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Domain Name
Register your company domain name (i.e.: idahoartnet.com, yahoo.com, excite.com, google.com).
This late in the game a lot of names are already taken, some are being held by companies whose
only purpose for existence is to resell names. The names are all unique, so you'll need to spend
time finding a name, or a variation of the name you want.
Find an easily remembered name that is related to your business. Potential
customers are more likely to come back if they can remember your address. Keep in mind that it
requires more funds to market a name like "google.com" or yahoo.com" than a name that implies
the products you sell or services you provide. You might also find it useful to buy variations
of your name (i.e., idahoart.net and idahoartnet.com).
Check name availability and register the name. Registration
fees range from $15.00 to $30.00 a year. The higher end ones offer free web pages (1-10 pages)
for registering with their company. Take note: these are free web pages, meaning
customer service is limited. Be careful of sites that offer totally "free" registration; many charge exorbitant front-end
webhosting fees that make their
offer more costly than simply signing up with a webhosting company.
 | enom.com
(Domain registry: $30/yr w/ free web pages) |
|
register.com
(Domain registry: $25/yr w/ free web pages)
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Suffix Designations:
.com = businesses (most common designation for businesses)
.cc = businesses
.biz = businesses
.us = no limitation, designates a United States-based website
.net = usually for network companies (businesses also purchase this name)
.org = nonprofit organizations
.gov = government agencies
.edu = schools, colleges and universities
Other suffixes are constantly being added to the list
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Design your Web Site
Design your website well, both in content and presentation. The objective is to get Internet
users to your website AND to keep them there long enough to become customers. Design your site
well, it is a reflection of the creativity, reliability, organization, and trustworthiness of
your company.
Determine what information you need to include in your website. Present everything in quick,
easy to read, easy to digest, easy to understand format. Keep information simple and uncluttered in
your web pages.
| Home Page. Design your home page to grab your customer's attention and to serve as the portal
to the rest of the website. |
| Products and Services Pages. This is the main section of your website. Make sure it's
easy to navigate through these pages; and that the information included is useful . Make sure
you answer all your potential customers questions about the products and services. Make sure
all of this information is easily available. |
| Locate your navigation bars in usual places --top, bottom and left side-- and keep them
in consistent locations in your website. In other words, don't make users have to look for
the navigational bars |
| About Us or Company Pages. Create a section that includes information about your company,
who you are, and your vision or mission statement, frequently asked questions, etc. The more
information you pass on to your potential customer and the more questions you answer, the more
likely they are to trust you. |
| Contact Us. Make sure this is visible (easy to find) in every web page. Let the customers
know that they can get a hold of you to take care of service issues or just to answer a few more
questions. |
Optimize all the search engine techniques to make sure your website will pop up near the top
of the major search engine's hit list. Location, as with traditional brick and mortar businesses,
is still important. Except this time, it's search engine location. Ideally you want to show up on
the first three pages of the hit list.
Use meta tags to ensure placing. These are optional
lines of HTML code that can be used to describe your page. Tags provide
descriptive information about your site to the search engines, but in a form
that isn't displayed by the browser. Meta tags are keywords that potential
customers will punch into the search engines.
Make sure you have the products they want.
Good design is critical. Getting them to the website is only part of the task; you also need to keep
them there and to get them to come back. In order to do so, make sure your website engages your viewers.
This means you should have products they want, as well as information relevant to their lives and
businesses.
Provide ever-changing, exciting information, such as product updates, competitions, promotions,
chat room, or an online bulletin board area. Include features that offer customers things to see and
do in your site. Update your "frequently asked questions" regularly.
Offer extensive free information or links to sources related to your industry so that your website
is also viewed as an excellent resource. Make it a one stop website, where customers can have all
their questions answered. Your objective is to increase the amount of time they spend visiting and
learning about your website, the more time they spend at your site, the more trust you'll build,
and the more comfortable they will be in purchasing from your business.
Make sure your website is easy to navigate. Potential customers and clients will want
to browse your site to find features without wasting time. If they get lost or have to wait too long for
loading time, they will leave. Terminology should be easy and self explanatory. Make sure buttons and
links are simple to understand. Build a site map to help customers navigate through the website by listing
all their options in one organized page.
Make sure your website loads fast and has a clear purpose. Animation and colors can be fun, but make sure they are not
distracting or take too long to download. People leave sites that take too long to download. Remember
that most of the Internet world is still dialing up through modems. According to market research, people
want sites that are easy to navigate and where all of their options are clearly presented and easy to
utilize. Easy ... FAST navigation is essential to keep visitors in your site.
