A study conduced by the Small Business Research Board/ Business Today in late 2007 revealed that out of more than 550 small businesses surveyed in numerous industries, almost 43% did not have a Web site. If you are one of them, and realize that your company could be missing out on a lot of business, read on to find out the best approach for you.

What do you want to achieve online?

First you should decide whether you want to sell your goods and services online, or whether the site should just provide information. If you want to sell online, you will need an e-commerce web site that lets you showcase your in-stock products, enables customers to place an order, calculates items such as sales tax and shipping, and lets customers pay for your products, all of which must be done safely and securely. This is quite a large undertaking, and can require a lot of work. Because it is a complex subject, the rest of this article will focus only on setting up an informational site rather than an e-commerce site.

The next step is to plan out your content and gather together any materials that you would like to put on the site. Make a list of the things you want on the site and try to envision what pages you will need. If you don’t already have a nice clean version of you logo that will look good on your website, now is the time to develop one.

Should you build or outsource your web site?

The next step is to determine whether you wish to build your web site in-house using your own employees and equipment, or whether to use an external company to design the site, and host it on the internet. Unless you or existing staff members know the HTML programming language and design applications you should probably consider using an external company. There are basically two types of companies that can help you get started; pure web design and development companies, who will develop the site but will expect you to host it with a specialized web hosting company, and web hosting companies who also offer either standardized web templates, or an in-house web design service. If you choose the latter, you will not have to worry about finding a web hosting provider in addition to a design company (although any reputable design company will be able to recommend a hosting company).

When looking for an external company to design and host your web site, you should consider whether you will want to be able to update the site yourself over time, or whether you are happy to have someone else do it. Depending on the complexity of your site, it may be less expensive over the long run to build the site yourself. If you decide to go this route, you have even more choices, because now you have the option of using a “template” Web design system or having a custom designed site. For many small businesses a template will work fine, but if you don’t have time, would like a large or complex site, or are just nervous about learning new technology, it makes sense to have someone else build it for you.

Domain Name Registration

Once you have decided on your approach, the next step is to select a domain name, or web site address, for your web site. Obviously you can try to find one that is your company name, or a derivative of that. But don't forget you can also include the names of your products or services. For example, if you sell shoes, you can add the word "shoes" to your domain name. Or, if you can find a descriptive word that covers what you do, you could just use that, such as shoes.com. If your domain name ends in ".com", consider registering other domain extensions like .net, .biz and .us.  Then try typing your domain name a few times and see if you misspell it – if you misspell it, chances are other people will to so you should register those misspellings. You don't want to lose a sale because a customer arrives at a competitor's site or can’t find your site! Likewise, if you have an unusual name and think people may not remember how to spell it, you should try to register the names you think they might use when looking for you. Some domain name registration companies will also suggest alternative domain names that might work better for you than the ones you were considering.

Now you have all the pieces in place to launch your first web site!