Web Presence for Small Businesses

So much for good intentions on posting regularly.  But at last here is my second post.  It is a topic I’ve been thinking about for a while now.  Recently, I’ve seen a number of colleagues start their own consulting businesses.  One of the elements that I see missing from most of their business launches is a professional web presence and a professional email address.  Using @gmail, @yahoo, or @hotmail as your email address just doesn’t hack it when you are trying to convince a customer that your business is stable and that you know what you are doing.

What’s more, a professional web presence and email address can be easily obtained at minimal cost and effort.  For a budget of around $200 dollars (subsequent year will cost around $110) you can get a web site with your own domain name and email addresses to match.

Using low cost hosting providers like Bluehost  (http://www.bluehost.com) you can get a custom domain name for your business, a web site, and email addresses.

So here is the an overview of the steps involved in setting up your small business web presence:

1. Sign-up for a hosting account from a low cost provider like Bluehost. There are dozens of other providers you could choose from. Full disclosure: I use Bluehost for my hosting.
2. Spend some time coming up with a good domain name for your business.  If your business name is not to long then an address like mybusinessname.com is ideal.
3. Once you have completed your hosting sign-up and selected your domain name you can go into the server control panel and configure a custom email address using the hosts’ email server.  Alternatively, if you want more functionality and a better web interface you can change the hosting MX records to point to Google Apps and setup a Google Apps account to manage your email, calendar, and contacts.  Note to iPhone users: if you have an iPhone then you will most definitely want to setup a Google Apps account and link it to your custom domain name.  Google now delivers push email, calendar, and contact information straight to your phone.  I will post a how to change your MX record and CName at a later date.
4. Next you need a web site.  For a small business I think setting up a blog is the way to go. While some of you might think that blogs are for individuals and not for businesses, nothing could be further from the truth.  A blog in most cases is simply an easy to use Content Management System (CMS).  The advantage of a blog over a static web site is that Google tends to rank blogs higher than static web sites in their search results.
5. Installing a blog on your new web site couldn’t be easier.  In the Bluehost control panel there is a service called Simple Scripts.  This service can auto-install a number of different open-source (free) web software packages.  One of the most widely used blogging platforms is Wordpress.  I would recommend this package for someone starting out as there is a large development community behind the product.  There are also thousands of free and low costs themes/templates available.

That is it in 5 easy steps.  Yes, there will be some time spent tweaking the blog with the template you want and adding plugins that deliver additional functionality, but that is the fun part.