Website setup process

Website Setup Process

These are the steps to creating a complete and professional website.

Once you established that a website will be beneficial to you or you business follow these steps:

Step1

Chose a domain name. This should be something related to yourself or type of business your running. When choosing a name understand that most common names have already been taken, so pick something descriptive, yet easy enough for the layman to spell and remember. With a solid website and decent marketing getting customers to your site won't necessarily have anything to do with the name.

Step 2
Once the domain is registered you need a place to host your site. A running website requires a certain amount of space as well as a very stable connection to the Internet. There are many reasonably priced hosting packages that can store your website and keep it running close to 100% of the time, so you don't have to worry about your website being accessible when your sleeping. We recommend www.webhost4life.com

Step 3
Now it's time to cerate the actual website. If your selling less than 30 products you wont need a database driven website, and can accomplish what you want with a static website at a moderate price.
What is the difference between a dynamically driven database site and a static website?
A database driven site offers the ability to change information on the fly. Meaning that you can change the price of a product from your control panel and it will automatically update the site. This is a necessity for a website which demands constant updating and new product listings.
A static website is one where each page is made separately and when you want to change something you have to edit the code of that specific page. So, if you have 25 products to sell, each one will have it's own page. This is time consuming and not very versatile, but effective for smaller websites.

Step 4
You now need to conceptually design the layout of the site. It's always a good idea to browse though other sites similar to yours to get a feel for what the visitor is expecting when he/she comes to your site. You need a simple and easy to use navigation bar and good structure so the visitor can easily browse through your site. If you use a web-design company they can take care of this section.

Step 5
Design. The actual look of the site. Unless you have some understanding of web-design and are comfortable with your work you will need someone to create the look of the site. A very expensive looking site won't get you customers. There needs to be a balance between professionalism and homeliness. Take a look at some of our designs as well as other sites similar to yours.

Step 6
Shopping cart. If you are selling something online you will need a shopping cart. If you currently do not have a credit card machine and would like to accept credit cards there are several companies that offer real time processing and will credit your bank account when an order comes in. You can have a cart built specifically for your site. But, we recommend using our OCP shopping cart for $5.00 a month.

Step 7
You now have a complete working site and are ready to get it listed on the Internet. Please view our advertising page to get a complete picture of how to advertise your site.

Things to note about a website.
The process is not instantaneous. Each step takes time, allow for about 2 moths to have your site up and running.
Don't be discouraged by bugs in your site, every site has bugs which are worked out one at time.
If you listed you site on google or any other major search engine it could take up to 6 weeks to start getting traffic to your site, although, there are other methods to get faster results.
Be careful when filling large or unusual orders. Verify that they are in-fact legitimate before sending them out. You have very little protection from on-line credit card orders because you do not have a signature from the owner of the card.