How to Create a Successful Web Site for Nothing (or Almost Nothing)

[Alan]

Have you got eight hours and $10? Then you can build a Web site for
your business.

Thanks to competition among Web-hosting providers, and the falling
costs of Web storage, it's never been easier to get a Web site up and
running -- from buying the domain name to building a site to setting
up a payment system to tracking traffic.

But many small businesses still seem intimidated by the job. In a
survey published last year, JupiterResearch LLC found that just 36% of
online small businesses -- that is, businesses with fewer than 100
employees, where managers access the Web at least once a month -- have
Web sites.

So, here's a guide for owners looking to make the leap online. We'll
lay out all the steps you need to take to build your site, and present
some expert opinion about getting it noticed and keeping track of
customers -- all with no technical background required.

1. BUY A WEB ADDRESS

First, you have to buy a domain name -- e.g., YourCompany.com -- for
about $10 a year. As an example, we'll show how to buy a domain using
the registrar Go Daddy Group Inc., but you can shop around at others,
such as Tucows Inc. and Register.com Inc.

Type the domain name you want in the search box at GoDaddy.com. If
it's taken, try another. When you've settled on one, scroll to the
bottom of the page and click "Proceed to Checkout." Ignore the offers
for additional products and services, continue to the checkout page,
enter your payment information and hit "Checkout Now."

You're now the owner of a Web address.

2. FIND A HOME

For years, companies have charged small businesses a fee to "host"
sites -- store the sites' content on their computers. According to a
recent survey from Jupiter, about a third of small-business executives
say they pay up to $1,000 a year for Web hosting, and about another
third pay more than $1,000.

Fortunately, in the past year, a number of companies have begun
providing hosting services free of charge. They often make money by
charging for premium services or running ads on your Web pages.

All you need to do is visit the Web site for one of these hosting
services -- such as Microsoft Corp.'s Office Live Small Business,
Weebly Inc. or SynthaSite Inc. -- and enter a user name, a password
and some other details. Then visit your domain-name registrar and
tweak your settings so that your Web address points to the service
you've chosen. The hosting service will give you instructions on how
to do this.

3. BUILD YOUR SITE

Once you've got a host, you'll want to design your site. The good
news: Most of the free hosting services provide tools that let you
build a site quickly, without lots of technical know-how.

Among the things you'll need: a welcoming home page; an "About" page
that describes you and your business; and a "Contact" page that tells
people where you're located and how to reach you. The rest depends on
your business. If you own a restaurant, you might include a "Menu"
page. If you're selling a product, you might include a "Store" page
where people can buy your wares.

Adding those things can be simple. In Weebly, for instance, click on
the "Pages" tab, then choose "New Page." In Office Live, click "Web
pages" in the top left-hand corner of the editor and choose "New
page." In SynthaSite, click "New Page" at the top of the editor.

In each case, doing so calls up a blank page template, like opening a
new document in Microsoft Word. Once you've created a page, you
usually can add content simply by typing the text you want into the
template and dragging and dropping graphics.

There are some downsides to these free hosting services. Each offers
several dozen design templates, but you could still end up with a site
that looks pretty generic, unless you have Web-design skills or hire
someone who does. What's more, most of these services don't offer an
easy, one-click way to add flourishes such as shopping carts or more
than two columns on a page; that, too, takes some know-how. Mostly,
you just arrange pictures, text and other elements, and that's it.
And, sometimes, even doing that can be tricky for nontechies.

There's one more free and easy way to improve the design of your site
-- using HTML programming code. Fortunately, you don't need to have
programming skills to use HTML. All you need to know is that a block
of HTML -- essentially, a bunch of gobbledygook words and symbols --
can add extra features to your site. And numerous third-party sites
offer handy HTML blocks you can plug into your site, as easily as
copying and pasting text in Microsoft Word.

Ali Shapiro, a health counselor in Philadelphia, recently found one
such program -- an appointments calendar -- at Scheduly Ltd.'s site.
She copied a snippet of HTML from Scheduly and pasted it into the
"Contact" page at her own site, PyourNutrition.com. The result:
Visitors to Ms. Shapiro's site can see a calendar with her free time
slots and sign up for appointments over the Web.

