How big do you want to be?
Whether you focus on business to business or business to consumer, as your business grows, your web site needs will also increase.
- Evaluate your web site presence in line with your business plan.
- Clearly identify your business and set yourself apart from your competitors by registering your own domain name. It’s as important as registering your own business name.
- Don’t get fooled into buying ‘unlimited everything’… because your Australian web host may have to minimise costs somewhere and it will probably be ‘good service’ that goes first.
Red Rook provides services that can be scaled to meet the changing needs of your business. We don’t believe in selling you more than you need, and we’re flexible enough to allow you to upgrade your services as your business web site grows.
Medium to Large Business
As your web site grows, or you start setting up member log in sections or ecommerce, you may need a database and more disk space on the Professional Web Hosting Plan…
- 5 GB disk space – content is now starting to increase exponetially.
- 1000 POP email accounts – you have more employees, and they all need their own email account. We allocate enough disk space per account that is usually enough for the majority of business applications.
- Unlimited Traffic – still, no unexpected traffic bills.
- MySQL database – a useful free addition to this hosting plan that gives you the option (with the right coding) to add the capability for web site visitors to subscribe to your web site, purchase online and use a shopping cart, or contribute to a forum or bulletin board.
What makes a good business web site?
Regardless of your business size, the principles of what constitutes a good business web site remain the same. We’ve included a few tips that can help if you’re designing and developing your own web site, or perhaps more importantly, if you’re managing a web developer to do the design for you.
What other tools could help your business?
Establish an online business database
An online database for your business can enable you to:
- Give your website visitors the ability to subscribe to email newsletters and be notified of website and news updates
- Include ‘fields’ into your web pages so you can make changes to your website with less fuss
- Implement a content management system
- Run a bulletin board or online forum
- Include product and price details
- Take online orders and implement other ecommerce applications
Utilise a corporate/employee intranet
Enable your staff and employees to:
- Remotely access company files and documents
- Gain both remote and local access to business applications
- Place orders via the internet when “out in the field”
- Streamline business administration processes
Get serious about internet marketing
Get your web site known using some well thought out internet marketing. For a corporate business, search engine marketing can be very cost-effective. Make sure your web site is optimised for search engines and start building links to your site. Think hard about the keywords that will be relevant for anyone finding your web site.
Some ideas for how you can promote your website:
- Promote your website address through conventional media such as television and press
- Make sure your website is search engine optimised
- Start building a link exchange programme from other websites
Implement an Enterprise Content Management System
A Enterprise Content Management System can help you keep your website content fresh and ensure all information is up-to-date. By giving management and employees responsibility for website content, and the access and tools to manage that content, your website will be a much greater success.