Getting online for a solo entrepreneur or small company no longer has to cost thousands. In the past, costs could be prohibitive but that is simply no longer the case. Getting a website built and getting online can be as simple as buying one that is pre-built or purchasing and using templates to assist in building the site. You then organize and purchase an appropriate hosting package and you can be online later today.
Ok, for many of us it isn’t quite that easy because once we’ve got the template or pre-built site, what do we do then? However the options available today for getting online quickly are so much greater than ever before.
If you are building a website from scratch, getting online can be time consuming and more difficult if you're not a website designer/programer. But if you hired a web designer it could cost you hundreds, if not thousands of dollars.
So what exactly are some of these new options?
1. You could have someone to build the entire site for you using a ready-made template and customize the site to meet your requirements.
2. You could purchase a design template package that includes the domain name with the site, and software that is set up to accept a blog or a CMS database.
3. You could even get all of option number two plus some content thrown in, then you would need to do nothing more than to put your products on the site and start selling.
Design Templates – what exactly are these?
Certain websites like Dream Template offer ready made designs that allow you to change the color of background and text, insert pictures and/or text, etc. (be aware that some templates are more difficult to change than others). The templates are available as WordPress, Joomla, HTML, Flash, Drupal, among others, so whatever programing language you know, there should be a template choice to match.
The cost of templates is usually very low unless you want the exclusive rights to them – you’ll pay much more for that! Some template sites offer a flat rate for downloading as many templates as you want, others charge a fee per template. The templates are usually arranged in categories like business, contemporary, funny, most popular and so on. Be sure you understand that others can use the same template for their site so it pays to customize a template to make it more your own.
Whether or not you use templates, the quickest way to get online is to have worked out, in advance, the answers to certain questions:
1. What do you want the site to do for you?
2. Will it be an informational or selling site?
3. Who is your target audience?
4. What features should your website have?
5. How do you want your customers to buy – through the site or by contacting you?
6. What do your competitors’ website look like?
7. What do and don’t you like about certain websites and why?
8. How much do you know about website designing and production?
9. What is your budget and timeframe for the production of your website?
10. How involved do you want to be in the design process?
There are many more questions that will come up as the process goes along but the more clear you are about what you want the easier it is for the person doing the work – even if that person is you!
Once you have the website done and up on the Internet, you have other elements to deal with if you want to be found but that is for another article. Suffice it to say, putting a website online is not the end of the process, in fact, that is just the beginning.
Author Resource:
Article Writing by Monika Nolte. Contact us for your own special article at reasonable rates. This article written for Red Hot Web Hosting - Design Templates
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