Planning For Success

Okay, you’ve decided to begin marketing on the Internet and you’re ready to jump right in and create a web page … right? Wrong!

There are a few more steps to go through if you want to be successful in your web adventure.

Before you begin your journey onto the Information Superhighway with a web page, there are several questions you must answer. These questions will be critical to the success or failure of your Internet marketing efforts.

What’s Your Purpose?

The first thing you need to do is answer the question, “What is the purpose of your web site?” or, “Why are you doing this anyway?” Don’t overlook this critical step! How you answer this and the other questions will help guide you through the rest of the process. Not answering these questions adequately will inevitably lead to a weakened web presence at a higher cost. Hardly the definition of “success.”

“If you want to reach a goal, you must ‘see the reaching’ in your own mind before you actually arrive at your goal.” — Zig Ziglar

A common characteristic of most successful businesses is that they have a vision for their business. They know what they are working towards, and they are building a business that matches their vision.

How do you create a vision for your online business? First you need to ask yourself what you really want to create with your business. Picture in your mind the ideal business that you want to own. Don’t get distracted by what is or is not possible and do not evaluate whether it will work. Just consider the possibilities and how aiming for what you want will be unique to you.

Select and Register Your Domain Name

If you are truly serious about marketing your business online, you should definitely register and get a domain name. We will be happy to register a domain name for you as part of our web design and/or hosting services, or you can register it yourself.

Hosting Your Web Site

Now that you’ve defined why you’re doing a web page and what you’re going to do with it, you can begin selecting where your site will be stored.

Your web page will need to be hosted on a server that is connected to the Internet. You may already have space allocated to you through your ISP as part of your Internet service. Or, perhaps you’ve seen all kinds of web sites that offer FREE web pages. Those FREE offers sound good, but quite honestly if you’re doing anything beyond a personal web page with family photos or pics of last years vacation, I’d strongly suggest you avoid those FREEbies.

Generally, web hosts come in three varieties:

FREE Sites
Earlier I suggested you should not use the free web hosting sites to host your business web page. There is however a useful function for the free sites as it relates to your business web page. You can create multiple portals or gateways to your main site from the many free sites available on the web. Now, you can’t be too blatant about it as many of them forbid you from creating simply a portal page. But, if you put some valuable content on the free site targeted for your customers, there is no reason you can’t point them to your main business site as well.

Budget Hosts
While these hosts do not always offer all the bells-and-whistles you may want in a professional site, many of them still are useful for the entry level web site. Be careful in choosing your host – if their servers go down for long periods of time, load your pages very slowly, or don’t provide a way for you to contact them, it can do more damage to your business than good.

Full Service Hosting
If you’re needing a full compliment of services and 24-hour technical support, contact us.
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If you don’t want to manage your own web hosting services, you can contact us here at Data Synthesis, and we can get everything set up for you. While we are not hosting on-site, we outsource our hosting services to various providers depending on your particular needs. We will work with you and find the best hosting service customized for your individual needs. We also act as an intermediary for you in providing customer service and support.

Are you ready for the next step?

Okay, now you know why you need a web site, what you’re going to do with it, selected a host, and have registered your own domain, right? You’re now ready to begin creating your site and Step 2 in our simple 1-2-3 strategy.

Plan