SCORE - SCORE Small Business E-Commerce Design -

Creating your Company's Web Site

The Internet is a powerful marketing tool that every business should consider including small and home businesses.

Here's why:

Getting an Internet account costs about $20-50 month and there are some free sites. With email you can communicate with customers, suppliers and partners anywhere in the world. You can attach documents as well. All of this without long distance charges. For initial setup you can use geocities.com (free). When finished the site can be transferred to a commercial site.

Your customers can contact you any time of day, from any time zone through email. With a Web site, potential customers may browse your site at their convenience to learn about your company and the products and services it offers.

To reach national and global clientele. The Internet is used by millions worldwide. This is your opportunity to reach potential customers throughout the world without opening shop oversees. Your Web site can be translated into several languages and offer the visitor their choice of language.

First, decide if you are going to develop your Web site on your own or find a web site developer. You may search the Web for possible Web site developers. Then, apply for a domain name - one service is Network Solutions (http://www.networksolutions.com/). Have several names prepared in case the name you want is already taken. Take time to choose your Web address - it will become your identifier. For search engine success, it is useful to have your product or service in your name. For example to have a SCORE URL (Uniform Resource Locator) a title like www.score_business_consulting.com would carry some key words for the search engine to find. The first thing the search engines find is the URL, second is the TITLE and third are the META NAME KEYWORDS. An example is this page (also can see under VIEW and SOURCE)

Remember <title> is a HTML function and not the Caption on this page which is

Once you have developed a great Web site, your next mission is to get traffic to your site. Get listed with all the major search engines. Many services such as SavvySubmit (http://submit.savvysearch.com/submit) do some of the work to ensure that your Web site will appear on many of the major search engines. The success of your site depends on the ability of customers seeking your products or services to find you web page in the vast universe of the Internet. Use traditional and Internet based press releases as well as newsletters, business cards and letterhead to spread the word about your new Web site. Form strategic mutual partnerships. You can promote a company's site on your site if they promote yours. A lot of Web traffic comes from other site referrals.

Following Some Key Web Search Sites

Alta Vista

Excite

AOL

Magellan

HotBot

Infoseek

Google

Looksmart

Lycos

MSN.com

Northern Light

SavvySearch