Website 101 for Home Improvement Contractors

Your contracting business needs a website, period. I’ve heard all the excuses, “My business is word of mouth”, or “My customers don’t use the web.” Get over yourself and take the time and money to get it done. The web has all but replaced the phone books and is now the default method for consumers to locate home improvement products  services, so enough, just get it done!
Your best bet is to hire a professional web design firm. They know how to design websites that are functional as marketing tools as well as friendly to search engjnes. There are so many different aspects of internet marketing to consider that the best advice I can give you is to hire a professional. However, for those of you who have decided, against my advice, to go it alone, here are some simple steps for establishing a basic website for your home improvements business.

Step 1 – Choose an Internet Service Provider (ISP).

You need a place for your site to exist on the Internet. This is what your ISP will provide. You want to look for a host that has a good, price, a strong selection of tools and services, and one that has a user friendly interface or C-Panel. For entry level hosting for a simple site you should expect to pay anywhere from $5-$10 dollars a month. You will also have an additional annual charge for each domain you register. This should cost you no more that $10-$15 dollars per year. You must shop wisely. ISPs have very low profit margins so they look for ways to sneak profits into packages. Some will have low monthly hosting, but hit you with $100 per year for each domain name, so be sure to examine their entire pricing structure.
Most serious ISPs have rich feature packages included in their packages. You should have ample server space (100MB+), email accounts, mySQL databases, and FTP access. There are a number of features that can save you money on your site like free stock images and widgets like weather and new, but you will need to lay the options out and decide what matches your effort.
For the interface, this can be tricky. Most ISPs will have some way for you to simulate an account experience so you know what you are in for as a client. Give them a try. Most of the core functions are the same for all the ISPs but finding out how each one implements them can be time consuming and frustrating. Find one that fits your workflow.
I started with ISP selection because you need to find a domain name, or URL for your business.  All ISPs have domain search tools but beware. Network Solutions used to be the default choice for searching domain names but I found a disturbing fact about Network Solutions. I seems they bought large blocks of domains to resell. I would search for an available domain and then when I located one try to purchase it through my ISP. I was told that the domain was already registered through Network Solutions. So while the domain is technically available, it is only really available if I use Network Solutions over priced domain registration and hosting.

I use 1and1 and Blue Host but there are a number of good ISPs out there. Use these simple guidelines to find an ISP that fits your needs.

– Next week I’ll write about picking your domain name.

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Posted by admin on Apr 19 2009. Filed under Featured, Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry