Steps to Internet Success

Domain Name

Lifetime Identity - Choice of your domain name is the possibly the single most important decision you will make as you establish your presence on the Internet. The name you choose is the one that all your customers and employees will identify to your business. It is important that you choose one that is memorable. Your first choice should be your business name, often this is not available because although your business name might be unique in your area there is a great chance that someone else could be doing business under the same name elsewhere.

Here is an example of that relates well to this concept, If your business is located at 524 Main Street, San Diego, CA 92110 and a letter is sent to this address in San Diego it will most surely be delivered to you. What would happen to this same letter if there was no city, state, or zip code for this letter. Where would it go? There is a great chance that there are 500 or more 524 Main Street addresses in the United States. In this case the letter would not be delivered due to the fact that the mail needs city, state and zip.

Limited Opportunity - The Internet operates on a much different principle. There is only one default address per name. A default address from here forward is the dot com extension of a domain. It is referred to as a default address because current browsers allow for the user to type in a name and it fills in the rest of the information. For example if one was to type in "atyourcompany" in the Net Address or Location portion of the browser and hit enter, the browser would assume that you were looking for "http://www.atyourcompany.com". So it is important to establish yourself with a name that refers to your business or the type of work that you perform. These names are dwindling by the thousands as more and more businesses establish themselves on the Internet. Ask a new AOL customer how they like their email address and the response will be "I hate it -- looks like a license plate!" The reason for this is that with so many customers nationwide the chances of getting an email address that identifies you by name is very slim, unless you have a very unique name. This will soon happen to domain names as well.

Company-wide E-mail - having your own domain name will allow you to set up email accounts for different individuals within your organization or will allow you to create the appearance of having more individuals in your organization. For example, if you operate a one or two man business, you can set up email for yourself@yourcompany.com, yourpartner@yourcompany.com, info@yourcompany.com, sales@yourcompany.com and customerservice@yourcompany.com. This can be accomplished by setting up email aliases that will route mail to your private email account.

E-mail Accounts - One of the biggest mistakes any business can make is using their personal email addresses for business purposes. If you ever become dissatisfied with your Internet service provider or a different technology becomes available to you and you decide to change, you will lose that personal email address and all of your marketing materials containing that address will now be outdated and very unprofessional looking. This may seem confusing but here is how a typical business should manage an email account. For example, you have one individual in your organization that is in charge of sales and customer service. This person is named Tony. You can set up email accounts for Tony as follows: Tony@yourcompany.com, Sales@yourcompany.com and CustomerService@yourcompany.com. These accounts would actually have the mail routed to Tony's Internet access account which might be T0033@aol.com. Now if Tony decided to change service providers, he would merely change where the alias accounts now route the mail. It is possible with current browsers to set up different mail filters to sort mail that comes in addressed to different parties. It is like having someone sit down and individually sort through incoming mail and distributing it to the appropriate parties.

Portability - In the event that you find a need to change hosting companies (the company that serves your web pages), having your own domain makes it very easy for you to change and not experience down time on your web site. But more importantly, your domain name remains intact and because of this, all of your marketing material, ie. business cards, brochures, flyers, and yellow page ads will be unaffected. One of the most fatal errors a business can make is to create and develop an Internet site based on a domain that is not their own.

Here is an example: John runs a small business and recently subscribed to Internet service. With his service, the provider also gave him 4 megs of space on their server for the purpose of creating his own personal web site. At first this looks fantastic, but at closer examination, we see that John's webpage address looks something like "www.accessusa.com/members/~JohnSmith/". If John is to build a web site for his business, this is going to be the address that he must use for business cards, yellow page ads, etc. This is quite an address to have on your marketing materials, but the length of it is just the beginning of the problem. Everything after the .com, .net, .org, .gov, etc. is case sensitive. If someone types in the address with a small j or s, they would not be able to access John's site. Another problem is that some search engines will only maintain in their index the main page from a given site. This means that John's site will probably not be found on a good many search engines.

Let's see where John is at now: John has an Internet site that has a long and case-sensitive address and stands a good chance of not being found by the major search engines. If this wasn't bad enough, John's site is not portable. John can never pick up his site and move it without having to change his Internet address (ie. domain name). This would render all of his marketing efforts regarding his site and all printed material that contains references to his Internet site useless. The money that John saved (approximately $200 annually) by not having his own personal domain name hosted could cost him thousands in business as well as thousands in reprinting of marketing material, not to mention the appearance of being an unprofessional organization.

Check a domain name for availability here!