4. GET PAID

Probably the easiest way to let customers pay you online is to let
somebody else handle the technical work. One popular option is PayPal,
from eBay Inc. The service lets people pay you by clicking a button on
your Web site, which takes them to a PayPal page where they can enter
payment information. You don't have to do any work to process the
transaction.

The basic service is free, but you have to pay a fee each time someone
pays you: 30 cents, plus 1.9% to 2.9% of the transaction. This basic
service isn't fancy -- if you want to build a full-blown retail site,
you'll probably want to buy special e-commerce software -- but to
offer a basic payment option on your site, it's enough.

To set up an account, click on the "Business" tab at PayPal.com and
follow the instructions. Once you've done this, click on the "Merchant
Services" tab. Then, choose "Website Payments Standard," from the left-
hand column.

You'll see three orange buttons you can place on your site: "Buy Now,"
"Add to Cart" and "Donate." If your customers are likely to purchase
one item at a time -- say, a yoga lesson or a day-care session --
click on the link under the "Buy Now" button, which will send them
directly to a page where they can pay for the item. If your customers
might want to browse around your site for different types of items
before paying, choose the "Add to Cart" button, which lets buyers fill
a shopping cart with several items before checking out. The "Donate"
option is mostly for people who aren't selling anything, like bloggers
soliciting donations.

You can then follow the instructions to create a button for each item
you want to sell. PayPal will give you some HTML that you can paste
into your Web site to add the buttons. You should put these buttons on
your "Store" page, next to a picture and description of each item.

The service has been a boon for Graydon Blair of Syracuse, Utah, who
sells biodiesel supplies at UtahBiodieselSupply.com. When he started
his company, MGBJ Enterprises LLC, he looked for software to add a
shopping cart to his site. "All of them wanted me to pay them lots of
money, and I thought their stupid shopping carts didn't look nice," he
says. So, "I built my little Web site, and threw some PayPal buttons
on there."

Visitors to his Web site can use a "Click here to purchase" button to
add an item to their shopping cart and buy it via PayPal. Payments get
sent directly to Mr. Graydon's PayPal account, minus the PayPal fee.
He says he now does 100 to 150 PayPal transactions a week. He brought
in $750,000 in revenue last year and is on track for more than $1
million this year.

5. GET SPONSORS

It's easy to add advertisements to your Web site to make extra cash.
Every time someone clicks on an ad on your page, you get paid a small
amount, which varies depending on the particulars of the ad.

One of the most popular services is Google Inc.'s AdSense. Advertisers
pay Google to place ads on Web sites throughout the Internet; site
owners, meanwhile, can sign up at Google.com/adsense to host those ads
on their pages.

You've probably seen the ads, which often appear as blocks of text
along the right-hand column of a Web site. Google scans the content of
participating sites to decide which ads would work best on the pages.
For instance, an ad for used cars might appear on a site with car
reviews.

But you need to ask: Will ads actually improve your site? Showing the
wrong ads -- or, sometimes, any ads at all -- could turn off potential
customers. If you run a funeral parlor, for instance, ads could come
across as distasteful. Also, you'll probably need a lot of traffic to
make significant money from the ads, since you typically get just a
few cents when someone clicks.

For Tim Carter, ads made a lot of sense. Mr. Carter, a former
carpenter, wrote a home-improvement column running in papers across
the U.S. The only problem: Publishers were paying him a pittance.

In 2004, Mr. Carter figured out how to make serious money from his
work -- by tapping into AdSense. He had been posting his work on his
own site, AskTheBuilder.com, for nearly a decade. Google scans his
site -- which has separate pages for topics like cabinets, fences and
mold -- and places appropriate ads on each page, such as pitches for
kitchen cabinets and mold removal.

He has since branched out by selling other types of ads. Taken
together, his ads bring in close to $2,000 a day, based on daily
traffic of about 40,000 visitors. He has also branched out by hawking
his own products, like a stain-removal bleach. In total, his site
brought in more than $1 million in revenue last year.

"I'll tell people in my columns, 'Look, this is what you need to do.'
But they're still going to need the products to do it -- and that's
what they see in those ads," Mr. Carter says.

6. GET KNOWN

So, you've got your site up and running. Next, you'll want to be sure
people can find it.

