As you work to develop your business, you will want to be able to point people to your website so they can find out more about you. You might also be interested in working Web search engines so that, when particular search phrases are keyed in by people, your site is a hit (search engine optimization or SEO). The implication here is, of course, that you have a website.
This means you need to develop the content to be loaded onto your hosted domain. There are lots of ways of doing this. You could, for example, handcraft a website using HTML, Javascript,… Ha Ha! Only kidding.
While that is possible, unless you already have experience in this space, you will want to use a website generator. These are tools where you design web pages through a simple drag and drop interface. When ready, you publish the site you have developed to the hosted site.
Most ISP’s have a tool they offer to do this and in most cases this is sufficient to get started. If that doesn’t work for you then the granddaddy of these applications is [Wix.com](https://www.wix.com). The tools usually operate in a similar way - you select a basic template, set up page tabs for different categories of information. For example, to start with a typical Agile consultant’s website has:
A “home” tab with tag line and your unique offering
A “service offerings” tab with sub-tabs describing coaching and training offerings you have
A “resources” tab with additional information such as publications you have and other information you think your clients will be interested in
A “blog” tab where you will publish ideas aimed at establishing your credibility
A “about” tab with values, principles, and philosophy
A “contact us” tab where people can fill in a form, for example, to ask for more information.
If you use these tools, you will find that the pricing model is pretty much the same. They are free to set up and in most cases publish your website for a period of time, and then charge if you want to make changes after that time has passed. Cost (at time of writing) is about $120 per year for this service.
While these tools offer user interfaces aimed at making the design of a website simple you will find that there comes a point where they just don’t seem to do what you want them to do. At this point you have a choice. You can work around the problem, or you can consider engaging Web design services. This choice will often be driven by how important the website is to your business. To start with, this should not be an issue, so start simple and experiment over time.
By Way of Context ...
You are looking at a part of a series of blog posts. The series looks like:
And remember, I am not an accountant. I am not a lawyer. You will want to get help from these experts and should defer to their opinion in the event that what you read on this page differs from their opinion.
Comments