A List of Things to Consider Prior to Creating a Website:

1. Web Name can be purchased for around $30-$75. Who you register the name with DOES make a difference. Some companies will hide clauses in your purchase where they actually lease you the name you choose. Hence they can steal your domain name. If you choose to purchase a domain name on your own, be wary and ask about their policies and ownership rights to the domain names. 
2. Short easy to recognize domain name that describes the business. Check the availability on the Internet by typing in names you think of and add www. to the beginning and .com to the end in your browser address bar (or .org .net). 
3. Do a lot of surfing to see what your online competition is doing. It doesn't mean they are operating correctly and that you should pursue the same, but you can use their material against them by looking for areas where you can fulfill a customers needs and they cannot. Learn from their mistakes as well as their strong points. The smarter business person often wins the battle for customers.
4. Don't get fancy with the site. You only want enough glitz to the site to make it appealing. Too much glitz increases the page loading time and confuses the customer. Also more graphics means more work by a web designer, which normally equates into a higher price.
5. On the same train of thought, stay away from Flash files, too large and too much time spent on page loading. The average person is still using dial up connections with limited speed. So unless your customers are known to have high-speed connections, don’t use flash oriented material.
6. It is recommended that you do not place other peoples advertising on your site. It is an invitation for them to leave your site before finishing your material, it's an added distraction that may annoy customers and once again, it greatly increases page-loading time. People want fast loading pages full of information they need that are easy to get to.
7. Stay away from geocities or free hosting that places pop up ads. It is a very unprofessional addition to your business and WILL reflect poorly on you. The money saved on free hosting will be a lot less than what you will lose in sales. A total web hosting package with domain name registration and email service should only run around $300 - $700 for the first year (does not include site design), peanuts when compared to average business income and definitely insignificant when compared to ads in newspapers or elsewhere.
8. Your website will need to be hosted someplace. APG uses the services of NXS (http://www.nxs.net/services/hosting.htm) as they are reliable, low cost and you get email services with the web hosting so that you may have email addresses to match your domain name. So your email address per say could be Mark@batteries.com or even better customerservice@batteries.com. You also receive a mailing list that your customers or interested parties can sign up for allowing you to keep them informed to updates or notices that you wish to send out. 
9. Alignment of web material and direct material is crucial to a unified look to your business. Your business cards should look like your website, any other printed materials should have a similar look and feel. Here is where a logo works to your advantage. Think of possible logos that will not be big and cumbersome but large and obvious enough to garner customer recognition. The second time a person sees your logo you want them to think, "I've seen that and know who they are". APG can create documents to match your web design.
10. A website cannot make your company successful. But a website CAN make a successful business well known. Web sites are a VERY cost effective way to advertise your services and explain details without using a lot of money on printed materials. If you plan on a website garnering you a lot of business on its own you will be disappointed with the results. Now if you make business cards that "pump" the website or run some small ads that point people to a website your website can help "close the deal" by giving the customer the additional information they wanted before spending their hard earned pay. Think of a website as low cost advertising
11. Sales via the web are generally not a good source of income unless there are products being sold directly. This has been borne out by many defunct dot coms. Even a well organized website will fail unless you drive people to your website to buy your goods and services. Providing the resources to get them to call or visit your business is what will earn you a good income. In other words advertise your website every chance you get, on business cards, in publications, in newspaper ads, wherever you can put the www.yourplace.com. 
12. Use online coupons. Website statistics are fine and dandy for seeing how many people look at your services, but that will not give you a solid idea of if the website is making you sales (unless they are online sales). Use of a printable coupon will inform you as to how many people walking through your front door are watching/using your website. You must inform people that there are benefits available via the website in order to get them to frequent it.

I hope this helps bring together your thoughts on how you wish to approach a website for your business. When you know what you wish to display and roughly how many pages it will take to do so, give us a call at 865 856-0480 or send us an and I will offer you a more specific quote price wise. Please visit our Package Deals with set pricing. 

I wish you the best in your web endeavors!

John Avery
Owner