A. What’s In a Name?
Remember that not only does your domain name tell customers exactly how to find your business on the Web, but also it communicates and reinforces the name of your business to every Web site visitor. It can also be used as part of your email address to reinforce your online identity.

Keep these tips in mind before you choose:

	Make it easy to remember. What's easier Yahoo.com or fast.internet.search.com?
	What is your business. If you are setting up an online presence for an established business, keep the name of your site the same as the name of your business (or close to it). Another approach is to simply and logically describe your business. "Flowers.com" works perfectly for a florist.
	Keep it short. The best domain names are those that customers can remember and type into their browsers after seeing or hearing them only once.  Do your best to Keep it Short.

B. How to Get Domain Names

Once you’ve decided on your Web identity, the next step is to determine if it is available and then register it with a domain name "registrar."  This can be done by looking in the "Who Is" database at http://www.networksolutions.com/cgi-bin/whois/whois.  This will also tell you who owns it if it is already taken.  If you have your heart set on one someone else has, contact them and see if they will sell.  

All you actually need is one name, but some businesses register a number of variations, just in case they want to use them later—or to avoid the risk of competitors obtaining similar names.  You also may want to register common misspellings so that all customers who incorrectly type your address still find their way to your site instead of receiving an error message. 

Most businesses currently use the extension (or TLD - Top Level Domain) of ".com".  You may also register their names with ".net" and ".org" (for "organization"). Other suffixes include ".tv" and ".edu" for schools and universities. The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) recently announced seven new TLDs—.biz, .info, .name, .pro, .museum, .aero, and .coop.  You can burn a lot of money just registering names.  I just bring these choices up here to help.  Usually one will do just fine.  

Registering is easy and inexpensive, so do it as soon as you’ve decided on your domain name to make sure you get the name you want. Once you have decided on a name there are several places to register it.  One is Network Solutions at http://www.networksolutions.com/catalog/domainname.  Shop around, some offer cheaper rates and all offer discounts for multi year contracts.

A. Plan Your Site Carefully

First, identify clear goals for your site, such as generating leads, building a database of potential customers’ names and e-mail addresses, or putting a product catalog online to save the time and expense of printing and mailing. 

Then, figure out what your potential customers need to know before buying your products and services. This might include:

	An overview of your company, its products and services, and their applications
	Complete product or service descriptions, including features, key benefits, pricing, product specifications, and other information, for each product or service
	Testimonials, case studies, or success stories so customers can see how similar individuals or organizations have worked with you
	An FAQ section that anticipates and answers customers’ common issues Plan the structure of your site, focusing on making it easy for customers to learn what they need to know, make a purchase decision, and then buy quickly. Create a site map that outlines every page on your site from the home page down and how customers get from one page to the next. Use tools that quantitatively measure site activity—where customers are clicking, how often, and whether they end up purchasing—and then compare the results with your goals.

B. Choose the Right Site-Building Tools

Now that you have a plan, you’re ready to start building a great site. Many businesses turn to professional design studios to create their Web sites, but if your budget is limited, there are a lot of quality Web site building tools make it fast and easy for you to create a polished, professional-looking site—with little or no HTML knowledge. 

C. Site Design Tips

Following these basic guidelines will help make your site not only attractive, but also easy for customers to use—and that means easy to buy from you.

1. Carefully examine your own favorite sites. Look closely at what makes them your favorite.  Are they easy to navigate? Pleasant looking? Do they load fast?  Is the information provided useful?

2. Your home page is your site’s (your business’s) online front door. It’s essential that it make a good first impression on visitors. Make sure it clearly presents the following basic elements:

	Your company name, logo, and slogan, prominently displayed. Take full advantage of the opportunity to showcase your brand identity.
	A link to an "About the Company" page for customers to quickly learn who you are and what your business offers and what your company history is.
	A site menu listing the basic subsections of your site. Keep this menu in the same place on every page throughout your site to make it easy to navigate.
	A "What’s New" section for news, announcements, and product promotions. Frequently updating this area will encourage customers to return often.
	Contact information. Don’t make it difficult for visitors to find your phone number, e-mail address, mailing address, and fax number.
	If you gather any information from your customers be sure to have a privacy statement clearly describing your business’s policy for protecting that information.

