site. The purpose of a sitemap is to help people find information quickly.
There are many more steps you can take to make your site user-friendly. A good site where you can get more information about building an online business is Home Business Opportunities. Click the link to visit that site.
