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Does Your Business Need a Website?
By businessbroad | July 29, 2007
The other day I was talking to a very bright woman who owns a brick and mortar gift store. She does pretty much everything for her business - picking products, negotiating with vendors, general bookkeeping, and she even tends the register from time to time (When she’s not sweeping and dusting the showroom!). I wasn’t at all surprised when she said that she’d love to learn to make her own website. Since her shop is in a tourist-y area, she finds that a lot of people stop by once and don’t get a chance to actually return to the store. She wants to give them a way to do that - online.
Oddly enough, she had NO idea where to begin with the whole website thing. Maybe it’s just because I’ve put together so many, but to me it seems obvious. If you’re just getting started, you should seek out a shared web hosting provider and register a domain that suits your business.
In her case, I suggested Concentric, as they give you a free domain name with every hosting account, plus they offer a lot of small business-friendly services, like the ability to use OSCommerce at no additional charge. It’s great for a beginner to use a service that’s supported by the hosting company, because then you have a concerned party to turn to when you have questions. They also offer private registration, but that’s not something I would recommend in her situation. If you want people to enter their credit card information, you don’t want to give the impression that you’re trying to hide information.
So even though I didn’t go and actually help her set up the domain and hosting, I think she was off to a good start. After all, she’s an entrepreneur, and independence kind of comes with the territory.
Topics: General |