| |
|
Tutorial: Starting
an Online Business
page 2 of 5
Step 3:
Your Domain Name
Selecting a domain name is
an important part of developing an Internet business. (See also Legal
Matters). Even if your
company already has an established business name, it may not be in your
best interest to use that name exclusively on the Internet. You may
even benefit by using two (or more) domain names, one with
your actual business name for customers who would look for you online by
typing your company name in their browser (like microsoft.com) and one
for people who are looking for your product and would look in a search
engine (like software.com).
|
|
 |
Many people have learned that an easy way to find a product or service they want is to type the name of the product into their browser. The chances are good that they will find something useful using that method. See what happens when you type in www.toys.com
.
Although it is true (or so
we have heard) that
virtually every word in the English language is already owned by someone
else, there are many clever ways around the problem of finding a good
domain name. For example, if you are a travel agency and can't get
travel.com (reserved in 1992), you might be able to reserve something
like RWS-travel.com. You can also reserve a name with a .net,
.org, or many other extensions, but the "dot com" is still the
most well-known and accepted extension for business domain names.
If you would like to register a domain name for your company, we suggest
using www.ondomains.com
, which is an excellent registration service for only $12.95 per
year. Network Solutions is currently still charging $35 per year for the same service.
You can purchase domain
names in the secondary market, if you are not able to find the name you
want through the domain registration process. A good starting
place for such domain names is www.OnDomains.com.
Do not ignore trademark
issues when you are selecting a name. You
do not want to find that
you have spent significant money developing and promoting your website,
and then lose it later to a company with a prior legal claim to the same
name. Please refer to legal matters in Step
2 or contact your attorney.
If you pay for another
company to register your domain name for you, please read an important
article about how you should register your domain name so you or your
company maintains control of your domain name. Read: How
is you domain name registered?
It Matters!
|
|
|
Click on the link below to
see if the name you want is available:
Check
your domain name choice here.
If you have questions about
domain names, please write to domains
Back
to the top
Step 4:
Selecting a Web Host
There are some basics you
need to consider when selecting a web hosting company:
-
Reliability -
This refers to the percentage of time the hosting server is working
and displaying your website. Unfortunately, these percentages
are often reported only by the host company, so their accuracy
should not be taken at face value. A good rule of thumb is
that if the host offers a money-back guarantee, you should feel a
higher level of confidence than if you are force to commit to a
contract period even as short as three months.
-
Access to support
personnel - All hosting companies probably have support
personnel. The important question is how easily can you get in
contact with them and how soon can you get help with your
problems. Look for a support page on the host's website and
see what is offered. Test the service before you
buy!
-
Server hard drive
space - An average web page is 10K to 50k. Pictures and
other graphics usually range on size from about 1K to 25K. This
means that if you have a 10 to 15 page website with 2-5 graphics on
each page, you will need 120K to about 3MB (3,000K or 3,000,000
bytes) to save your website on a server. Even if you have a
much large website with many more graphics, your website should be
able to fit comfortably onto about 10MB of hard disk space.
When web hosts offer you 400MB of hard disk space, they do so
knowing that the vast majority of users will not come close to using
all of that space. Therefore, in most cases, offers of more
than 10-25MB of space are made mostly to impress prospective
customers who really do not understand how much they need. It just
sounds good.
-
Allowable data
transfer - When someone visits your web page, they cause data
(web page code and images) to be transferred from the server hosting
your web page down to their individual computer. If you have
many visitors who look at everything on your web site, this transfer
puts a strain on the resources of your host server. For this
reason, limits are generally placed on the amount of
"traffic" your site may receive before you are charged
extra. In the example above, assuming the maximum web site size
(about 3MB), and assuming 1,000 visitors per day viewed everything
on your website once, you would need to transfer 30MB per day or
about 1GB per month.
-
Secure server -
Many web hosts have this option available for an additional monthly
fee. Secure (or encrypted) server space is needed if you plan
to accept credit card information or other sensitive data on your
website. If this data is not encrypted (coded so it cannot be
read except by the intended recipient), then it can be viewed by
others and potentially stolen.
-
FTP or other access
- There are many ways for you to upload your web pages to your
server. However, the quickest and easiest is by using an FTP
(File Transfer Protocol) program. If you do not have an FTP program
on your computer already, your can buy a good, inexpensive one here.
-
POP accounts -
These allow you password-protected access to mail sent though your
website email address. You may want to set up separate POP
accounts for each major department in your company. Ask how
many POP accounts your host allows you to have without paying extra.
-
Included software
- Some web hosts include no software; others include a large number
of software tools to help you run your site more easily.
Examples of programs, which you might expect to have available are:
Auto-responders (to send automatic replies to your customers), forms
for guest books, online orders and questions, search engines to let
visitors search your web site, chat rooms, bulletin boards, online
web site management, backup file restore programs, and (last,
but certainly not least) shopping cart software. Our web host
offers all of this and more. See www.ace-web-hosting.com.
-
Server-side software
- FrontPage extensions and compilers for running and using programs
on your site. Many web hosts will not allow you to add any software
to their servers.
-
CGI-bin access -
If you want to run your own programs on your website, you must have
CGI access. Your CGI capabilities must allow you to read, write and
execute on your server. Many hosts do not allow such
access. This may not seem important when you first set up your
website. However, as your site develops and interactive
capabilities are needed (like quizzes, contests and surveys), you
will find your company needing this ability.
-
Domain name hosting -
At a minimum you need your host server to allow you to have your own
domain name. Since you can now register a domain name for only
$15 per year, every company should have their own. Some hosts
will allow you to have more than one domain name on your site;
others will not.
We use and highly recommend
both ACE Web Hosting
and www.ACE-Web-Hosting.com.
We have used ACE Web Hosting to host
almost of our websites (and about 250 of our own domain names) for the past
five years. Because of this, we have been able to accomplish much more
than our competition in less time and we have a very satisfied group of
clients, many of whom are actively selling their products online.
Back
to the top
|