Make sure the text is readable, both in content and in visual format. Don't pick a
neon color for the letters, it's difficult to read. Make sure your writer has a good command of the
English language and has proofread their work; people notice these things. Again, do not forget that
your website is a reflection of your reliability, credibility and creativity.
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Developing your website
There are several options on how you can develop your website; depending on your priorities, time line,
and financial limitations. What's more important to you, launching your business as soon as possible, or
saving money? Or both?
Hire a
Web Designer to develop your site. Unfortunately, this is the most costly choice. Most web
designer's charges are very expensive. Costs could run into thousands of dollars, depending on the complexity
of your site. You will also have to pay extra for each update to the site. If this is affordable, go this
route. With this option, you don't have to purchase or learn new software, and you can focus on your business.
Design your own website via Web Design Software. The most widely used
programs are Macromedia Dreamweaver, Microsoft Front Page, Adobe GoLive and Homesite. Each
have their pluses and minuses. The
biggest complaint regarding all of them is they
put too many tags on the html code page. What that means is the content of the web pages are buried in
so much html tag that search spiders give up looking for content in the web pages.
In other
words, your website may not show up at the top of the search engine lists.
You'll also need image editing software if you design your own
website.
It doesn't have to be Adobe's full featured Photoshop, but something that can crop, resize, rotate,
and clean up photos would be good. Microsoft's Picture editor (comes free with newer computers),
may do the trick.
This route is less expensive than hiring a web designer, but it takes a
serious commitment in
time to master all the software. Prices for web design and image editing software run anywhere from
$200-$500 each. Try www.yahoo.com shopping to compare prices.
Use
Online Templates. This is a quick, easy, and inexpensive option for very small businesses. Number of
pages are usually limited to 5, enom.com allows for 10. Many domain registration websites and web
hosting sites offer this service for FREE. They have a series of online templates for web design,
you provide the data and drop the information onto the templates.
There isn't much flexibility regarding
graphics layout, general layout and color choices, but they're pretty good. It's
not technologically advanced, but you will need to know how to digitally import text and images onto the templates.
Don't expect marketing, search engine submission, or 'excellent' customer service to come with these
services; they are afterall "free."
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Webhosting
Locate a reliable Hosting Provider that has a proven track record (at least three years
in business), with no
downtimes (99.99% operating time) and 24-hour tech support. Out of control downtime would be equivalent to customers coming to
your door and finding it locked.
Make sure they offer expandability (i.e., lots of email, ecommerce,
shopping carts and merchant account gateway services, generous disk space, and traffic quotes.) Make sure upgrading won't cost you a small fortune, that
any excess to traffic use won't mean you'll have to give up your first born.
Review their marketing solutions, such as search engine submission,
banner ads, etc, to see if it is inline with what you want. Find out if this is a part
of the fee or an additional expense --some sites charge an additional $75.00 a year
for this service. Marketing options are critical because search engines are a vital key to
generating traffic to your site. Some companies will even help ensure that you rate well with the search
engines.
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Ecommerce
The ability to actually sell products through an online store. In recent years these e-stores have
become a huge part of our economy ... 51 million consumers (end of 2000) bought a gift online and online
spending has increased 62% over the past year, to nearly $4.7 billion worldwide.
Shopping cart software makes it possible to have an online brochure where your
customers can browse, add items to an order form. Hosting companies usually offer ecommerce packages that include
a shopping
cart software.
Provide security for personal information. This is of primary importance to all online customers.
Make sure your webhosting company uses an encryption code, like 128-bit SSL
(Secured Sockets Layer) technology. Internet credit card processing is safer than via phone.
Merchant Accounts and Gateways allow businesses to
accept credit card payments online. Merchant accounts handle transfers of
funds. The online payment gateway, which usually comes included with a merchant account, reads the information from order forms and translates it for the merchant account. Not all gateways work
with all shopping cart software. Make sure your merchant account is compatible
with your webhosting company's commerce software.
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Search Engines
Search engine placement is critical.
