This is pretty much where you want to start with your online venture. You want to keep track of all things in an organized way. You need to also establish goals. How many products do you intend to sell within a given time period. Where do you want to be at this time next year? These are important aspects to consider. One way to track sales or create goals is to base your output on a quarterly approach. Plan out your goal for the first quarter of the year. Look at your numbers at the end of the quarter and see how they look. From this analysis you can give you self and idea of what numbers you want to see in the quarters to follow. This three month at a time approach is great because it gives you a time out to look and see what is and isn't effective. Now, this may be the wrong section to place this in, but I don't care. IF you are going to have your business online, it IMPORTANT that you get a real domain name, website and SPEND MONEY for it...don't go at it for free. Having a real and established domain name gives your customers a comfort that says, "This is a real company" and not some guy just making websites to take my money and run. Yeah, I know you have seen those free tripod, geocities and other free sites, but you have to understand, you get what you pay for. If someone comes to your site to buy something, they certainly don't want to see any pop-ups that have NOTHING to do with your product or service. That is what you get with freebie web hosting. So what are you to do? There are a ton of web hosting companies out there, many of which let you register your domain and pick a hosting package all at the same time. I have had much success with a company called DOTNETPARK, but you can always look around for yourself. They have complete web hosting packages that start at around eight dollars a month. Once you get your website up and running, you will need to establish email contact information for your customers. You will want to create simple, relevant email addresses such as: info@yourdomain.com
help@yourdomain.com
webmaster@yourdomain.com Next you are on to design. Now I am not going to give you a whole tutorial on how to design a website, but I will give you a small list of points to consider. It is important to design for your market. Don't use the wrong colors, don't overly use stock photos and don't use photos images that don't belong to you. Host the images on your sitedon't reference images from other sites. Design for usability...make sure even Joe Schmoe can navigate your site with no problem. Also, if you are going to do your own design and web page construction, consider purchasing THE standard in web imaging, the all mighty Adobe Photoshop and its super compliment Macromedia Dreamweaver. These two products go hand in hand! OH! one last thing: Do not use sound effects!!! Let me say it again, do not use sound effects!!! Ok, I'm done. I can move on now. Always have people look at your site before your release it. Consider using a content management systems to maintain your site. This will save you much time and effort when updating content for your users. Heck, a blog application like Wordpress could even work for you. Those of you with blogs out there are probably already familiar with this tool. If you admit that you have no eye for design, these are your options: Find someone who does and pay them Go to your local bookstore and browse great books such as "WebPages That Suck " to get the latest do-s and don'ts of web design Visit other websites that may offer the same thing as you to get an idea of where to start with your design but don't blatantly copy anyone else's work or you could be infringing on copyright laws. Always provide contact information about your site so that people can feel at ease with visiting your site and purchasing your offerings. Keep track of what works! |
