What is a domain name?
A domain name is another name for a website address. E.g. www.yourbusinessname.com.au.
A good domain name is short, easy to remember and easy to spell. To own a .com.au, all you need is an ACN (Australian Company Number) or ABN (Australian Business Number). .com.au addresses also last for 2 years before you need to renew it. Anyone can purchase a .com address. They last for 12 months and are generally cheaper than their .com.au counterparts.
In many cases, you can have more than one domain. Your website developer can point another domain to your existing one. Imagine having one address, redirected to another, for your home or business. Everything “lives” at your home or business address but all other “mail”, received by your secondary address, gets redirected. This scenario is great for businesses undergoing a name change. Their old website address can point to their new one, keeping them “connected” with those potential customers who have old business cards or advertising. These potential customers get automatically redirected to the new website.
Webgirl
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Hosting refers to the storage of your website; its associated pages, images and design files.
To make a website work, you need both, a website address (domain name) PLUS website hosting. Imagine the domain name to be your postal address and the website hosting to be the letterbox. One does not work without the other.
When your website is built, it is uploaded to a hosting account attached to your domain. As with domains, there are thousands of suppliers to choose from. There are also different types and levels of hosting. Have a chat to your website developer to find out what you need, and avoid paying too much.
In general, website hosting is available on a monthly or yearly basis. Most types of hosting also include email accounts. From a branding perspective, it is much nicer to have info@yourbusinessname.com.au versus a gmail, hotmail or bigpond email.
In today's economic climate, more people and businesses are searching for alternative revenue streams. There are also more and more of us buying online. Put the two together and you have a massive demand of online shops.
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How website work!
If you have ever wondered how a website works, here is a basic diagram explaining about how each of the main elements come together. Sometimes it can get confusing when attempting to set up your own website, or when speaking with your web developer...having a basic understanding of how a website works can build your confidence.
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Eccomerce / Online Shopping Carts
In today's economic climate, more people and businesses are searching for alternative revenue streams. There are also more and more of us buying online. Put the two together and you have a massive demand of online shops.
Now, where do you start?
There are thousands of shopping cart programs and software available. It is a matter of working out/researching what features you need and are avaialable.
Here is a quick list of things you might consider:
- newsletter marketing
- easy to use for you and potential customers
- sales reports
- search engine friendly software
- slides shows
- coupon codes
- payment options
- postage options
- downloadable products
- custom design capabilities and the like.
There are heaps of cheaper (and easy to use) online shopping cart software options available online suitable for many small businesses. www.bigcommerce.com starts at $24.95 per month. They even offer a 15 day free trial.
If you are web savvy, you can also try free shopping cart software like www.zencart.com – all you need is to have a hosting account set-up (prices do vary for hosting). For those who have a Wordpress website (popular editable website platform), there are now heaps of free shopping cart plugins that you can instal yourself for free. There are usually some fees associated with Paypal or your preferred payment gateway (payment processor), however these are usually quite resonable.
Paypal also offers shopping cart solutions for business accounts. If you know a little bit about HTML, you can create your own paypal buttons for an existing website – great if you only have a small amount of products that do not change that often.
For a more professional/customisable shopping cart with heaps of options, my favourite is epages. This is what I predominately use for clients. It covers most of what small/medium business requir (and then some). While not the cheapest to set-up, the latest version is easy to update and includes many great features to assist with sales reporting, search engine optimisation, marketing and more.
This is only a snap shot of what is available with heaps of new programs emerging all of the time.
Speaking to a web designer, who offers eccomerce, or researching online is a great place to start. Most web designers can also help you design and establish your online store to get you started.
If you have something great to sell...why not sell it online?
