Web sites for Small Businesses
The recent Super Bowl commercials hammered home the importance of Internet home pages and online enterprise services. Even those who don't own PCs commented on the overwhelming "dot com" commercials, especially the E- Trade commercial that said "We just spent two million dollars, how do you want to spend your money?"
So,
you don't have two million dollars to spend on TV commercials to get
someone to look at your Web Site? You don't even have a Web Site? No
problem. Having your own Web Site is easier today than ever. And
cheaper, too.
First, decide why you
want a Web site. Is it just to have a place for Web advertising, or
are you looking to connect online ordering and inventory to your back
office functions? If your Web site is just
advertising, there is free Web site space available from many
Internet Service Providers (ISP). You don't get
to use your own name, however, as you co-reside on someone else's
address. You get to add your identifying "address" as a
series of slashes (/) behind an existing address.
Beyond the free Web
sites, there are basically two charges for a small
Internet Web site. One is for the rental space on a hard drive on a
PC server directly connected to the Internet. If you want your own
server to be connected, prepare to pay for a high speed, 24 hours a
day, 7 days a week (24/7) data link. The service is not cheap. That
disk you rent is usually 20 or 30 Megabytes in size and comes with
basic services, such as e-mail links and basic file maintenance. This
site has nothing to do with your ISP link to the Internet.
The second charge is paid
by everyone who has a presence on the Internet:
$70 for the first two years, then $35.00 annually thereafter. That
charge is for the name of your site, called the domain name, and it
is paid to Network Solutions, Inc. To find out if the name you want
to use is available for registration, check their site at:
http://www.networksolutions.com
The ". com"
sites are the most sought after, but anyone can have an ".org"
or even a ".net" type page. The ".gov" and ".edu"
sites -are obviously reserved for those types of organizations. When
you reserve a domain name, you must tell Network Solutions
where to assign it. Every server has an Internet address all its
own, adding your domain name is like adding the name on a building
directory. The service you rented the PC space from will be more
than happy to assist you in getting on their server.
Now
you have to decide what to put out there and how much to spend. Site
design can be a simple, self-written page, or a complicated,
multi-layered, multimedia extravaganza.
If you
start now, you might be ready for next year's Super Bowl.
George Mindling
©
2000
