A website these days is essential whether you are planning to start your business on the Internet or on the shop floor. Nowadays, you can use the web as your virtual shopping centre. If you are a complete novice at the the art of websites, don't be alarmed - no doubt you have come across the mountainous range which is fondly remembered as free hosting, and even when you signed up to your own ISP (Internet Service Provider) you would have probably come across a tab which offered you a chance to have your very own webspace.
A word of warning however, before you start playing Bill Gates and running away with yourself and your creative ideas for a business website, there are some pretty obvious drawbacks on taking something which is free, or at least claims to be free...
Finding The Best Host
Most ISP's will give, as we have said an amount of webspace. For free, you will get a pretty basic template or templates to chose from - normally in fairly dull colours and perhaps not looking at all business like. You will, of course have the option to 'up grade' if you wish, and this, of course, will be for a fee. Naturally if you pay for it, you will get the best templates, HTML/Java Script options and other gadgets, but like most things in life, you get what you paid for.
There are, however, if you are prepared to do some ground work, there are some good hosts around which will cost nothing, but you do have to look for them. I think http://www.webs.com/ is a good place to start. You can upgrade at a price but the free hosting is just as good for a business to start. Also try http://www.zymic.com/free-web-hosting/ the website is easy to navigate around and you'll find some fairly professional templates to chose from. Yahoo and Freeserve also have good basic templates, but please be warned - if this site is going to be strictly for business, make sure that you have something that looks good. If the website looks sloppy, your potential customers are going to think the same about you.
It might be worth thinking about having a blog to compliment your website. Some hosts such as http://www.webs.com/, will allow you to have a blog attached to your site. Another good site for a blog is here at blogger. With blogger in particular, you will get great ranking in a google search automatically if you ask for it. The templates are simple yet not too childish. Another thing to bear in mind is also to keep an eye on your visitors. If you use Feedburner which is now a part of Google, you can see how many visitors to your blog to get on an average day. By way of this, you can shift your blog's postings around accordingly. If you feel that the blog is not getting sufficient readership, change the layout or move the content. Many readers to such sites are only passing through so you need to grab their attention with a catchy title or something amusing in the content.
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