The questions that may come to your mind, about having a web site, could be, "Why do this?", "What will it achieve?", "What for?", "What is the purpose?". Apart from the reasons mentioned on our "Welcome" page, the main ones are:

• The "me too factor", "our competitors are getting a website, we'd better get one, else we fall behind!"
• We want a cost effective means to increase our potential sales/service area.
• We want to tell potential customers about our business, and gain a favourable impression upon us.
• We want to develop a qualified list of prospects for our goods and services.
  We want to provide more choice for our existing clientele.
• We want to provide a "point of contact", 24 hours-a-day, 365 days-a-year

There are a number of important steps to take before going "live" on the World Wide Web:

• Decide what content you want display
• Plan the layout of the content
• Design & proof the contents
• Select a Web Host
• Choose a Web Address
• Register the chosen Web Address
• Publish and upload to the reserved webspace

Information on the Web is stored in page structures. A collection of pages relating to a specific group, organisation, business, club or person, is known as a Web site.

It is recommended that your Web site should at least consist of at least four pages:

• Home /Index
• About the Business/Your Products/Services
• Contact/Feedback

Plan your Web site around what your customers need. Most people don't care about mission statements and organisational charts. They simply want to find what they need fast. It may be useful to ask yourself, what are the most frequently asked questions by your customers. planning the content around the answers your customers are seeking may shorten the sales cycle. Therefore it may be useful to have a "Frequently asked quetions" section on your web site.

There are "extras" you may consider, apart from the usual Feedback/Contact Form, like:

• Free Email newsletter, "Join Mailing List" service
• Asking your visitors if they want to sign your "Guestbook"
• A "Discussion Forum", where your visitors, can discuss related subjects and queries

Each web site must have a unique Domain Name or address, in order to ientify it, when uploaded to the webserver. Domain names usually start with "www." it is follwed by the site's classification. for example ".co.uk",is a UK commercial site, "ac.uk"is a UK based academic organisation.

All domain names must be registered within a special database, the most common is Nominet, which stores the details of which Internet server is hosting it. A small fee is charged by the domain name registration service organisation, Nominet.

Apart from designing your website, we "market", your web site by submitting your site with "search engines". These are another set of databases that hold information regarding the content of your site, these are used when others are seeking information, usually by using "phrases" or "keywords". We also perform "search engine optimization", by slightly altering terms and phrases used in your web site, so as to be "search engine friendly". By this we hope to enhance your business image, and so contribute to the success and profitability of your business.