Thursday 31 July 2014

What do I need for a Website?

Getting your business online, or just getting a website can be confusing. Often people are not aware of what you need to get yourself online and how each one of these different criteria may cost you. Indeed quite often I approach businesses that simply cannot believe the low cost service we provide. Others sometimes exclaim that they can get it cheaper, but they are always referring to a part of getting yourself online and not the whole picture.

To get online there are a few things you need for your online presence to be felt. (Please be aware that this is a brief guide and very basics like having a computer and internet access is assumed!!)

Firstly you will need a website address otherwise known as a URL. This is usually related to your companies name or field you wish to be found in. For example out mother site is Above Website Design so we own the address www.abovewebsitedesign.co.uk (and a few others that direct to our .co.uk address).

These can cost anywhere from cost anywhere from a couple of £s to tens of ££s depending on the domain ending eg .com, .co.uk, .eu etc. And usually you renew the domain name (www.) every year, and if you sign up for multiple years the cost comes down...usually.

In my opinion having the ownership of your domain is of utmost importance, make sure you own your website, or if you let someone register the domain name for you, make sure that if you leave there services you get domain ownership. The last thing you need is to get a popular domain name and the provider sell it from under your feet and you can do nothing about it, or your choose to leave and they won't release the URL without you paying and extortionate amount.

Another way you can be caught out is by companies offering to register a domain name for you that is actually part of their domain, so they become more popular on the back of you putting effort in to promote your site. eg www.yourdomainname/RIPOFFCOMPANY.com These type of companies offer extremely cheap of free domain names and you can have absolutely no rights to the URL and what they do with it and they get further exposure off the back of your hard work promoting it online.

So own it yourself or make sure you have the rights to it from the start.

Secondly you need to have a website created or designed. There are several companies and organizations that provide free websites. These are usually fairly basic websites, with limited design and feature options, but could be adequate for your needs. These 'free' sites may have a limited time offer for them to remain free or options to pay to upgrade features or designs etc. Also if the site is 'free' check out the support they provide.

Free sites are great if your just starting out on the internet, but expect to spend a lot of time yourself adding and changing content to get the best out of them. If you have the time to experiment than great and do so, if not then expect to pay someone with experience to do it for you.

Thirdly you need to have your website 'hosted'. Basically put when you have a website design you like you could put it on your won computer (host it or run it) and everyone could view it. But when you turned your computer off they would no longer be able to see your website. When you host it you place the website onto a 'server' which is a computer that is constantly running. So as it is never turned off people can view your website anytime of the day everyday....in theory.

Hosting your site for free is possible but you better get used to seeing adverts! Hosting costs vary massively depending on your needs, or the needs of your website. As a general rule the more data on your website and people interacting with it the more it will cost, memory or space required to keep running your website and features has always cost and always will. Find out what you need for your site and only get what is required, if you don't know what you need the
n, again, expect to pay someone with experience to provide you with advice or to do it for you.

With these first three steps in place your on-line! But in order to get your website noticed you will need step four: Off site SEO or on-line marketing.

This is essential and costs vary massively. It can be done for free but expect to spend a lot of hours to do a successful job yourself.

This is a basic guide, but I thought it would be a good idea to make non-internet savvy people aware of the costs that can be involved and what the cost are for. Maybe you can do some of the work yourself to lower the cost but it can be an expensive past time getting your business online.

We presently offer a 'package' that covers all of the above for a mere £30 a month, but this offer is due to expire in October 2014.

If you have any further question you would like Above Website Design team to answer please contact us on here or on our main website www.abovewebsitedesign.co.uk and we will be happy to help.