Most small business owners don't have time to research what goes into a website design. This often leads to confusion, and at times, being over sold. This is a short synopsis to describe the very basics of web design. This article will also introduce you to some basic terminology that will help your communication with a website developer as well.
Minimum requirements to have a website:
- Domain Name - This is the name you purchase that you want people to type to find your website. Our domain is www.belizegraphics.com. You shouldn't pay more than $14.99/year. You can register your own domain on sites such as networksolutions.com or omnis.com
- Hosting - Refers to a place where the files that make your website will reside. Price can vary, but for most sites, it should stay somewhere between $8/month and $18/month.
- A Web Page - This page is just a file written in a language such as html or php (html and php are just a few choice languages websites are written in) and copied to into the public folder of your hosting package.
TIP: Always remember the log-in information for your domain and hosting packages. It's very common for businesses to lose this information and it's very difficult to recover. Belize Graphics can register and keep your domain log-in on file for you.
Practical Understanding:
In reality, a one page website will do little for most businesses today. An analogy would be to consider a one page website like a small row boat. The marketing strategy would be the oars or a sail. Without discussing how to incorporate your marketing strategy and demograhic preferences into your website, it will be "dead in the water" and offer no real value to your business. The result is usually a business thinking the internet is not right for them. (This is an extremely unfortunate situation, because the internet is single most cost-effective means of marketing ever created when propertly applied.)
Now taking this analogy to the next step, imagine trying to attract customers who want to take a boat ride around a lake. You would want to add comfortable seats, a fresh coat of paint to the boat, an umbrella for shade, a cooler for drinks, bait and some fishing rods. This is the equivelent of adding elements to your website that will entice customers to visit your site, such as more pages, a shopping cart, slide shows, galleries, bullentin board systems, custom scripts, training, additional information, etc.
You see it doesn't matter how well you market, if your site doesn't have appeal, then people will not stay on your site and give your products/services a fair chance. This is part of the reason Belize Graphics was formed: To assure each business will have the maximum chance of succeeding with their website venture.