3. Make it easy for customers to explore your site. As you build your site, try to minimize the number of clicks it takes the customer to go from your home page to finding the information they need.

Make sure links make sense, so customers know what to click to find what they’re looking for. Don’t make your navigation buttons or graphics too dominant in your site design: instead, focus on information.

4. Keep things simple. Don’t fill up your site with graphics, animations, and other visual bells and whistles. Stick to the same basic color palette and fonts your company uses in other communications, like your logo, brochures, and signage.  Maintain that "look and feel" throughout your site.

Ensure that images and graphics serve to enhance, not distract from, the goal of your site. Make sure your text is easy to read—black letters on a white ground may not be terribly original, but they are easier on the eyes than orange type on a purple background.

5. Keep download times short. Test pages to make sure they’re not too overloaded with graphics that slow load times—and minimize the size of your images when possible. Most users will give up and move  to another site or log off if a page takes more than 8 seconds to load.

As soon as you’ve completed this step, you’re ready to put your site on the Internet.

Your Web site is a series of files that reside on a special computer, called a Web server, connected to the Internet. For customers to visit your site, they must actually connect to that Web server via the Internet and view the files. Web servers and the Internet connections that link them to visitors must be fast and powerful enough to quickly respond to all the visitors’ requests to view your site.

Most small and medium-sized businesses turn to an Internet Service Provider (ISP) or Web hosting company to host their site.  For a monthly fee, ISPs and Web hosting companies will connect your site to the Internet at high speed via one of their Web servers, allowing the site to be viewed by anyone with an Internet connection and a Web browser. The host provides your site with space on a server, access to its high-speed Internet connection, tools for managing and maintaining your site, customer support, e-commerce features, and more. There are hundreds of ISP and Web hosting options to choose from, so look for one that can meet all your needs.

	Shared hosting or dedicated server? Shared hosting is an arrangement in which your site is housed on the same server with several other Web sites. This is an economical solution for smaller sites. Paying a dedicated server, a solution used by larger and busier sites, provides faster access and ensures that your site will be accessible without concerns for other sites on the same server.  Does your Web hosting provider offer both options?
	Hard-disk storage space. Smaller sites may need only 300-500 MB (megabytes) of Web site storage space, while busier e-commerce sites may need at least 9 GB (gigabytes) of space—or their own dedicated Web server. As your site grows, your selected company should be able to accommodate you with a range of options.
	Availability. If you run an e-commerce business, your site must be accessible to customers 24 hours a day. Web hosts maximize the availability of the sites they host using techniques like load balancing and clustering. Can your ISP promise near-100-percent availability?
	E-mail accounts. E-mail accounts that match your domain name are often available from your ISP. Are they included with your monthly access and hosting fee?
	SSL Encryption: The security of the credit card numbers and other personal information customers send you should be a top concern. Does your ISP or Web host protect your site with an SSL server ID?
	Support. A big part of the value of turning to an ISP or Web host is that you don’t have to worry about keeping the Web server running. Does your host offer 24x7 customer service?

Register your site with search engines. Over 90 percent of Internet users search one or more of the top engines to find what they need. Make sure your business is part of the results when customers look for the products and services you offer.  Manually submitting your site to search engines and directories can take countless hours every month.  There are several companies that will do it for you (for a nominal fee, of course).  One is SubmitWizard, an easy-to-use search engine submission service from Network Solutions and MyComputer.com. Submit Wizard has the capability of automatically submitting your site to over 200 search engines and directories, including Yahoo!, Altavista, Lycos, Excite, Infoseek, and more. Visit http://submitwizard.mycomputer.com/submitwizard_sale.html?cobrand=nsi&service=6 to learn more.

Put your domain name everywhere. Brochures, advertisements, business cards, and even hats, jackets, and t-shirts can be effective ways to promote your site and establish your corporate identity. Anything having to do with your company should have you domain name on it.

-- C.L. 'Steve' Crane