What you need to get your small business online, a really simple guide!

Part 1

So you have a small business in professional services or making products and would like to get online. Get a website designed. And start using the web for your business. Before you run off to the nearest website designer there are some things to consider that will make the website designer’s job easier and your company website more successful.

What do you need? and where do you start? This article will give you some guidance on what to do and how to do it. Taking your business online with ease and success.

Stage 1 – First Steps

The first steps are often the most important and have the greatest impact on the rest of the project. First things first, you need to decide upon an internet purpose for your website. This sounds complicated but basically means deciding what the website will do. For example do you want to sell products, promote your services, show a portfolio, gain a list of customers, share information. Decide what your primary aim of the website is and how this plays a part in your business.

Make a sentence like this: People who visit my website will …. Find information on our latest projects.

Step 2 – Building the concept

Once a purpose has been found and a sentence constructed you should know what the primary aim of the website is. The next step means starting to build an idea of how your new website will achieve the primary purpose or goal. This could involve looking at examples that are already online and how they achieve there goals or speaking to colleagues or friends about what would be a good website that achieves the goal set out in step 1. Write down any ideas that you find useful.

Step 3 – Taking the concept to a reality

After the idea has become a concept it is time to look into making it a reality and building the website. One of the first things is to decide if you have the skills to build what you want. If not there are many web design companies who can give you good quotes and help to bring your idea to life. Get in contact with a web design company and share your ideas with them and find out the costs.

 

Deciding on a domain name

An good simple article on domain name choice is here but remember if it is a UK company then a co.uk domain or .org.uk is useful.

Getting an artist impression

Once the name and concept fit together it is now time to get your designer (or yourself) to design a proof of how they envisage the site. This should fit in with the concept and ideas that you have.

Note: It is important to try to get the design right at this stage before the creation of the website; this will save you both time and money.

The making of the website

Creating the website coming soon…

 

Chris Barton
Web Designer
www.cjb-i.co.uk

Feel free to contact us for any more information. 01384 270477 or [email protected]

our services are listed below

small brochure site
blog/small site
SME business packages
new look - website redesign
ecommerce - internet
shopping sites
search engine promotion
google adword campaign
Internet advertising on google, Yahoo, MSN,
more

statistics and analytics of your website / online shop
email / domain setup

web 2.0 consulting

 

Tel: 01384 270477

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