In today's world almost any new business wants to have a website. But having a site that is under construction indefinately is not the right way to go about it. Like anything else about your business if it is something you start then be prepared to finish it. If not you may lose more than you have gained.
First of all, be clear on the purpose of the site. There are many very good reasons to build a company website. It can provide credibility, information and enhance relationships. You can sell products 24/7. You can reach new markets worldwide; you can increase your company's profits. Decide Which of these functions are most important to you as the site owner. Then decide what features your site will need to have the site serve the function you first chose.
Often it is too easy to say, I would like to do everything! Believe me the web designer will love you. Be selective as to what features your site needs. Be aware that there will be costs to keep those features running. 80% of the time the cost will be your time. For instance, you can have a company blog on your site. Who is going to keep it up to date and relavant? You can track to most minute detail about the visitors who visit your site like the O/S they use or the time the spent on your site. But who is going to review the data? Most importantly how is it going to change the way you do business.
Assuming that you have a legitimate business providing a product or service, then I think it is safe to say you want your website to provide information about the service or product along with contact information.
A decision will need to be made whether or not your product can be sold over the internet. If it can be sold over the internet YOU need to decide if you want to sell it over the internet. If you do then you will need to have shopping cart system and payment system.
At the start I used Yahoo! to build an online store. Yahoo provided hosting and the software. http://webhosting.yahoo.com . The process is simple and it is really user friendly. You have to pay monthly fees and/or percentage on revenues to Yahoo! After my customer base built up I decided I wanted to have my site to have features not available on Yahoo! I hired a designer in house and we created our current site. We used open source software and modified it to meet our needs. We host the site with GoDaddy.com and we use our bank service provider to handle the secure online payments. I am not saying it is the only way to go but it is the way I went.
With the site up and running this way for almost 2 years, I am glad to say it is still running. There are still struggles ahead such as increasing visits but that is something I can talk about next time.
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