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Home | Be your own boss | Building your own website

Building your own website

The web can either be a brilliant way to deliver or market your business, products and services to customers, or an expensive money pit into which to sink your hard won business capital with nothing to show for it. Technology and the capabilities available are changing with lightning speed, so it's hard to always stay ahead of the game so here are a few tips to get you started.

If you want to try making your new life as a web entrepreneur, what do you need to know? There a number of great books on this topic (we really like Create a successful website by Paula Wynne) but this is constantly evolving area so whilst we can give you the headline points to consider it’s up to you to to work out your own individual solutions. We also recommend that you sign up to a few newsletters and web discussion groups to keep up to date with latest events and resources. Some regional enterprise agencies offer free courses.

A web-based business is still a business

• The first point to make is that all the other normal rules of business still apply. You still need a decent business plan, and well thought out financial plans.
• Having a business in cyberspace does not exempt you from thinking things through properly, or obeying the law and complying with the tax authorities.
• Walking down your local high street you'll see shops and eateries that are shining examples of their genre and have been in business for ever.  You'll also spot plenty of shoddy or badly staffed ones that may or may not make a buck before they either adapt, survive and become better or go under. The internet is just the same only it just isn’t so obvious. A badly organised site with poor navigation can be as bad as a shop that is merchandised like a jumble sale.
• A slow and unresponsive site full of irrelevant graphics can have the same effect on your shopping experience as a long queue at the Post Office or a surly shop assistant. You may never buy there again, you may not buy from there at all and, what’s more, you’ll tell everyone you know not to shop there either!
• Would you shop somewhere where they can’t give you a receipt, or would you pay in advance if you think they might rip you off? No. That's why you need proper security measures on sites that accept credit transactions. When you build your site you must incorporate these features into your design.
  
• What you do and how you do it depend on your current level of familiarity with the internet, the time you have to create a DIY site or whether you need to farm it out to a professional, your budget, the level of sophistication you really need, and so on.

Website design essentials

Whether you hire a professional or design your own site there are a few basics rules to bear in mind.

• Don’t go for every bell and whistle and piece of flash animation or high-density graphics just because you or the designer can do it.
• Your home page is a key starting point for search engines to find you - don't use bland photos or clever flash intros because search engines can't read them. It's like only having a one page site.
• Users don't generally like flash intros either, they skip them because they want to get into the content and use it.
• You want the pages to download as quickly as possible or your visitors will go elsewhere. If it doesn’t add value, don’t do it.
• Stick to limited numbers of fonts that work well on screens.
• Look at other sites you like and borrow the best ideas.
• Keep copy short and punchy as appropriate.
• Keep your content regularly updated.
• Create sensible links and navigation so that visitors can search and use your site in a natural and logical fashion.
  

Making money or 'monetizing' your website
You can only make money from your site if visitors can find it so you can’t just publish it on the internet and hope that, magically, visitors will visit it and turn you into a millionaire. Out of sight, out of mind! Repeat purchasing or visiting is often a function of ‘recency and frequency’ too. If visitors only buy your product once a year e.g. car insurance, what else can you get them to come back for?

• Adding extra value - maybe you can add newsfeeds (RSS feeds 'really simple syndication' can be piped in from lots of different news sites these day), a forum or chat room, guides or buying tips. Be careful about giving away too much free stuff. It has to be paid for somehow.  
• Being found - there are millions of sites on the internet so ensuring that yours can be found is critical. Internet search-engines work in a variety of different ways but mostly they use devices called spiders and robots to look for words or phrases that match the request that the customer has typed into whatever engine they use such as Yahoo! or Google. So, if you type in an exact web address it will be found easily enough. If you're looking for 'bed and breakfasts in the Peak District', it could throw up a whole range of options and yours may or may not be one of them. This means that your site needs to be properly optimized for search engines (sometimes abbreviated to SEO) to ensure that your keywords are relevant and will be found.
• You can pay relatively cheaply through the Google adwords programme to get your site higher up the page rank of search listings and also have ads from which you can create revenue piped onto your site. It’s called ‘pay per click’ or PPC advertising.
• You can also find other complementary sites and ask to swap links with them, because the more sites yours is linked with the more the search-engines will pick up your address. It sees this as a vote of popularity. Reciprocal links are less important than one way links.
• You may be selling your own goods and services or you can also join or use affiliate marketing programmes like Trade Doubler, Commission Junction, Affiliate Future and Affiliate Window where you advertise other companies’ products on your site and you receive a small commission if the visitors click through from your site to theirs and buy something. Links are listed in the directory below. Some sites like amazon run their own schemes which you have to sign up to individually.
• The bigger issue, however, is getting regular recognition for your site from other sources, so you need to put your web address on your business cards, your company stationery, brochures, mugs, mouse mats – anything printed.
• Get regular mentions on the radio, the local or national press, TV if at all possible - send out a news release at least once a month to keep interest going.
• Ensure that you use involvement devices like newsletters, and ‘tell a friend’ (viral marketing) to keep visitors coming back to your site.
  
• Speak at your local Chamber of Commerce, trade events, etc.
• Give away free stuff like documents and guides on your site.
• Be creative - constantly, or your visitors will forget you are there.
• Consult and use your web traffic statistics packages or Google analytics regularly so that you can see where your visitors go and what they are interested in. If something isn’t working, experiment, change it until it does work or drop it.

Security & Legal issues
People really worry about hackers and identity theft for good reason so make sure that you can assure your visitors that their payment transactions are safe using something like Verisign, WorldPay or PayPal. You can set up a PayPal merchant account by clicking on the link below.

• If you ask your visitors to share personal details make sure you are registered under the Data Protection Act.
• If you use tracking devices like cookies you must tell your visitors.
• You must take all reasonable steps to protect your systems from hackers or other system failure – choose your web host carefully.
• To keep up to date with any legal issues, sign up to Out-Law below.

Useful resources

Adbrite Alternative to Google Adwords - buy and sell ads for your website.

Affiliate Future Affiliate Future - Affiliate Marketing Site. Register with the companies that fit with your visitor profile. You receive commission on sales generated via your website.

Affiliate Window Affiliate Window - marketing site. Register with the companies that fit with your visitor profile. You receive commission on sales generated via your website.

Commission Junction Commission Junction - affiliate marketing site. Register with the companies that fit with your visitor profile. You receive commission on sales generated via your website.

Google Established in 1997 Google is the top name in search, especially if you have a UK website. As far as search engine use is concerned (and these figures keep changing) Google has 78% market share in...

Information Commissioner Office responsible for the enforcement of the UK Data Protection Act 1998 and the Freedom of Information Act 2000. Find out if your business has any data protection issues from the Office of the...

Microsoft Office 365 Microsoft Office 365 web services for your small business.

Out-Law.com OUT-LAW has 6,000 pages of free legal news and guidance , mostly on IT and e-commerce issues. These issues can affect any organisation, and OUT-LAW is as much for those in a software start-up as...

Text Link Ads Alternative to Google Adwords - buy and sell ads for your website.

TradeDoubler TradeDoubler - affiliate marketing site. Register with the companies that fit with your visitor profile. You receive commission on sales generated via your website.