Getting a Business Website
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You have several options on how best to set up your website for your home business. You can either choose to do it yourself, use an existing storefront program that has everything already set up for you (this is the option I would recommend), or hire a web designer to make your website for you. Each option has benefits and downsides, and each has significantly varied costs associated with it.
Regardless of which option you choose you will also want to register your own domain name to use for your business. Also, depending on which option you choose you may need to set up website hosting and figure out how you are going to accept payments.
Here are your options for getting your site going.
Option 1 – Do it Yourself
This option is by far the cheapest, though it also involves the most work. If you don’t know anything about creating web pages, you will need to learn quite a bit (though there are tools that make it quite easy to create your own site nowadays)
The benefits of creating your site yourself are:
1. It’s the cheapest option.
2. You can make your site exactly how you want it
3. You can update your site yourself to add more products when you make them or take products off when they sell.
4. You can make change to your site anytime day or night without having to wait for someone else to do them for you.
The downsides to creating a site yourself are:
1. If you don’t already know how to create a website it can be time consuming to learn.
2. If something goes wrong either with your website or with your payment processing you are in charge of fixing the problem yourself.
There are many, many WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) website editors out there that allow you to create web pages without knowing anything about HTML. My top recommendation would be Macromedia Dreamweaver. It is a rather expensive program, though, so you may prefer to go with a cheaper option. Or, you can look for an older version of Dreamweaver on Ebay and usually get it for a steal while still getting everything you need to create your site quickly and easily.
The best advice I can give you if you create your site yourself is not to get carried away with extra, unnecessary graphics on your site. It is tempting to add lots of fun pictures, animated images, sounds, etc. but those can just annoy your customers and drive them away. You also need to keep in mind that many of your customers may still be using dial-up internet connections instead of high speed connections. If you have too many images on your page it may take too long to load for them and they will just click their back button on their browser before even seeing what you have to offer.
The actual creation of your website is beyond the scope of this book. To learn more about creating websites, you can do a Google search for the term “how to make a website”.
Option 2 – Use an Existing Storefront
This option is a nice in-between option for people who don’t want to learn to make a website themselves, but don’t want to pay big money to a web designer to do it for them. It is also the option I would recommend to the vast majority of people.
Basically, a storefront site provides you with an easy to use backend to a website where you can upload product images for your store through your browser, set your prices by just typing them into a form field in your browser, and process transactions (accept payments) using their ecommerce system.
The benefits to using a storefront are:
· You don’t need to know anything about HTML or creating a website to use it.
· You typically don’t need your own method of accepting payments online since this is usually provided with the service.
· You can get up and running more quickly than if you are creating the site yourself or having to wait for a web designer to finish your site.
· You can make changes to your site anytime day or night without having to wait for someone else to do them for you.
· It is cheaper than hiring a web designer.
The downsides to using a storefront are:
· You have less control over the look and feel of your website.
· It is more expensive than creating your own website.
If you decide to go with an existing storefront, I would highly recommend going through Yahoo stores. One reason is that Yahoo is well known and well respected name that your customers can trust. More importantly, though, it is easy to set up and packed with features that will really benefit your business including free domain name registration, browser-based administration of your store so you never have to upload files yourself or deal with programming, numerous extra checkout and shipping options that you can add automatically, excellent customer support and more. To check out the plan in detail, compare it with other programs and see if it is the right option for you, visit the following link:
Yahoo Merchant Solutions-Comparison chart
Option 3 – Hire a Web Designer
The third option available to you is to hire a web designer to create your site for you. This is an easy option since you won’t have to learn any web programming yourself, but it also has some downsides.
The benefits of hiring a designer are:
· You can make your store look exactly how you want it to
· You can get a customized shopping cart that is perfectly suited to your business and your customers
· You don’t need any knowledge of HTML since someone else is building it for you.
The downsides to hiring a web designer are:
· It is the most expensive option
· You will need the designer to make changes for you when you add new products or sell existing products which means big ongoing expenses.
If you decide to hire someone to create your website for you, be sure to shop around. There is a wide variance in the prices that web designers charge. You may be able to find someone who will create a website for you for $100.00 while another web designer may charge $1000.00 for the exact same site. You may want to try to find a local web designer so you can meet with them in person and explain your ideas directly to them so you are sure that you get exactly what you want.