A business website has become a key component to most company’s marketing strategies. There are several different goals that can be quite effectively accomplished by developing a website for your business:

Billboard Advertising:

A static website typically containing less than 5 pages that serve to provide basic information on your services or products, company history, location and contact details.

Lead Generation:

This type of website takes the static website a step further. This is still typically a small website containing less than 15 pages. The presentation of basic information on your services or products is focused directly on creating inquiries from site visitors, usually by means of an online form. This site would also include company history, location and contact details.

Online Sales:

Dynamic websites generating online sales can include both companies listing inventory online and accepting sales via telephone and full-featured e-commerce sites allowing customers control of the entire purchase and processing payments online. Providing a secure, user-friendly shopping experience for your customers to increase company sales is the ultimate marketing goal of this type of site. This site would also include company history, location and contact information, as well as company policies regarding shipping, customer service, and privacy.

It is important to sit down and plan the goals involved in setting up a website for your business. Ask your customers what information they would like to see, what features they would be most likely to use. Talk to your co-workers and employees to find out what common questions and tasks could be better served by making information available online. And finally, work closely with an experienced website developer who can help you bring out the best in your business website.

Website hosting can be likened to paying rent for a store in a shopping mall. Instead of renting a storefront, you are renting space on a computer that will be the new home for your website. This computer is called a server and can be located in a data center anywhere worldwide. The server is configured to run your website and also process email for your domain. Your domain name becomes the address that your customers use to visit your website. Now when a customer wants to visit your business they can skip driving to the mall to your shop, and instead simply type your domain address into their web browser and visit your company online at your website.

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Creating a website for your business means being online with your computer and sometimes being online can be risky business. You could run into spam, email phishing scams, viruses, or trojans, on any given day. Learning the basics of protecting your computers is an investment well worth making and won’t take much time at all. Compare it to the amount of time and money your business will lose if your computer hard drive is ruined by a virus or trojan and you can quickly see that it is time well spent.

The basic considerations you need to take into account include:

1. Firewall
   • A software application that runs continuously in the background filtering incoming and outgoing traffic to your computer to limit your exposure your attacks.
     • ZoneAlarm - http://www.zonealarm.com
2. Antivirus Utilities
   • Another software application that also runs continuously in the background, anti-virus utilities scan your computer for virus infections. These are typically spread through email and most utilities also provide a real-time scanner to warn you if an email in your inbox and quarantine it before you are infected. Keeping your virus definitions up to date is critical to making your anti-virus software work for you as new viruses are developed every day. Most utilities include automatic update scheduling.
     • McAfee - http://www.mcafee.com
3. Web Browser
   • A web browser is a software program that allows a user to see and use content published on the Internet. Web browsers format the HTML code for display and there can be differences between browsers viewing the same website for this reason.
     • Mozilla -
       

Knowing what tools to use is the first step in understanding how to keep your computer safe when you take your business online. Now you can focus on helping your business grow!