How To Set Up Your Own Internet Business : Part 2
Part 2 : Building
Create a website and master Google rankings
Finding a home for your business
Choosing a base for your business used to mean selecting a shop or office for your customers to come to. An online business interacts with its customers via the internet, the choice now is what form of online presence you need. This will serve two main purposes; to persuade the customer to buy and to act as a shopping cart to take their orders.
The main purpose of the website is to get people to buy. A site is made up of HTML pages, along with images, sounds, videos and scripts. The simpler option is to have your site hosted on a server owned and operated by someone else. This often means you can use your host’s framework to build your internet presence very quickly with little technical knowledge. EBay is a good example of a system that not only hosts your site but also provides the tools to build it.
The second option is to rent a web server, or space on a shared server. Generally this means your development process takes longer, but you get full control. As well as being able to construct your site exactly the way you want, you can move from one host to another if your dissatisfied with their service or, more positively if your business grows to the extent that you need a dedicated server with higher performances.
If you sell physical goods, the quickest way to get started is to use a provider such as EBay to build a shop. If you sell services, information products or software then, in most cases, you will be better of renting your own space and building a sire of your own, even if your shopping cart is handled by a third part.
Content management systems
When it comes to setting up your own website, or your own domain, just as you want it, you’ll need to start somewhere. A content management system ( CMS ) offers and alternative to doing it all from scratch. For our purposes, a CMS is a ready-made system that enables you to create and edit a website without needing to code it by hand. Once installed on your web server, a CMS can be used to set up and edit the appearance, content and capabilities of your site through a browser-based user interface.
Content management systems are :
Quick to get up and running : so you can create a fully working customized site in few hours
Extend-able through plug-ins : making it possible to incorporate additional functionality, often free.
Reliable and continually updated : if you choose one of the big players.
Take your pick
The three leading players in affordable content management are WordPress , Joomla and Drupal. All three are open source, free and written in PHP, which means they’ll work with most web hosts. If you are looking for the most fully featured CMS with the best support for multiple authors and detailed user management, choose between Drupal and Joomla. However, as our task is to create and everyday business website, WordPress is by far the best choice.
WordPress is simpler to install and especially to get working. It has a wide range of plugins available that extends it functionality and there are thousands of themes from various developers, many free, to changes its look and feel. As these are essentially CSS, they can be amended to give you exactly the front end you want.
Principles of good web design
The likes of WordPress and Joomla can take much of the hard work of creating a website,but whether you’re using a content management system, a more basic template or building your site from scratch, you need to understand the basics of design if you want to make a good impression.
Whichever way you achieve it, balance is one of the key aspects of design that separates the professional from the amateur.
White space : One of the defining elements of a professional design is the active use of white space. White space is any area that doesn’t contain text or graphic. It doesn’t have to be white, just empty. Amateurs usually cram their websites full of text and images, all jostling together. Designers use white space to separate elements and, in designer-speak “ give them room to breathe”.It makes a page look more pleasing and, if you want a more mercenary justification, helps draw the user’s eye to the parts you want them to pay attention to.
Color : The key to coming up with a color scheme is to begin with a base color. If you have a logo, the base color can be taken from the dominant color in it. Each color invokes a different emotion in the user. If you aim to sell globally, you may need to consider the cultural implications of your colors.
Fonts :
Rule number one : never use Comic Sans.Fonts such as Comic Sans aren’t design accordingly to any conventional principles and therefore convey no sense of authority or professionalism, an in large amounts are painful to read.
Rule number 2 : limit the number of fonts you use. I suggest between no more than three per page. You can always get away with one but most well designed sites use two or three. Generally speaking, you’ll use one font for all your headings and one for your body copy. Any additional fonts will be for specific purposes.
Choosing how to host your site
Web pages are made up of text,image and media file that are sored on a server and viewed through a browser. In effect, your site is a document that the user opens and it needs to be stored somewhere anyone can access. There are three choices : Shared servers, dedicated servers and virtual private servers.
Shared servers : As the name suggests, this is where you share a server with dozens, hindered or even thousands of other websites.
Shared hosting is the cheapest option and usually the easiest to set up , because you are not taking control of a computer, just adding your files to one that’s already set up.
On the other hand, the fact that you are sharing the web server means your site’s performance can be compromised by the sheer weight of traffic the server has to cope with. Even if only a few people are trying to view your pages, you’re also affected by the number accessing the other sites that may be on the same server.
Having said that, a good quality shared hosting plan is perfectly sensible choice for many online businessness, including those selling products online or simple using the internet to publicize themselves. You don’t have the level of control over your hosting but in many cases, you simply don’t need it.
Dedicated servers : A dedicated server is a physical machine leased in its entirety by you. You get complete control over your machine through a browser based control panel and root/admin level access.
Dedicated servers are usually much more expensive than shared hosting but they are almost the right choice if you’re developing a web application. In other words, if your core product is delivered to the customers via the internet, rather than being a physical product that is merely ordered online, a dedicated server is likely to be the best choice.