We asked two experts, Bruce Clay of Bruce Clay Inc. and Alan
Rabinowitz of SEO Image Inc., to reveal some tricks about search-
engine optimization -- moving your site to the top of search-engine
results.

Start with your site itself. You should use language on the site that
is associated with the business. Let's say you're a florist. Most
likely, you'll show up prominently in search results if people search
for the exact name of your business. But the trick is to show up when
people search for complicated terms related to your business, like
"wedding flower arrangements." That's because you want to attract
people who might not know about your business but are looking for
something that you provide.

Mr. Clay offers two shorthand ways to do this. First, ask your
employees to send you a couple of words or phrases that describe what
your company does and incorporate that language into your site.
Second, do a Web search for terms related to your business and look at
the language used in the top search results. For instance, a search
for "cowboy boots" turns up several Web sites that also use the phrase
"Western wear." The fact that those sites turn up so high in search
results means that they're doing something right. So, if you sell
cowboy boots, you should also refer to Western wear on your site to
draw additional traffic.

You should also make sure to include those phrases in your page titles
-- the headings that appear in the blue bar at the top of a browser
window -- since search engines pay particular attention to these. (How
do you change the title bar? In Weebly, click the "Settings" tab and
type in the "Site Title" field. In Office Live, click the "Page
Editor" tab, then click "Page Properties" and type in the "Page title"
field for each page. In SynthaSite, click the "Properties" tab and
type in the "Window Title" field.)

If you primarily do business locally, there are other ways to get
noticed. Start by trying this exercise: Type "Seattle spas" in Google
and pay attention to the results. At the top of the page, you'll see
several spa listings, with phone numbers, reviews and Web-site links,
next to a map showing each spa's location.

Below that, you'll see traditional search results, but many of the
links won't send you to a specific spa's Web site. Instead, they'll
send you to a news or review site, like Citysearch or Yelp, that talks
about area spas.

So, it's important to get into the listings at the top of the page,
next to the map, as well as into the news and review sites. To do
that, first register your business with Google's Local Business Center
(Google.com/local/add). By entering some details, like your business's
address and phone number, you can automatically be listed in Google's
local results at the top of the page.

Next, the news and review sites. Say you're a spa owner in Seattle:
Click on the Citysearch page that comes up in a search for "Seattle
spas" and find contact information for a Citysearch editor who might
want to include your spa in the site's list.

Also click on the links for review sites like Yelp, which solicit
reviews from businesses' customers and often give businesses a way to
list themselves. Don't review your own business on these sites (it's
usually against the rules), but you can encourage your customers to
post reviews, as long as you don't bribe them with freebies (also
usually against the rules).

7. TRACK YOUR TRAFFIC

A bunch of companies offer free tools to help you track who visits
your Web site, how they find it and what they do once they're there.
This can help you tweak your Web site to attract more potential
customers.

The best-known provider of tools is Google; you can find its offerings
at Google Webmaster Central (Google.com/webmasters). We'll focus on
one of the programs: Google Webmaster Tools (Google.com/webmasters/
tools).

To set this up, follow Google's instructions for uploading a file to
your Web site so that Google can track it. Once you've done this, look
at a few areas on the Google Webmaster page.

In the "Statistics" area, click on "Top search queries." This shows
you two things: the search queries for which your Web site turned up,
and the queries from which people actually visited your Web site. If a
search term appears in the first list but not in the second, it means
your Web site is showing up in search results for that term, but
people aren't clicking on it.

To improve your site's performance for that term, you should tailor
the language in your Web site. Say your Web site shows up in searches
for "experienced Seattle therapists," but nobody is clicking on it;
that suggests that you might want to describe your level of experience
on your site to improve your performance.

You can find another handy feature of Webmaster Tools in the "Links"
area. Click on "Pages with external links" to see a list of other
sites that include links to your site. This can give an insight into
how others view your site. For instance, if you run a bar and see that
a local hotel links to it from its own Web site, you can guess that
the hotel is recommending your bar to its customers. So, you might
offer special discounts to that hotel's visitors.

See article link:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121803326363016929.html?mod=SmallBusinessTechnology_feature_articles

[biotech...@gmail.com]

Thank you Alan, good job.

Jack

> http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121803326363016929.html?mod=SmallBusi...

[Dehua Yu]

http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/business/biotech/20080617-9999-1b17pacific.html