To put your business on the net, one of the first decisions to make is how much time and finances can be dedicated to your venture. Most companies who offer dial-up access will allow you to put home pages on their server as part of a monthly cost. A home page is similar to a full page ad in a magazine. You can use programs such as Netscape Communicator or even Word ‘97 to design a simple page for your company. There are also companies who will do it for a fee. A single page setup fee starts at approximately $150.00 per page.
You may prefer to purchase a domain. A domain is a dedicated address to your own website, rather than a subdirectory underneath your provider’s dedicated address. For example, the web address "www.indigosun.com" indicates that "indigosun" is a domain. The advantage to having a domain is that you can store large amounts of information on your provider’s server. This is a good option for a business who wishes to put a catalog on their site (similar to a mail order catalog) or for an interactive site with calendars, articles, chat rooms, or large amounts of pictures or graphic files. Your Internet provider can assist you in purchasing a domain. After that, either set up the domain yourself or have a company design the site for you.
In deciding which company will design your site, make sure to look at other sites they have created. Any reputable company will provide you with a list of their client’s sites. Be concerned if they cannot produce references. Pricing for site design can vary greatly from company to company, so always shop around to make sure you are getting the best deal. Pricing will also vary depending on whether or not your site will need monthly maintenance, as in changing prices on a catalog, etc.
After your site is designed and on the Internet, the next step is to register your site with search engines. This is something you can do yourself and is free. Search engines allow individuals to search for a particular website by entering a few words. For example, The Indigo Sun is listed in search engines under ‘psychic,’ ‘holistic,’ ‘meditation,’ and many other words. Many design companies will do this for you as part of setting up your site. Although there are about 10 major search engines, there are hundreds of engines out there. It is very important that your site be registered with all of the major engines to ensure that people are able to find you! Also, links are very important. Most sites and home pages include links to other sites that they enjoy or which are about a similar topic. A link is a way for an individual to move from one website to another by clicking on a particular spot. There are even internet rings which are dedicated to one topic. This allows someone to click on a graphic at the bottom of your page to move to another site on the ring. Rings have become very popular in the past several months, and are a great way to get people to visit your site.
To measure the success of your marketing efforts, you will want a counter on your main page. A counter is a mini-application that counts the number of people that visit your site; in web language these visits are called "hits." You can find many free counters on the Internet that you can put on your page. Some counters have become quite sophisticated and can break down the number of hits to your page by the day, hour, country, and what servers they are coming from.
In all, putting your business on the Internet is quite painless, can bring you many new customers from all over the world, and can be a very inexpensive way to boost profits!
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