That's the second important issues to decide. First because you want your www.yourdomain.com to be fast and easy remembered, young, fresh, and if possible related to what you sell.
If you have already a business, you of course prefer to use your company’s name. Go check out if it's available. Don’t spend to many time with this. Decide quickly a few names that interests you. Then go to a Hosting firm over our Website www.bonus-webhosting.com , almost every Host do offer a domain search where you can see if your name is available or not.
The search engine immediately give a answer if your name is available or not. As well they show alternative names available or names who are for sale or did expire.
That’s correct, there are domain names for Sale, some for good money.
A legal ® registration of your company or Logo does NOT give you any protection in the dotcom world until you register a domain name. Therefore we highly recommend that you register your Domain Name as soon as you have found one available, do this PERSONALLY. The domain registration only cost you just a few buck’s and it’s valid for 1 year.
The Hosting firms we offer register domains for FREE if you sign up with themes. As you need anyhow a Host to setup a Website you can do both things at the same time. They offer at least 1 Domain for FREE.
We know cases from people and company's with a good idea who talked first with a lot of people to get a feedback about the idea.
Later, the domain name they wanted to use was already registered. Guess by whom ? They had to pay a lot of money to the “owner” of the domain to buy it . Imagine you would have registered Coca Cola, Google , Apple etc. , before those firms did so and could sell it back to themes ?.
Your visitor will enter in your Home page (index.htm or home.htm) if he uses a search engine like Google, Yahoo or MSN . At your Home page he has to find all vital information about your business, what you offer and the links to your other pages, partners and subdomains.
A subdomain is like a other Website, but uses your main domain in the URL. (exp. www.subdomain.yourdomain.com). Can be interesting to separate departments or adding a special offer to a selected visitor.
It’s just like in a book. You start at the index page and then from there you go to the page you want.
Decide if your “subdomain’s” will redirect to a other link. Redirect a subdomain is a VERY useful tool for many reasons. We use it to protect our Affiliate links who could be Hacked if we place themes openly on our pages. If you sell products as a affiliate, we highly recommend you do use this option.
QUESTION # 5 : WHAT E-MAIL ACCOUNTS I NEED ?
You will get a amount of e-mail accounts with your Hosting contract, yourname@yourdomain.com. Host’s do offer a huge amount of e-mail accounts for you, some even unlimited.
Create a account for each issue you want to separate, each person involved or each department involved. Or create an account to receive survey information's from your visitors or create a client database offering a Newsletter for who subscribe.
Remember that it is very important to have as much contacts as possible in the Internet business in order to be successful. Follow up orders are very more likely as selling something to new clients. The more you get, the better.
With that e-mail database you can make some good follow up sales, using in the e-mails as well affiliate links or picture links in Html . Be aware to keep your clients or submitters always happy delivering what you have promised.
There must be always a option to unsubscribe and cancel a e-mail address from your database.
Do not send a e-mail every day or SPAM your subscribers. First because spam is illegal and you risk to get punished by the search engines like Google, Yahoo etc. . (without themes your site will not reach your clients).
Second because NOBODY likes this and you will loose subscribers, the lifeblood of your Website.
AUTO RESPONDERS :
Each one of your e-mail account’s is able to respond to a client automatically. Use this to thank themes for a purchase, a sign up, a survey or just inform about a response time you need to respond manually. You have already there the possibility to include products or links for extra sales.
QUESTION # 6 : WHAT WEBSITE DESIGN ?
The best school is the proper Internet. Go and check out how your competitors do look like. Get inspired and try to design some good looking page even better. Just copy a page is not helpful as the client most probably knows the competitor’s Website and will recognize that you just copy it. This would hurt your reliability and the sales to your visitors.
The first design issue is the look of your Website, colors , pictures, background, fonts etc. all that is related to the visual part of the design. A Website for “Quality Lifestyle” in grey and black would not attract many people. But keep it simple and don’t make it too fancy, unless your business has something to do with it (If you sell toy’s for exp). Use the space for the important issues. Pictures for design issues just if necessary or if you really have to show some. Use a good Font and size for that reading don't get annoying. Too many or to bright colors as well do not help to keep the visitor on your Website.
The second, even more important issue is the FUNCTIONAL design. Give very much attention to this point, keep it as simple as possible and make it actually work (the link’s). Visitors will leave immediately if it’s hard to find information, or if the link is hidden somewhere, or if there is no link to go back to your Homepage after the visitor visit a page, or if a link is not working (dead link).