Hosting

Value - The cost of having a web site hosted generally is $200 annually. This includes unlimited email aliases, 10 megs of storage space, ftp access for the purpose of managing your site. When compared to other forms of marketing, ie. direct mail, business brochures, yellow page ads, display ads, etc. which costs can range from hundreds to tens of thousands of dollars, hosting fees now seem miniscule. Having your own Internet site is like having a professional representative to answer the phone, sort the mail, explain services, take orders for as many customers as come to your site, 24 hours a day 7 days a week.

Reliability - The reliability of your host is based upon the following factors:

Bandwidth - The amount of data that can be transferred from one computer to another. For example, if the server is connected by a 56K modem to the Internet, it will comfortably handle 3 or 4 simultaneous requests if the documents requested are fairly small (less than 75k each). Ftp servers (large file servers) require large amounts of bandwidth to assure quick delivery.

Here is an overview of some different types of connections servers might use to connect to the web:

Modem - This option is limited to small organizations. Maximum data transfer rate of 53 kbps with current technology.

ISDN - Integrated Services Digital Network. This option is suitable for medium to good size companies for use with a dedicated web server. An ISDN line is composed of two 64 kbps digital channels, for a total bandwidth of 128 kbps.

T1 - T3 - These are high volume data-communication lines capable of transferring data at 1.5 mbps for a T1, and 45 mbps for a T3. These lines are very expensive and are used for high traffic web and information servers.

The number of users that are using or accessing a particular server, as well as the connection type, affects the amount of time it takes to download information from that server. For example, a typical website will transfer 400 megs per month. A server with a T1 connection can comfortably host 300-500 websites (sites with unusually high traffic will obviously change this figure).

The use of spam (unsolicited mail), as well as pornography (extremely large size files) will bring servers right to a halt. Spam also causes a large amount of unnecessary administrative work sorting through and deleting these messages.

When choosing your host, it is important to know the rules and guidelines that they have for their customers and sites. AtYourCompany.Com has decided that pornography and spam will not be tolerated. Violators will be removed from the server and will not be eligible for refund of any fees paid.

Web Site Creation

The elements that make up a quality web site are simpler than you might expect.

CONTENT - By knowing what and who your target audience is, you will be able to create the content for your web site that will attract and captivate your audience. For example, if your product is collector baseball cards, you wouldn't have dancing lizards running across your page. A picture of Babe Ruth would be much more appropriate. It is important that your audience know that they have a good chance of getting the information they are looking for by the appearance and statements made on your home page. It is much better to have a site that is rich in information and conservative, than a website that has jazzy and animated graphics which add little to the essence of your products or services offered. It is also important to understand that a great percentage of your target audience is still using a 28.8 kbps or slower modem to connect to your site.

COMPATABILITY - The advent of 4.0 browsers which support many new features, such as java, cascading sheet styles, and much more, allows for intriguing and interesting web sites. It is important to note that these new browsers, although free, still require a downloaded file of 16 to 24 megs. This can take up to 6-8 hours with a 28.8 modem and often times the download will not complete. This means that a great percentage of your target audience is still using a 3.0 version of popular browsers. A site that may be dazzling with a 4.0 browser may not render properly with older browsers. There are two methods of dealing with this problem. One is to create two versions of your site, one for 3.0 and one for 4.0 browsers. The other solution, which often times is the best option for most small businesses, is to create a site that is compatible with both. This solution is by far the most cost effective if you are employing a web design firm or professional. Also consider that a great many of your viewers may not be using a frames compatible browser. Care must be taken when using frames, otherwise, your pages will become difficult to view.

Website Management

1. SEARCH ENGINES - Now let's assume your site is created, it is compatible with a majority of viewers, and it loads in an efficient manner. Now you must announce your site to all the search engines and directories. Search engines use different methods of rating your site. Some will send a "spider" or "robot" through to examine the content of your site. Others such as Yahoo! have a real live human view and rank your site. Indexing with this method will take much longer as regards getting your site ranked, but users of directories such as Yahoo! know that they will find sites that truely have relevance in regards to the search criteria.
   
   (IMPORTANT) - Make sure that the bold type and headings that you use throughout your site and in particular, your home (index) page, relate to exactly what your target audience is looking for. For example, if you are the largest shrimp distributor in Louisiana and your first bold heading states: "The Largest in Louisiana!", the search engine will assume that "The Largest in Louisiana!" is the most important element in your site.
   
   Bear in mind that it can take 3 to 6 months for your site to be added to the index of many search engines.
   
   AtYourCompany.com offers phone based training to aid you in attaining high visibility with all of the major search engines.