What's involved and where do you start?

As more and more people get interested in getting their businesses online, they run into a problem: confusing Web jargon and a lack of information about where to start. In our years of experience with online businesses - and getting other people's businesses online - we have found that the elements themselves are few. Basically, you need:

• a workable business plan
• a computer and an Internet connection
• a website and web hosting 
• good customer service

A Business Plan

It's one thing to want an online business, but knowing what you're going to sell or offer, how you're going to deliver it, whether products can or would best be downloaded rather than shipped... these kinds of questions are essential to your business success.

Don't follow the dot-com bombs. Figure out how you're going to make your website benefit you - whether it results in sales leads, information to assist customers and attract new ones, or actual sales of goods or services.

• Computer: you don't need the latest computer on the market, but you'll need some familiarity with using it - even if it's just to download and respond to email. Otherwise, your hesitation in using it could interfere with your willingness to respond to customers.
  
  
• Internet Connection: this is how your computer gets connected to the Internet. Companies such as @Home, Earthlink and others provide such connections. We prefer cable because it's fast, but any connection will do. Your Internet Service Provider ("ISP") will help you to set up your browser (the program you use to "surf" the Internet) and email program.

Website

Having an online business means you'll need a website and a few other things. Your web designer should be able to help take care of these details, but it will help to know what's needed:

• Your Website
  
  You'll need a website to advertise, provide information or sell online. Either you or someone else will have to design it, create the images, write effective ad copy, and make sure the whole thing works.Notice that the above says more than "make" a website. Websites are about marketing - so that means professional-looking, unconfusing, easy-to-use, with ad copy and pertinent images. Just for starters.This is not the place to stint on fees and the future success of your online business by hiring the cheapest person you can find. Remember that you are creating a business, so entrusting it to an amateur or making decisions based on who is the cheapest are not the smartest ways to go - especially if your next step turns out to be paying someone else redesign your website!
  
  

• A Domain Name (example: novawebmedia.com)
  
  A professional business website should have its own domain name. Among other things, it looks more professional and established. Don't simply use your Internet connection provider's free web space, or your website address will look like this:
  http://members.theircompany.com/~yourwebsite
  instead of this:
  http://yourwebsite.com
  Which is easier to explain ... and for customers to remember?
  Which makes it look like you are serious about your business?
  
  
• Web Hosting
  
  Once your website is completed, it will need to be on the Internet. This is generally accomplished by getting an account with a "web host" - a company that provides web space for websites. There are many good web hosts available.For commercial websites, we do not recommend "free" web hosting, which can be tremendously slow to download and usually comes with its own set of banners advertising anything but your business.

Customer Service!

Just like in the offline world, you'll need to tend to your customers. That means answering email and your phone, providing what they want, and generally keeping on top of things. If you keep in mind your own experiences with "good" and "bad" customer service, this will take you a long way towards providing great customer service for your customers!

EFFECTIVE WEBSITES

A few words about effective web design In all this discussion about websites, a few words need to be said about what constitutes effective web design.First, most people have certain goals in mind for their websites. Period.
If these goals are not met, they may not know why.Let's address creating a website. Without knowledge of what it takes to create an effective website, it's easy to get engrossed in how it looks or some tiny feature that doesn't take into consideration the overall picture.It's about marketingThe truth is that effective websites are not about putting up a few pages of text and pictures and hoping. Effective web design is really about marketing.
There are quite a few elements to this, but the basics are that a website has to look professional, be designed to sell - and, furthermore, it must be built from the ground up to be search engine friendly so that it attracts visitors. Otherwise, one may end up with a (hopefully) good-looking website that doesn't sell and or get many visitors.

Whether you are selling online or simply appealing to people to contact you, your website needs to:

• Look professional
• represent your company well
• be targeted to your customers
• contain the information it needs to contain
• be set up logically so that information is findable
• be unconfusing and easy to get around
• with images and text created not just to present or fill space, but to sell
• with forms, shopping carts, databases - whatever's needed
• download fast
• built to be search-engine friendly
• with a promotion package for visibility and exposure

That's: website building, marketing, search engines.

Do I need all that?

That would be up to you. However, commerce is commerce. You need to get attention and convince prospective customers that yours is the company to buy from, hire, whatever. You may as well ask which elements you are willing to forego: good ad copy? an unconfusing website? good design? search engine traffic?

Price isn't everything - or is it?

Not really. I would say that it's more important to find a web designer who can produce what is needed to make your website effective.
Interestingly, websites - even websites that merely give information - are a combination of advertising, full-scale sales presentation and branding (getting people to know and recognize your name or "brand"), and possibly online store.

In offline marketing, you can get a Yellow Pages ad (2" x 2") for a few hundred dollars. But that's just a small ad, possibly with a phrase or two included. It can't say much, is printed in few colors (red/yellow/black?), and certainly can't take credit card transactions for you.

But a website gives you plenty of room to talk to your customers. It can contain many gloriously full-color pages of product information, tutorials, support pages, a history of your company - and even a shopping cart which allows people to order online.

There's no denying that cost will follow suit. However, even in the case of a brochure-type website for your offline store or home business, you'll also find people doing their research on the Web - and they likely want a little more than a few phrases ... another good reason to have a website.

In the short or long run, your website will likely pay back its costs by getting the word out there for you - or outright sales - to more potential customers that you could easily contact for the same amount of money, on a 24/7 basis, and without tying up valuable sales staff.

Okay, so maybe you've run across someone selling "websites" for $200. I'm not sure what that entails but, well, there's got to be a limit to what you get for $200.

Truthfully, it takes a good deal of time, effort, knowledge and experience to build an effective website. But what do you get for your money? Round-the-clock promotion, lead generation and possibly sales. What else can give you that?

