What do you need from small business web hosting ?
If your company is small or just starting out a web presence is a must today, many websites are the life blood of a business, without a website you may well be losing out on thousands of sales.
Small business web hosting – what does your company need?
Just about any small business web web hosting hosting package should include..
- A domain name – the domain name should ideally be the name of your business, for example our site is called computer-adviser.com and our company name is Computer Adviser Ltd, it not only looks more professional to have the name of your website as your business name, but it also helps to create your brand name, thus getting your name out there and established.
- Webspace – Webspace is simply used to store your website.
- Email – any hosting company worth its salt will also give you email, this will be any name you choose @ your domain name, for example johnsmith@computer-adviser.com, having an email address with your name and company name will make your company seem much professional, rather than using a free service, for example johnsmith@computer-adviser.com looks much more professional than johnsmith1001@hotmail.com.
- A back end database – A back end database such as MySQL offers lots of benefits such as the ability to store clients information, track orders, stock control and analysis, plus a wide range of other things
What should a website do?
A website is usually the first look at your company a potential client will get so it needs to make an impact, having a page full of text is fine for content sites offering only information, but if your selling a product, boast about what your selling, let everyone see how proud you are of your product(s), in the world of the internet he (or she) who shouts loudest get the most visitors to their site.
How difficult is to build a website?
Not so many years ago building a website was considered best left to specialised companies, as it was too difficult for the average computer user, but today just about anyone can build a professional website very easily as there as lots of easy to use tools on the market, and recently lots of website hosting companies now provide there own website building tools which require very little or no programming or website building skills.
How much does it cost to build a decent professional website?
If you get company to build a website for you the cost could be anything from around £1000 to millions depending on what you require, then on top of this you will have charges for updates or anything else you need added.
Building a website yourself will cost a fraction of this, and if your just starting up or have a small existing business with a small turnover then I’m sure you will be counting the pennies, a decent small business web hosting package with domain name – web space – email – backend databases will cost you around £80-100 per year and usually this will include software to create your site as well such as WordPress (WordPress is blogging software that’s very flexible, you can create blogs that look like websites or forums very easily) another excellent site is Site Build it (everything is stored on-line with site build it they take you through an intensive easy to follow course before you build your website with them)
Of course building a website is not for everyone, but if you decide to DIY the one thing to remember is no one knows your products or company as well as yourself, and very often you can tell a website that has been build by a design company as opposed to one created by someone who really believes in there products as it shows in the content.
As we mentioned above the two small business web hosting companies I recommend are
Site Build it and Site5
They cost between $100 and $300 a year for a full package, this includes.
Domain name – web space – email – back end database.
Scripted WordPress installations (only takes around 10 mins to create one).
Multiple website hosting – once you have an initial hosting package with them, they only charge $10 a year for each additional domain name/website for a year which means great value if you need multiple website hosting.
Live chat online support to ask any sales, technical or general questions.
One of the best ways to create a static website that has a real chance of competing with much larger websites.
In-depth help and guides to help every step of the way from choosing your domain name, deciding what you want from your site, how to organize it, how to write content and how build it, plus they also offer one of the best set of easy to use SEO (search engine optimization) tools.
Nice forum where you can ask and answer questions and receive real answers from people at all levels.
The whole of computer-adviser.com originally was built using site build it.
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