SMEs go online: Introduction to website building | myBusiness ...

What do you do when you want to create a website? Learn the steps in starting your website, and how a Content Management System can help.

By the myBusiness techblog team

With everyone (especially your potential customers) becoming increasingly connected to the web, building a web presence for your business is vital. Creating a website is the first step and the process might seem daunting, but we can simplify it into three main areas:

Step 1 ? Pick and register a domain name

We suggest choosing a simple name ? perhaps your company?s name ? to help identify your business. Decide if you want the name to end with .com, .com.sg or .sg extension ? the latter two denotes that your business is a local one. Remember that there are registration fees, and an annual fee for maintaining the domain name.

Alternatively, if you?re looking at promoting a product or brand, you may want to consider having your product name in the URL. For example, if you?re selling a watch brand called ?Timely?, you might want to consider www.timelywatches.com rather than just www.timely.com. Having the right domain name can also help in your marketing efforts in the future.

Find out more about domain-name registration at the Singapore Network Information Centre (SGNIC)

Step 2 ? Designing the website

You must have a good idea of what you want your business website to be before even deciding on a web-creation platform. Think about what kind of features you?d like, and how much content you want to offer your potential customers.? The most common (and basic) features that business websites tend to have are:

• An introduction to the business/company
• The products and services offered
• Contact details

After you have the framework of the website down, do some research to look for the solution that suits your needs best. You should bear in mind the costs, support, user-friendliness and compatibility of the web creation solution in your decision.

Step 3 ? Find a web-hosting company

While it is possible to host your own website using a home broadband connection, it will be complicated to set up and the bandwidth may not be able to support high visitor traffic. A web-hosting company can help host your website, and also provides dedicated technical support. Alternatively, you could think about setting on free sites like WordPress or LiveJournal. It may not be the most professional-looking, but you can always upgrade to a proper website when things take off.

Another great tool to use in creating websites would a Content Management System (CMS).

What exactly is a CMS?

A CMS is an application that helps create, edit, store and manage content and work flow. Content is created and edited on the web in an administration portion of the application (commonly referred to as the Backend). The resulting content is then displayed to the viewers on the regular site (referred to as the Frontend).

Why is a CMS good for my business?

While there are several likely reasons to use a CMS, they key one is to help make creating and editing of content simple and easy. Sometimes the content you need on a website is a form or user authentication system. The challenge is to find the CMS that provides functionality without sacrificing ease-of-use for yourself or your customer. With a good CMS, you can enjoy:

Convenience in updating content

• CMS helps you easily update your website, especially if it has a lot of content; or content that is constantly changing. For example, updating your website with daily or weekly offers.
• You can also make changes to your site in real time, and these changes will be reflected in your search engine rankings.
• A CMS allows content to be managed separately from the style of the website, so it is easier to update the look of a website. For example, the WordPress software lets you easily keep your existing articles but change the fonts and other stylistic elements.

Easy-to-use interfaces

• You don?t need to get bogged down in technical details when you generate content. A CMS will often have an interface that allows users to format their own text using a text editor similar to Microsoft Word, instead of having to learn HTML.

Enhanced collaboration

• When more than one person submits content, a CMS can help incorporate a work flow engine and facilitate the collaborative efforts of your staff in creating, editing, and approving content at the same time.

Better customer service

• A CMS is also handy when visitors are contributing content via comments, where the CMS might be set up so that others can create an account on your site and make posts right away. This will allow you greater feedback for you to improve your customer service.

If your site is fairly basic, you may argue that you don?t need a CMS. As your website expands, you may find it useful to have in the future. However, it is easier to use a CMS from the start, rather than convert an existing website to CMS.

Be sure to look out for the next article in this series to discover what types of CMS there are, and how each can best suit your business needs.

Already using a CMS? What are your thoughts on it? Share your experiences by leaving a comment below.

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Tagged as: Business, Marketing, Small Medium Enterprises

Source: http://mybusinesstechblog.com/archives/blog/smes-online-introduction-website-building

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