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Here are my presentation notes for the CEDO Home-based Business Fair.

Infrastructure

• Websites are data files stored on a server.
• The server is referred to as a “host.”
• Hosting costs tend to revolve around bandwidth usage, storage space, specialized software, CPU power, service.
• Domain Name/URL is handled by a DNS host.
• At some point your web designer/developer will forward you some emails and say: don’t lose these. Really. Don’t lose them. They probably contain all your log in info for the DNS and hosting. Changing your web host later will be much more complicated without this information.

Design and Production

• Contemporary websites use a database-driven “content management system” (CMS).
• Multimedia is easier than ever before.
• Web standards (how the code is made) makes your site easier to update, more accessible, and search-engine friendly.
• Yes, you should have a company blog.
• Good web design is a combination of information design (clear presentation) and branding (effective statement of the position of your product/service) and consumer-focused graphic design (looks appropriate for your market). There are trade-offs and decisions that need to be made by you and your designer. Furthermore, technical constraints must play a part in determining these tradeoffs.

Marketing

• Search-engine friendly requires you to think about marketing from the very beginning of your web project.
• Paid advertising is still a very good idea.
• Social networking (can be a lot of work/effort but should be done): Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, Myspace, YouTube…
• Don’t be a spammer unless your list is large enough to win the numbers game.
• Marketing your website should be part of the conversation from the beginning. It should effect the code, the content, and post-launch activities. Your marketing effort is integrated (your social networking will improve your search-engine results, for example).

E-Commerce

• Shopping cart software
• Merchant bank account (your bank or other)
• Internet Gateway (connects cart and merch acct)
• PayPal
• E-Commerce solutions can be as complicated or simple as you want. Once you survive the hassle of the gateway/merchant account and so on you can get down to business

Here’s a useful article about getting your business online (and that covers a fair bit of the technical mumbo-jumbo).

The article is fairly Apple-centric. But in my experience, everything it says is pretty true. If there are similar Windows or Linux links out there please let me know and I will include them as well.

Related article

• 8 Interesting CMS for e-commerce websites (woork.blogspot.com)