Virtual private server : Virtual private servers ( VPSs ) sits between shared and dedicated hosting in their cost and features. To you, they offer all the functionality of a dedicated server for a fraction of the price: indeed what you get appears to be a dedicated server in every detail. In reality, a single computer is running several ‘virtual servers’. Each copy of the server software thinks it’s running on its own computer but in fact, the machine processor is handling them all at the same time, while each has its own hard disk partition.Since the physical resources of the server are shared between the virtual servers, you can expect to get less hard disk space, lower memory and some competition for processor time, reducing performance.However, VPSs are a excellent halfway house between shared hosting and dedicated servers.
Choosing and registering a domain name
Selecting a domain name is one of the most important decisions you’ll make in setting up your business. Your web address is crucial part of your brand, and might appear on everything from T-shirts to press releases. Most crucially, it plays an important role in your internet marketing.
Your domain name should include your most important keywords, if possible. This is because of the way Google matches the text of ads ( sponsored keywords ) and indexed websites against the search terms that users type in. Even thou Google indexes the entire content of millions of websites and can find words buried deep in their pages, the domain name of a site – much like the title of a book is still the clearest guide to relevance. It would be a strong indication that it’s relevant, so Google will tend to place it higher up.
Google results pages the terms that the user typed in will be highlighted in bold wherever they appear. It will make your ad or listing entry more likely to be spotted by the searcher.
Top level domain : the top level domain ( TLD ) is the final part of the web addresses, such as “.com”, “.net” or “.org”. If you are aiming primarily on a specific region market, it makes sense to choose an appropriate TLD like “.co.uk” or “.co.sg”. For an international audience you might consider just plan “.com” or ‘.net”, however iy depends entirely on your intended identity.
Second Choice : What if the domain name you want has already been taken? There are plenty of other TLD extension you could possibly use. Each name exists separately within each TLD, so if someone else already has makemoneyonline.com you can still register makemoneyonline.net and so on.
If the exact domain name you wanted has gone, try putting the keywords in a different order or turning nouns into verbs. Try to buy as many combinations of your keywords as possible, as well as covering the main TLDs. Once registered, your domains can be transferred into the care of your preferred web host.
How to set up your web space
So you’ve registered your domain name and chosen a host for your website. Here’s how to get your web space ready.
DNS : First go to your domain name registrar and change the DNS records of your domain to point to the IP address you’ve been given by your host. The “MX records” section handles email routing, so you should usually enter your default web address here. This done, click Update DNS, Bear in mind DNS changes can take many hours to take effect.
Point and click : Go to cPanel in your shared housting plan. Click parked domains, type your domain name and click Add domain. Your domain name will now point to your shared hosting space. To copy files to this space you’ll need an FTP account. If you’re only hosting one domain in your web space, you might as well use the default FTP account details that your host will have provided you with. If you don’t have any FTP software, head over to filezilla-project.org and download the free FileZilla FTP client.
Connect : Click file, site manager, new site, enter the default domain provided by your web host, the the FTP user name and password. Click connect and your site should be open in the file browser interface. Now open notepad and type the following :
<h1>Any heading you like</h1>
<p>This proves that my site works</p>
and save it as index.html. Copy this to your website’s root folder – usually /public_root or /httpdocs – via FTP.
Head home : Now type your domain name into a web browser. You should see your simple home page. This proved your setup worked. If you get a DNS error, try typing in your default web address instead. If the page appears here, either you’ve messed up your DNS settings or you need to wait a few minutes. If it doesn’t appear, go to FileZilla and make sure you’ve copied the file into the right folder.
Sounds all too complicating?
It ought to be if you are really are no techie. I am not one myself but it gradually took me quite a long time to actually figuring it out how it works. You can have a better alternative. Certain webhosting servers would have a dedicated service of providing you with a ready domain name of your choice for you.One of the best webhosting as such I ought to recommend is Hostgator. Webhosting+domain name registration+affordable price.
If you are interested in finding out the cheapest deal you can possibly get with Hostgator ( I literally mean paying only just $0.01 for the webhosting fee for the first month ), just drop me a mail or contact me and I will be giving you the right and proper direction of getting real cheap deals =)
Create a site using WordPress
WordPress is becoming an increasingly popular tool for creating a website quickly without needing specialist knowledge. And best of all, it costs nothing.
There are 2 ways to go about installing WordPress with your web host which is automatically or manually. If you have hosted your webhost on Hostgator, you would notice that Hostgator in itself has dedicated a service to cater such needs. Meaning you get to automatically install WordPress as your site without much intense frustration. If you are interested to do it automatically with Hostgator, check out the video link below. If you are opting in for the manual method, scroll further down.
Automatic application :
How to Install WordPress Via Hostgator Fantastico
Manual application :
Start by downloading the WordPress code, free of charge from www.wordpress.org. Download the zip file version to a temporary folder on your PC, the extract the file into its own folder. If you don’t have a Zip tool, you can download either Winrar , or 7-zip.
