How To Get A Website Online

Posted on March 9, 2010
Filed Under Web Development | Leave a Comment

If you have a business today you know the importance of advertising. Just as advertising in the Yellow Pages has known to be a must have advertising tool you had to have, today you have to have a website.

Not having a website for your business is just unthinkable.

A Website is Cheap Advertising: Even though you may think that a website is too much for your offline business – it is not. Even though not every business can have a multiple page website, every business should have a main page, a contact page and a mailing list sign up page. These features can be designed onto one page as well.

Setup a Free Website: You can setup a free website that cost you nothing but your time. It is not the professional way to represent your business online but it may look just as professional like the paid website product, except the name as your free website name is created as a directory or a subdomain.

This means that if the website giving you a free website name and space where it resides, is registered at gaitsi-thubib.com, then your carparts may probably be at hosted at gaitsi-thubib.com/tomscarparts or at tomscarparts.gaitsi-thubib.com.

Professional Website & Email: Registering a name for your website is easy and costs about $10 per year. Hosting costs around $5 per month. If you think that this is too much then your website visitors may also wonder why you could not afford something like tomscarparts.com.

The Main Page: Your Main page can consist of pictures of your business or your products or just your logo. It is an introduction to your business. The way you want it to speak to your customers, or potential customers, is your choice.

Without misrepresenting itself, a small business that works out of a garage can seem like a professional corporate business. It can lend to more sales. You can also feature and introduce new and behind-the-scenes products of your business that most of your clientele does not know about. If you sell car parts you can advertise a range of large tractors for sale even though you may not have the shop space to promote the product at the work place.

The Contact Page: Your contact page gives your website visitor a way to send you an online message without having to send you an email. This is fast and convenient, especially for people that are not browsing your website from their own computer. Software to handle this is available for free and it is easy to install and to operate.

The Mailing List Sign up Page: The mailing list is handled by what is commonly referred to as an autoresponder script, software, program or service. Of these the best is to have a mailing list that is managed online by using a professional autoresponder service. The average website user may not identify a cheap choice when you use software but when the software or script suddenly stops working, or your domain gets blacklisted from a spam complaint, you will want to pull out your hair not to have invested in the $10 to $20 per month autoresponder service.

An autoresponder account collects your website visitors’ contact details and can follow up with automatic autoresponder messages going out at preset intervals you determine. These emails should be always “green” – always true and fresh. You cannot setup automated mailing list responses that contain information like the specials you have for this month. It will not be true for the person subscribing next month, would it?

An autoresponder also have the feature to broadcast to any or all your mailing lists. You type the email and when you click on send, everyone on that list or lists receive an email addressed to John, Mary, or whatever her or his name might be. Using a mailing list is fun, have huge potential and very professional. A time may come when not having a mailing list may be like not knowing your business should be listed in the Yellow Pages.

If you want a mailing list but does not want to pay for one from the start, you can start by signing up for a free autoresponder account. This way by the time you have figured it out you only need to upgrade your free account to a paid one.

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