A word about search engines
Again, websites must be built to attract search engine traffic. However, another caveat - some folks think this means endlessly repeating words, or having extremely tiny text or text in the same color as the background. Well, these "tricks" worked several years ago. Today, they may get the entire website banned. (Be careful too of "guaranteed" top search engine listings.)

And about those "metatags"
Metatags are text built into web pages from which the search engines take the text for their listings; when you see listings for "Joe's Barber Shop" at a search engine, likely this data was taken from the metatags.

Years ago, metatags had very much to do with how high a page ranked in search engines. Today, simply throwing metatags into badly designed pages (from a search engine standpoint) will not magically raise their rankings.

Solution? Hire a pro.

HOW SHOULD I CHOOSE A WEB DESIGNER?
"I know someone whose kid made his own website"

At the risk of sounding terribly presumptuous or opportunistic, I would like to answer the question of how to choose a web designer in the hopes of shedding some light on the subject and enabling people to make good choices.

But first ...
With the lack of easily accessible (or understood) information about how to start an online business - and the great excitement about marketing to literally millions of people - it's easy to leap upon the first person who "knows someone" whose kid "made his own website." This gives the idea that "anyone" can make a website, and that it's easy. And, of course, the kid comes cheap.

Well, maybe he's good at it. I've seen a few. But just as in the rest of "real" life, those are few and far between - and, generally, cheap can equate to ineffective.

Effective websites: design, marketing and search engine know-how
The actual building of simple websites can be learned by nearly anyone. However, note that I said simple websites, not professional.

Professional websites are marketing tools. They have to look good and make you look good. They have to be functional, easy to use, and provide what's needed to help you achieve your goals. They have to download fast, and be built from the ground up to be found in search engines - so that your customers and potential customers can find you.

Beyond the ability to make a website, you'll need someone who knows something about actual design, about what might be pertinent to your industry, who can create effective images and ad copy that will appeal to your customers, and who can build a search-engine friendly website without overstepping the bounds and getting your website penalized or banned by search engines.

This means: someone who knows a little more than just how to design a website.

What is a web designer?

In an industry that has grown very fast in a relatively short time, the catchall title is "web designer." It isn't very specific, and the truth is that not everyone who does "web design" does everything.

The huge growth of the Web started with people learning how to code web pages; all text on a grey background, yes, but the pages were there. Later came the advent of browsers that could display images - and, later yet, came an influx of people from the print and graphics design worlds, raising "web design" to new visual standards.

There is also the issue of what the website contains - it is well thought out, easy to use, does it give visitors a "comfort level" about doing business with the company, does it sell effectively? These kinds of issues, while partially falling into the "design" category ("easy to use"), are more the domain of marketing and sales. Thus, the ability to "design a website" does not necessarily encompass these aspects.

And yet still, there is the issue of getting visitors - traffic - to the website. Many of the larger companies, possibly funded by venture capital, opted for highly expensive promotion: TV, advertising banners on major websites, and the like. However, this scenario does not work for most companies; it's simply far too expensive. The solution, then, is to build an effective, capable website that also brings in traffic.

That said, I will venture to say that most don't know - or perhaps have chosen not to specialize in - all these factors.

So, in the interests of educating the public at large - those who are going to be choosing a web designer who fits their needs - I will say that, if you need your website to look good, bring search engine traffic and sell, what you are probably looking for is a web designer who also knows something about marketing and search engines.

Do they work with you?

Aside from choosing a suitable web designer, creating an effective website has something to do with you, too. It's not just a matter of throwing money at a design company and hoping for a great outcome.

As I understand it, there are some amusing stories circulating about web designers who insist on doing things their way - or else. I'm not sure how this could possibly work.

Let's face it. It would be the rare web designer, no matter how web-experienced or design-talented, who knew all about your industry, much less your particular business. Who has this data? You.

In my opinion, barring that your web designer is also an expert in your field, effective web design can only be done in tandem with the client - you. Your input about your business and industry, and the designer's design, marketing and search engine expertise, are what put you on the road to an effective, professional website.

The marketing and search engine savvy web designer
The truth is that the web design professional capable of doing all of the above may be somewhat rare. Not all web designers either know about or choose to incorporate all these factors into their work.

Why? Because it's a lot of work, and it requires venturing out of the "web design" mold.

It takes experience, expertise and just plain painstaking work to create a gorgeous but suitable layout, design images pertinent to your industry, write good, solid ad copy, and make it all fast-downloading and search-engine friendly. Your shopping cart and other features, consulting with you, getting your input, making recommendations and incorporating it all will take additional chunks of time. The savvy web designer will implement your ideas and enhance them. He may spot possible pitfalls and give you confidential advice borne of his experience and expertise. He'll know how to design a workable, effective website designed to bring visitors via search engines and sell.

In short, he'll work with you and be effective.

My Best Advice
While it is difficult to put myself in the position of making recommendations, I also recognize that the very lack of such information often results in people making poor choices, getting less than they should, and occasionally concluding that "the Web doesn't work." It's not the Web that doesn't work... it may be your website!

So, I would say that this is not time to get stingy with the business or advertising budget. Yes, you can take your chances and hire the cheapest you can find. But if you find yourself settling for what you get or wondering months later why your website fails to perform, impress customers, or bring visitors from search engines, then you have one option - redesign and rewrite. But that, of course, means that your original investment was wasted - along with the time you could have spent establishing and making a real "go" of your online business.

Talking to a marketing-savvy web professional may help you spot what's missing.

Ultimately, the choice is yours, and depends on what you need. Hopefully this information will enable you to make some "right" choices that fit with you and your company.

The good news
But - and this is the good news - doing it right the first time, or redoing it right to fit your needs, is the best way to give you a head start in taking advantage of what the Web has to offer.

And that is: plenty.

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