Business Essentials and Internet Practices
| There are some general rules when approaching your web business to increase your brand awareness and maintain a professional approach. There was a day when it was "cool" that a company had a web site and the ability to utilize this medium. Many companies did not concern themselves with the look and feel of their site, only proud that they in fact had one. Times are changing.
Many people have the impression that web designers all know their stuff since they could speak about the things that were normally not understood. We hope to change that and provide you with the basic information to become educated in the Internet space as it should be as important to you as your business card or phone number. In the past, someone always knew a friend's brother's son that did web design part time and because he could talk the talk, he was deemed the professional. Now it is quite different as we see many different technologies appearing for web use and companies are slowly understanding what it means to their business. This is very apparent when looking at e-commerce. There is a gap, or separation when it comes to web professionals understanding your business systems and day to day activities. Your systems should be integrated and not treated separately.
There are a few basic rules and guidelines to follow when examining the web and the web hosting environment.
| | 1. | E-MAIL | | | One of the most common mistakes businesses make is concerning their domain name and e-mail addresses. As a rule, you should not use your personal or "other" company branded email address such as "abccompany@yourisp.com" . You should use "yourname@yourdomainname.com". Forget the "hotmail" and your local ISP free based accounts. You should have your own domain name and use it for e-mail. If you have a name already, you should be using it for e-mail. If your web hosting company is not capable of setting this up for you, select a different web hosting company. Unless you have a deal for advertising their name with every email you send.....that may be different, and extremely rare. Would you put your ISP's name on your business card? Remember, this is your brand and your company. For a small fee per year, it is a must for any professional business. | | 2. | WEB SITE BUDGETING | | | Many companies wonder.......how much should I spend on my web site? As this is clearly hard to gauge, you should consider your investment in a professional web site to match at least three months advertising for your business or more. Consider this to be more important than a single page ad in that trade magazine you have used in the past. if you have database or member functionality, plan to get several quotes to examine the benefits of each and make sure the web professional understands your business and the day-to-day procedures you follow. | | 3. | WEB HOSTING | | | When selecting a web hosting company, make sure they utilize the services of a data centre connected to the web. Many companies try to offer hosting from their office over the dsl or T1 line etc...but tend to neglect the need to have constant uptime, fail over procedures, physical and Internet security 24/7 as well as backup generators and multiple line feeds in case the main provider experiences line problems. The latter is frequent with Internet and data connectivity. There are hundreds of data centres that operate this type of service and more than one option available in every major and secondary city in North America. Ensure your hosting company not only offers 99.99% network uptime, but also 99.99 server or hardware uptime - the results may surprise you. | | 4. | CONTROL AND ACCESS | | | Hosting companies should provide you with a browser based control panel so you can log in at any time and create e-mail accounts, add users, create a site, manage files, view web site statistics etc. | | 5. | E-COMMERCE | | | Do your homework here. There are many tools and "shopping carts" available. We even offer a free cart, which is quite advanced, inside of your hosting account. Is it good? Yes! Can it link to your local business System? Maybe. Can it integrate with your billing system? Probably not easily etc. You get the point......make sure you look at the value of the solution and how it affects your business. By the way, the osCommerce solution we include is very good for managing online and selling goods over the web with real time transactions. We recommend you do not purchase "Island" products where you need to replicate or duplicate information. And....FYI, do it in real time, not the old fashioned batch routines. |
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