Don’t write tons of things who are not important, principally at your Homepage. Tell in a few lines what is your business about and what are you offering. You always can insert a link to a page or subdomain where is a more detailed information. Let the visitor decide if he wants to take a deeper look at a issue or not.
Remember that a visitor decide to stay or not in a few seconds after he look at your Website. Your surviving on the net depend on that ( if your Website do sell something). If your Site is not good looking or not clear explained he will not stay long enough to buy anything. The main offer should be available in a few simple steps or even better, at your Homepage.
Your Webdesign plan should include all those details and roots where to go, how to come back, what you will show on page X, what on page Y, where do you want to place a sign up form for visitors ? etc. , etc. You must think about all those little details before you sign up a Host. Make a flux-diagram to resolve this issue.
To help you "design" this we recommend you use your text program on your Desktop, and “design” your Website page by page. For each page at your Website should exist a file with the same name. All text can be “exactly as used in your Website” as you can copy text into the Website Builder later on. Where you want a picture you write “picture” and specify which picture should be there with name and size. Where you want links you write it, and give already a name for every link you want.
As described, all TEXT and all PICTURES should be already written, organized and saved on your Desktop to transfer themes over to the Website Builder at the time you design your Website.
QUESTION # 7 : DO I NEED ADDITIONAL FUTURES ?
Additional, most used futures can be ...
A SHOPPING CART. Visitors can add different items in a virtual cart and then pay all at once when they leave. That's a must for who sells many single items (cosmetics, clothes, CD/DVD etc.).
A NEWSLETTER. Interested to send out a Newsletter to your visitors ? But a Newsletter has to have actually some NEWS in it.
He must be interesting and periodically (once or twice a month). Send just to visitors who did sign up for it. They as well must be able to cancel the subscription at any time they want like we told before.
Important to remember is that you can make very good after sales to this clients, as they already trust you and do purchase easier then new clients. Offer themes really good information and products can be very profitable. But remember, never fill their Inbox with e-mail’s twice a day. We all hate this and you will loose most of the subscribers. One of the e-books in our Bonus Gift for clients explains how to create a membership site.
YOUR OWN AFFILIATE PROGRAM. A simple way to sell a product is www.clickbank.com we mentioned before. But you might be interested in having your own affiliate program where people can subscribe and earn money for selling your products or services by sending clients to you. Set up this futures is complicated as there is a personal affiliate link to be generated, accounts and commissions to be managed and more. Here you have to go to your Host or a individual Pro.
A SEARCH ENGINE. Do you want to have a search engine in your Website where people can look for other sites. Search engines can be for a segment only, they don't need to be as Google or similar. A more complicated but profitable way to have a Website. You as well can include a Google Search field in your Website, as an easy alternative. One of the e-books in our Bonus Gift for clients explains how you can create such a search engine.
A BLOG. Blogs are very popular and easy to build. There are plenty of Free Blog options out there. A Blog is like a personal Website where you discuss any kind of issue. Blogs can as well contain links and sell something, in fact they can sell VERY WELL. One of the e-books in our Bonus Gift for clients explains how you do create a successful Blog. A Free Blog you can get at www.blogger.com , owned by Google.
A FORUM. A other popular item is a forum. People can post a question and the viewers of the site answers to the issue. Used for exp. From some Hosts to resolve a problem a client might have. He can post his problem and the other clients who knows a answer do help to resolve it. A client support from a company can get a very good hand by such a forum.
ADD'S AND SPONSORED LINKS. Here you have to go and read the next step
QUESTION # 8 : CAN I MAKE EXTRA MONEY ?
The answer is YES. If your Website is very well visited, segment related company's could be interested in advertising in it and will contact you. You can make for this some extra money without doing absolutely nothing then giving themes a advertising space in your Website.
Then there is GOOGLE ADSENSE. A perfect extra money opportunity for your site. Google is showing ad’s from other firms who pay for that on your Website. Each time one of your visitor”s click’s on a ad posted by Google, you get paid. Google is absolutely the best program and give the most return.
Some think it is negative to advertise your competitors on your own Website over Google Adsense. Do you really think that a Internet user does not check out all interesting Websites, offering what he is looking for ? By a simple click in a search engine he has all themes showing up at his PC.
Some Website don’t get Google’s permission, so perhaps that’s why they do not like this extra revenue possibility.
Google pays a few cent’s per click depending on what the advertiser do pay to Google, related to the business the client is in. But this can become a nice total sum at the end of the month if your site has a lot of visitors.
Go to http://www.google.com/intl/en/ads/ to find out more about the GOOGLE Adsense program.