Setting Up a Commercial Small Business Web Site

Let me start by saying that I'm not making millions at home from my web site, or trying to convince you of buying my latest online get-rich scheme. I am a small business web site owner, and cater to a small niche market. Specifically our products are collectible vinyl records, resale merchandise and per-click hits for articles like this one. Although we don't make much money doing this, over the years we have found ways to create and market our web site for slightly increasing profits. Depending on what you are actually selling or promoting, your results may vary. And that's the bottom line in all this web site mumbo jumbo.

The best scenario for someone who owns a commercial web site is that what you are selling is something that everybody wants to buy. Better yet. They NEED to buy it, and they can only get it from you. Sounds easy enough, but there are thousands of folded web sites whose owners felt their product had the same potential, whatever they were selling. We've owned a commercial web site for over ten years now. Although it's yet to turn a profit, what we've learned so far might help those who are new to selling products with better profit potential.

Freebie web site hosting will not allow you to sell products. So you first need commercial web presence. This will include purchasing a domain name and renting commercial web space. Domain names are usually available for annual and packages rates. Commercial web space hosts use similar rate scales, varying in price depending on services and amount of server space desired.

Let's start with a simple way of explaining domain names. Basically a domain name is an easier way to identify the address of your web site. A web site address is actually a long numerical sequence, for example 303.189.8176.630. So you are purchasing (renting) the right to use an alphabetic name to represent that number. The dot.com at the end is the company (facilitator) that makes this ID available on the Internet. You 'own' this domain name as long as you keep the payments up.

If you can find a dot.com name you can live with, then it won't cost you much. Last I checked, maybe ten bucks or less a year. The trick is to find the dot.com name you want, and most of them are taken. So in your quest to find an available dot.com name, you might end up with something too long, making it hard to remember. Or the name is not exactly what you want. You may not even be able to use your business name because it's already taken. This is the first problem we encountered when establishing our web site. But if you can't find a suitable domain name with dot.com, just remember that there are other alternatives.

Fortunately with Internet growth new domain names (facilitators) have been added over the years. I'm sure you've seen non-profit organization web sites with the dot.org at the end. They also added domain IDs for commercial purposes as well. Our web site uses a dot.cc tag, but there are others out there. Be forewarned that you may pay more for the exact domain name you want. In our case, we specifically wanted to use our business name and it wasn't available on dot.com. So we pay significantly more than most for our domain name, one reason why it's difficult for us to turn a profit. Call me a fool.

After securing a domain name you will need web space on a server host. In fact, a server host may even offer inexpensive domain names too. So you may only have to visit a server host to get everything started. In case you don't know what a server host is, they are businesses that have invested in, and maintain rooms or buildings with large hard drive arrays (space) available 24/7. They rent you space for all your web site data on a partition and make it available on the Internet. Most of these businesses offer services or software included in their fees to enhance your web site. Their service will often include free web site building (HTML) software, email services, a blog, online chat, message boards, software and other nifty things to add to your site.

If you want to accept online credit card payments on your web site, it can get complicated and expensive. Put simply, you pay your server host to set up your account and integrate a web page into your site to accept a secure electronic bank transaction. This is sometimes called 'e-commerce' ability, and you'll pay the fee whether they design the web page or you create it on your own. You'll have the ability to customize (HTML) the page, so a lot of good that expensive HTML software did for you, huh? You will also be paying monthly or annual service fees, maybe both, to oversee any bank transactions. Key word being, oversee.

Because then you must pay another service company to facilitate each electronic credit card transaction securely to your bank. This service handles the actual transaction between buyer and bank. Your server host only 'oversees' and documents it. Sometimes the server host may offer this service as well, for additional set up and service fees of course. Had enough yet? Well, recently our wonderful government has implemented an annual fee for those owning web sites that accept online credit card payments. The last one we paid was almost two hundred dollars.

We don't do enough business to justify these costs, so we terminated these services and looked for other options. The most popular online credit card payment service is PayPal. It's a trusted service that makes electronic payment transactions a whole lot easier. They charge percentage fees based on total amount per transaction. They also offer ways for web masters to put transaction buttons directly on your web pages for no cost. They still charge per transaction though.

Putting these buttons on your web site gets a little complicated, so you should be fluent or familiar with HTML. Our web site products are in lists. Too many items to create individual pages each with a 'buy it' button. So we opted out on this free service. But if you are selling individual items, this button can make your e-commerce go smoothly and pleasantly for your customer. We are still able to use this popular payment service for our web site though.

You can use a generic 'buy it' button that will allow the payment service to facilitate the transaction via email to your account identification. In other words, someone can previously email you about the item they are interested in, and ask for a total. When you reply then they can click the button and instantly pay the amount with a credit card, and a little description about the item to your account.

We currently use PayPal, but have used another. There are several businesses that offer the same service. What we have found is that per-transaction fees are slightly higher, and most people who are not familiar with these companies are often suspicious, sometimes refusing to use them. If all else fails you can tell your customer they can send a check or money order, but it will take longer. People who buy vinyl records don't usually mind the wait, but most online customers prefer immediate payment transactions. This is a world of instant gratification, and your ability to provide what they want, and how they want it is a key to success.

In our next segment, we will look at ways to create your business web site, and the importance of using simple HTML code for other purposes besides creating web pages.