When you first think of going online there are a few things to consider to make it as painless and hassle free as possible. In thinking of your strategy for using the Internat as a new channel for your business, these are some points to consider for your first steps.

In this article we discuss what those first steps should be and how they fit into the overall scheme of going online with your business.

What do you want the website to do?

The first and most important thing for you to figure out is 'why?'. Do you want the website to gather sales leads? Do you want to make it a sales channel itself? Perhaps you want to publish information about the products and services you offer. Think of it as the business strategy for your online channel. Identify the purpose of the website, set goals for what it is to achieve. Try to write it down, yet do allow it to change and adapt it as necessary.

Register the domain name.

A web hosting company will generally also be a domain reseller so you can buy both the domain names you want and webspace to point those domains to from your friendly web host.

Go for the .com first. Think about registering more than one domain name but don't go overboard, there is a diminishing returns argument to be made. I advise to try for 'mybusinessname.com' and also for 'whatitisiactuallydo.com'. So, if you sell widgets, try to register murphywidgets.com and widgets.com. If those are already registered, try adding your location such as widgetsireland.com. Also register the equivalent .ie domain name. For this you will have to send a quick letter to the registrar explaining why you want it. It is generally enough to say that the domain name is required as it is the business name or is an extension of a product/service that you provide on headed company paper.

Get some webspace.

Wherever you register the domain names, get webspace also. This is where the files for the website will reside. There are two popular types of web server you are likely to encounter when getting webspace. One web server configuration follows the Microsoft product line and is built to handle Microsoft web development technologies. The other type, which I believe is the most popular is based on Apache and is set up to handle most other web technologies. There are ways to make one work with technologies that are designed for the opposite configuration but it is best to know up front what technologies you or your developer are intending to use in ordrer to decide which to choose from.

Your web host company will send you credentials to access the webspace or a control panel where you can do things like, add email addresses, create user accounts to access the webspace, create databases and database users. Your web developer will need some of these details to work on the site.

Create the email addresses.

Two options here also, you can have email forwarders which means if you create This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it you will also be asked where you would like that to forward to, such as This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it . These are not real mailboxes, however you can make them act like mailboxes, for example if you do forward to a gmail address you can have gmail configured to send from the forwarded address ( This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it ) also. In that way, customers will only see the more professional domain email addresswhen you communicate with them.

The other option is to create real mailboxes. In this instance the email address is assigned some of the wespace to store the messages. You can configure Internet email (such as gmail) to access these messages or you can use an email client (such as Outlook or Thunderbird) to access the messages. It is useful to remember that, as the mailbox fills up your available webspace will diminish, so it is advisable to configure your email client to delete the message from the server once it has downloaded it to the client application.

Some suggested email addresses:

inquiries@ enquiries@ info@ eolas@ contact@ mail@

sales@ service@ webshop@ shop@

It is also beneficial not to publish peoples email addresses on the website to avoid them being collected by spammers and to allow the mail to be answered by more than one person, the addresses on the site itself should be generic.

Corporate Identity.

If you are an existing business then you likely have a corporate identity. The colour schemes, typeface and logo of your business will feed into the look and feel of your web presence. Before you or your web development company can get far in the design of your website, it will be useful to know the colours and feel you desire.

Once these are in place, you are ready to begin putting your business online. Your next steps are to begin writing some content. Don't worry about the writing just yet, write down a company history (About Us), a description of each product or service, perhaps a profile of each employee or unit manager and begin to think about the home page. The home page is not necessarily the first page visitors come to, though often visitors will return there. What it is useful for is to show what most important things you want the visitor to do. For example, a featured product or service, a popular product or service, the most up to date news or press releases or and recent awards or activities are often displayed on a home page as options for visitors to proceed to.

Check back soon for more articles on business online.

Ultan.