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Small Business Web Site: Becoming a Necessity? 

Small Business web site: An overview

Small-business web sites are quickly becoming increasingly necessary to the growth and development of small-business enterprises. Small business web sites may be anything from a simple one-page online brochure, to a large, complex informational and e-commerce web site. To many people, the thought of a web site for their small business is daunting and seemingly too complex. In actuality it is relatively simple, with many experts to guide you along the way without your having to spend an extraordinary amount of your limited budget. While marketing and promoting your site may take more time and money, there are really only five main tasks involved in initially building your small business web site. 

Small-business web site-purpose and customers:

The first thing you need to do in developing a small business web site is to decide on its purpose.  You will need to choose from primarily two different options: a marketing web site containing strictly information about your company and products, or an e-commerce site to sell goods and accept payments online.

Next, you will need to decide what your customers would want from your small business web site. You'll then need to have at least a small amount of pages to fulfill your customer’s needs or desires.  You will want to provide reassurance to customers that your business is real and not a fly-by-night Internet scam.  If you have nothing else, you will at least need a contact page and a page or two describing your business or products on your small business web site. 

Small business web site domain names and hosting: 

Your small-business web site will also require a domain name.  You can go to www.register.com  or one of possibly hundreds of domain registering sites to see if the name you want is available.  You may have to try several variations if the name you would like is unavailable.  There are many different extensions to consider for your domain registration including .com .biz .org and so on. The costs of registering domain names continue to drop with some now being registered for as low as $5.00 - $7.00 per year. 

Next, you'll need to host your small business web site. Hosting companies, basically post your site to the Internet for a monthly fee. Some domain registering companies offer web site hosting as well as some ISPs (Internet service providers) which may actually host a small site for free.  You may want to choose a hosting company with such features as e-mail addresses ending in your domain name along with some extra storage space.  You may shop around at hosting directories or get the recommendations of someone that you know.  This author has found great satisfaction and success with www.godaddy.com  and  www.ipower.com . 

Small business web site designers: 

Finally, your small business web site might require a designer to create the design for you. All you need to do is tell them what you would like the site to look like and what you want it to do, and possibly give text and photos for them to use.  Once your site is up and running you may want to designate one person as a webmaster to keep it up and running as well as updating information and products pages.  Also, there are several software products which are relatively easy to learn such as FrontPage, which will allow you to maintain your own small-business web site.

By Paul Susic MA Licensed Psychologist Ph.D. Candidate CEO/President  Susic Psychological P.C.

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