If the search engines can't find you, then your location is not visible to many
potential customers. That would be the equivalent of having a shop at the end of the
lane, five confusing turns from the main drag, down narrow alleys. That might be fine
in a small town in Spain or Italy, but it would still be far more profitable to have
a good business on the main drag. The following are some hints to make sure the search
engines can find you.
| Place key words are in your title tag -- area in the head section between the title tags |
| Place key words in the body where it is easily found -- somewhere in the top 200-300 words
of the page |
| Use meta tags |
| Choose key words carefully. Pick ones that accurately and precisely describe the subject of the page.
Make sure you include words that people will type to find your site |
| Place content before java script or CSS tags. A pop down menu
and animation are great, but is it keeping the search engines from finding you.
|
| Delete unnecessary html code. Web page design software
are notorious for overloading on html tags. If you know how, remove extras
in the html code page work area. |
| Make sure contact information is included in every page.
Include contact information in every page, name, phone number, address,
etc. It can be a link to your contact page; search
robots look for this information. |
| Optimize several pages of the website for your key words |
| Use plenty of text links. Search robots can't follow drop down
menus or image file links, so include plenty of text links in your pages.
|
| Label alt names in your image files |
| Link to good, reliable sources and make sure they are linked to
you. Search robots look for this information. |
| Avoided spamming in your title tag and in the body ... But repeat key
words often. |
| Exchange links to get visitors. Form unions with other related sites: professional associations
and memberships or umbrella organizations. If your members have websites, they should post your logo on their sites. |
| Submit to search sites at the same time. Don't bother with the smaller search engines,
there are only about 10 major search engines used by 90% of Internet users. You want to show
up in the first two pages of the major search engines such as: Excite, Hotbot, Infoseek, Yahoo,
Google, Magellan Art Index |
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Partial Check List for Starting an Internet Business
| Cash for Start up -- purchase software, computer, paper, inkjets, printer, etc |
| Web Design Software, unless you already know html programming. |
| Photo Editing Software |
| Word, Database and Accounting Software |
| Design the website w/ SSL |
| Firewall to protect database and Virus protection to protect computer |
| Review website security and liability with hosting company |
| Study to find name and website address -- register domain name |
| Research and find a reputable hosting site |
| Get Tax ID# and set up Company |
| Establish on online merchant account for ecommerce |
| High Speed Internet connection to transfer files from your computer to the hosting site |
| Market study of potential customers and sales projections |
| Design Business Plan: Management, Operations and Finance |
| Design Advertising, Marketing, and Distribution Plan |
| Cash for Operations --marketing, monthly fees, office supplies, etc. |
| Establish traffic to your website through online marketing -- opt-in mailings, search
engines, e-zines, newsletters, classified ads, etc |
| Monitoring system for website: statistical information regarding website activity |
| Process orders and replies quickly |
| Email customer receipts and deliver products |
| Start building an email database for future mailings -- plus keep abreast of removal off list |
| Back up system for computer |
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Pitfalls to Avoid
| Too many ad banners or pop up ads |
| Not clear how to contact the company |
| Confusing navigation |
| Confusing or distracting design or page layout |
| Difficult to read text |
| Slow loading pages |
| Too much animation and sound |
| Long, scrolling pages |
| Hard to configure functional interactive tools (i.e., send a card, send this to
someone, sign up, etc) |
| Poor search engine within the site |
| Broken or mislabeled links |
| Lengthy complicated registration process |
| Unclear site map and no links |
| Out of date content (i.e., old FAQ's, calendar, etc) |
| Lengthy complicated check out process |
| Don't show up in search engines |
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Internet Business Resources
Web promote (www.webpromote.com) has an assortment of
articles to help you find your way through the maze of starting a business on the Internet. They
have how to articles,
free online tools, free weekly e-mail newsletter, online promotion developments,
and opportunities.
C|Net Builder (www.cnetbuilder.com ). The site for
builders. Provides webauthoring, web graphics and design, web business, cool tools, web programming
and scripting, web servers, hosting, hardware, getting started and builder downloads.
Two cows (www.tucows.com) has freeware, shareware, demo
ware and other try it before you buy it software.
Webreference (www.webreference.com) is a reference
library of webprogramming, ecommerce, articles and tutorials.
Other sites: 3d Artists and High Five
|
Snowman, (Detail)
Johnny Hammond
This space for:
Recommended Books Listing
Extra display space for artists submitting articles
(As soon as the portfolios are finished,
images in this column will be linked to the artist's portfolios)
Attention Artists!
If you want additional display space, submit an article for possible
publication. Follow guidelines specified under "Submission Guidelines"
above. |