I will go as detail as I can possible. =P
Create your database : Your first step is to set up a database: specifically a MySQL database on your web server. To do this ( assuming that your web space includes the cPanel user interface, others may vary , go to www.yourdomainname.com/cpanel – replacing the “yourdomanainame.com” with the domain and appropriate extension you have set up. Type in your username and password. Click the MySQL databases icon and enter a name for your new database such as “wordpress”. Click create database.
You also need to create a new user account to access the database.Enter a username and a password for your wordpress login account then click create user. Bear in mind that cPanel may add your cPanel login name to the front of the username and database name. For example, if your login was Giga, your username – assuming you’d typed “Tera” – this would end up to be Giga_Tera.
Add users - Further down the same page, assign this user to your database. Select the user from the left hand drop down and the database from the right hand list and click Add User to database.
We need to enter these details into WordPress. Open up the folder on your computer containing the WordPress source files you downlaoded. Find a file called “wp-config-sample.php” and rename it to wp-config.php. Open it in notepad. Find the following line :
define(‘DB_NAME’,'putyourdbnamehere’);
Replace ‘putyourdbnamehere’ with the name of the database your just created, such as ‘wordpress’. Note that you need the single quotation marks shown.
On the following line, replace ‘username’ with your MySQL username such as ‘Tera’ and ‘yourpoasswordhere’ with your MySQL password. Save the file.
In FileZilla, copy all the files in the /wordpress folder via FTP to the root of your website. Run the installer by opening the file /wp-admin/install.php within your website root folder.On the install screen, give your blog a title, enter your email address and click the install button. If you don’t see this screen, pay attention to any error messages and fix them first.
Within a few moments you’ll see the success message. You’ll be given the username “admin” and a randomly generated password. Click log in. Type “admin” as username and the password in. Log in. You should see a message at the top prompting you to change your password to something much more memorable for you. It can be done within your profile page too.
Apply a theme : You’ll notice that you’ll have a plain boring standard WordPress web page. Before you go any further, make sure you apply appropriate theme beforehand. WordPress has thousands of free and paid for themes available. =)
Editing your WordPress site design : one of the joys of WordPress is that you can edit your theme to get the look you want. You site made up of PHP from the functionality and MySQL for the content, while CSS defines the appearance. Confusing? Do not be. Improve, learn and tweak as you go along. =)
Making your words work
I can’t tell you how important it is to get the words right, particularly on your home page and sales landing pages. Now matter how impressive the design of your website or how effective it is from a usability point of view, poorly chosen or badly written content copy is the fastest way to encourage your customers to click the back button.
Here are generally 7 tips to improve your copy writing skills.
Start committing and taking responsibility : the responsibility for getting the copy right is yours alone. Because it’s your business and just as you’re heavily involve in selecting or building the product or service, you’ll be making many of the key decisions to developing your business.
Know your customers : The biggest mistakes you see in web content is that writers have written it for themselves rather than for their target audience. Clearly, your audience isn’t you and you don’t need to but your own product. That is where the application of market survey is inevitably important to realize your customer’s needs.
What’s in it for them? : Having learned something about your target audience, you need to write your copy so that this audience sees the benefits in your product compared to those of your competitors. You must present your products in terms of benefits, as opposed to its feature and their advantages.
What do you want them to do? : You should know what you want your customers to do, whether that’s buy a product immediately, ask for more information or signing up for a mailing list. Never assume that your customer knows what ought to be done. Make it clear and precise .
Keep it simple : There’s no avoiding the importance of simple,clear, grammatically correct English. Remember that you are communicating more than just a message in your copy; your words also represent your product. If your copy contains intense grammatical errors and spelling mistakes, that suggests to many buyers that you’re careless and being unprofessional, so they will be unlikely to buy from you.
Be friend with Google : Google reward relevance. The more relevant Google believes your web pages to be, the better they will rank and the cheaper your advertising will be. Google determines relevance primarily from the websites that links to you ( and those that you link ) and from the content of your page.
Get your headlines right : The most important line of your copy is the first one visitors see. Headlines fall into several type, including questions, calls to actions and direct headlines. One of the most popular is the “how to”. The best headline grabs the user’s attention with something either interesting or too good to pass over. If you need some inspiration, have a look through Jay Abraham’s 100 Greatest Headlines Ever Written at www.pcpro.co.uk/lines/headlines.
Images and graphics
No web page is complete without at least one image. But you need to use it with care, and you need to be clear why you’re using the,. To help you choose wisely, bear in mind that images fall into three types : branding, illustrative and decorative.
Branding : your logo is an essential part of your brand, as you need it to work well and look professional.
Illustrative : illustrative graphics are photographs and other images depicting the project itself. They might be photos of a physical product or screenshots of software.
Decorative : Any graphic that doesn’t either enhance your brand or illustrate your product or service needs to be treated with caution. Images with no purpose serve only to distract visitors from the parts of the page you want them to concentrate on. If it doesn’t have a reason to be there, get rid of it.
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This ends part 2 of How to Set Up Your Own Internet Business : Building. I hope you have enjoyed reading. Look forward to the final chapter, Part 3 : Marketing : Find Customers and Make Them Buy!
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