The internet has the largest market share of consumers than any other market in the world. Considering the cost of effectively creating an internet marketing campaign, it is also one of the most efficient methods to reach potential customers. While it may seem like a daunting task to place your small business on the Internet, it truly is easy once you understand the web development and hosting process.
The initial step to creating an Internet home for your small business is to create a small checklist of information. Write down the demographics of your ideal customer, what information you feel is relevant for them to know, and how you want the information portrayed. Some questions you may ask is do you want your homepage to portray a corporate look? Perhaps you would like to portray as a small business hoping to achieve a local feel.
Once you have achieved completing the checklist, it is time to find a professional web developer. One method of ensuring you are hiring an expert is to ask to see their portfolio. They will often send you an E-mail with a list of web sites that they have created. As well, you can often determine if they are responsible and reliable by contacting the owners of the sites they utilize in their portfolio. It is a great method of contacting references like you would when hiring a new employee. Lastly, it is common practice by professional web designers to enter into a written contract.
The last phase of placing your small business online is placing your newly designed homepage on a hosting account. This is often part of the contract with the web developer, yet is still important to understand what it is. Essentially, a computer is consistently connected to the Internet that physically stores your homepage files and displays them on the Internet. When a customer types in your domain name (www.yourcompany.com), it will send your files from that computer to the customers.
Unless you are expecting a large number of visitors exceeding hundreds of thousands per month, which is not common in small businesses, stick with the base hosting package. This often includes five hundred megabytes to one gigabyte of hard disk space. As well, it should include one to five gigabytes of transfer per month. It is recommended to have your developer check your usage periodically as your web site gains popularity so you are not charged extra if you go over the monthly bandwidth.