Creating a website? Read this first!

Putting your goods and services on the web? Well you have a great task ahead of you. Lots of decisions and work; however, it will all be worth it. Below is a a list of tasks that will help you when starting your website. This list will help you create a great web presence.



Web Hosting
To me this is the most important decision you will make. You can have a great looking site but if your host is down all the time no one will see your site but you. There are lots of hosts out there and prices range from real low to real high. The key is to always check out their statistics. I have found this great site that will show you how to signup for web hosting, change your hosting, has coupons for web hosting, and much more! Check them out by clicking on the image below:

Domain Name
Your domain name is the URL or web address that your clients and your potential clients will find you on the web. When deciding on your domain name it is best to include your business name in the URL. (Example: Alicia's Shop should use something like aliciasshop.com or aliciasshoponline.com) Sometimes using your business name is hard to obtain since there are millions of other folks with businesses online. Try to come up with some form of your business name or something your customers will remember that relates to your business.

Design Phase
There are so many ways to do this now. You can hire a designer (like me), purchase a template, use a free template, or create your own design using free WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) software. Remember to use just a few colors, not create an image heavy site, and tailor it to your business. Someone that sells flowers should not use an animal template for example. You can start out with a few pages and build upon it or just launch the whole thing at one time. If this is your first site I would suggest to do just a few pages and add additional ones at your own pace. A whole launch can be a big under taking and can cause frustation especially if this is your first go round.

Site Promotion
Once you have your site and the host is set up and ready to go... You will want people to come visit it, right? Promotion is a very important step in building your online presence. You should plan out doing things like search engine optimization (SEO), buying ads, and linking with other sites. Also make sure you always have great meta tags!

Fresh Content
The best websites are always changing their content and keeping it fresh. You should at very least change content weekly and always comb through your site for issues.

Good luck and feel free to comment or contact me with any questions you may have!

　

That's the Buzzle!