Webupon

Register Your Domain Name

The first step you need to do is decide on a domain name and go to an online registrar site to register it as your business name for a year.  This will be the name you give your website.  To obtain a domain name, you have to pay a one-time yearly fee to a registrar for the right to use that name. Getting a name does not get you a website.  It’s just the name for your website.  It’s like registering a business name in the regular business world.  Just type in “Domain name registrar” into the Google search bar and you will be shown a variety of registrar sites to research and choose one from. This typically costs about $8.95 for an annual charge.

Choose a Web Host and Sign Up for an Account

A web ‘host’ is a company that has many large computers connected to the Internet in one place, like Atlanta, GA.. When you park your web pages on their computers, everyone in the world will be able to connect to it and view them via their own computer. You have to sign up for an account with a web host so that your website has a home on the web.  As getting a domain name is similar to getting a business name in the regular business world, getting a web hosting account is the same as renting office space for your off-line business.  After you get the web hosting account, you will need to point your domain to that account on your web host.  This is done by changing the ‘dns settings’ at your domain registrar’s site.  Most domain name-registrars will have a video or text tutorial to explain how to accomplish this small function.

Decide what To Sell, or, Create a Splash Page (1-pg website)

You will need to make the decision whether to create a 1-pg splash pg., or a multi-pg. website where you will offer products for sale.  The 1-pg. splash pg. is much easier for a beginner to manage.  Again, you can search the web via different search engines for more information on the differences in these two websites.

Designing your Web-Business Pages

Your next step is to design the web site itself.  I assume you will be doing this yourself.  If you are using a third party web designer to do it for you, you can probably skip this step. Although, it’s a good practice to know as much as possible about all the facets of your website and how they work together. There are free website creators/software you can use, just do a Google-search for “free website builders” or similar term.  You will find them.  Be sure to search through and read about them, they do not all do a great job.

Although there are many facets to web design, your main goal is to actually get something out onto the web. The fine-tuning can come after you’ve figured out how to get a basic web page onto your site. One way is to use a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) web editor to do it. These editors allow you to design your site visually, right in front of you-on your computer, without having to learn about the technical details. They work similar to a wordprocessor most persons are familiar with.

There are many for-pay and free web editors around. Some of the best free ones are nvu.com and frontpage.com.  Kompozer is also excellent (it’s a free download). Find any of these via a Google-search.

Other web design software is available, just Google-search for them (use the word “free’ as your first word in the search bar). If you prefer not to use either of the above, you can find some others listed on thefreecountry.com’s Free HTML Editors and WYSIWYG Web Editors page.

Testing Your Website Pages

Testing the functionality of your web pages should be done in all the steps of your web design progression. I list it separately so it will stand out, as many website builders fail to accomplish adequate testing.  You will need to test your web pages to see if they pull up in the major search browsers as you design them: Internet Explorer 8 (versions 6,7,8),  Firefox, and Safari browser are the main ones. Because all these browsers are free, it should be relatively easy to install them. The trick is to test them with more than one version of Internet Explorer browser since the later version will overwrite the earlier browser version.

Collecting Credit Card Information:  Making Money

You will need a way to collect credit card information, as most person make purchases online with the use of their credit card.  The easiest and most reliable method is to sign up for a free Paypal account. It is one of the best credit card collecting processors on the web.

Getting Your Site Noticed

When your site is ready, you will need to submit your site’s URL address (EX. www.your domain name.com) to the search engines, particularly Google. You can find the Google submission page by clicking on the “About Google” link on Google, and then locating the “Submit your content to Google” link on the page that appears. You will need to trade site links with other websites to build up “link strength’ for the Google site-robots (bots) to like your site and give it favorable ranking on their site. The more links to your site you accumulate, the better page ranking you will achieve with Google, and thus, the more visitors, which can create more sales.