The first step towards launching your online marketing strategy is creating a website and finding the best person or company to do it. This can prove quite tricky for first timers. Unless the business is based on IT, it is highly unlikely that there is an experienced web designer familiar with what is needed within the company.
There are four basic criteria for creating a website for a company:
Goal Determination
The first step when creating any website is to establish goals to be achieved by the domain. Once you have a set of goals for the domain, it becomes much simpler to choose a web design company. When setting up goals for the website, ask questions such as:
1.Is there need for the website?
2.What do you have to sell at the site?
3.Do you have a particular product or several items?
4.What is your target market?
5.Does the web designer work with email hosting companies or independently?
6.Is your brand established or starting out in the market?
7.What industry does your company operate in?
8.Who are your competitors and how are their sites?
9.Does your company have pre-existing websites and how do they look like?
10.Are you willing to accept different forms of payments from users?
11.What is your time limit for the site?
12.Will there be repercussions for not developing a website?
Having the answers to these questions will help you in choosing an appropriate web designer.
Make a Budget for the Job
When approaching web design companies, do not be upfront with them about your budget. First, get the approximate cost based on the goals above. You can then calculate the amount of money available for the project.
Choose a Web Design Company
The third step is the actual choosing of a website design company. This will involve considering several options. For instance, does the company do web hosting and web design at the same time and checking out the companies” web design portfolio. This contains some of the work they have completed in the recent past.
Experience Matters
The web design company must have some experience in the field. Check up their domains online and see if they are close to what you are looking for.
You can also check out any reviews posted online about the company. These can offer you some info on how users find the web design company.
There are literally hundreds of companies offering web hosting services. All these companies are in competition for the millions of websites that make up the World Wide Web. They make many promises to potential customers in order to draw clients. Hence, it is necessary to know the essentials of hosting as a business person. This will enable you to choose the best and quality provider for such services.
Below are points to put in mind with regard to domain hosting:
Cost- Optimum price is the best recommended charge for hosting services. There is no need to get excited with by low rates. There are key features to look for that cost more over a period of time. Price alone is not an indicator of quality hosting.
Bandwidth- Choose a hosting company with high, consistent and reliable bandwidth. This is especially vital for domains dealing with e-commerce. You do not wish for your site to crash when shoppers are in the middle of transacting business.
Consistency- Consistency and reliability are viewed in terms of uptime. This is critical for successful operation of a website. Imagine if your domain dealing with regular shoppers is down even 5% of the time. Sooner or later you will be completely out of business.
Privacy- This is among the fundamental concerns about domain hosting services. There is a lot of private data which streams through websites. The host company needs to be completely full proof when it comes to confidentiality. They must be Hosting Assured to guarantee compliance with ethics and legal conduct.
Security- The domain hosting provider must have the capacity to guarantee security of data streaming through your site. They must provide guaranteed protection of user’s confidential data. They must also ensure high uptime and have the capacity to deal with virus attacks, malware, worms, bugs and threat of hackers.
