What You Need to Design Your Web Site

You'll need the following items to start designing a web site to sell your products and services.

A computer with an Internet connection and an email address to receive orders. You don't want to run to the library to check your emails and respond to email messages.

A domain name. Having your own domain name is a must for a business web site. Your domain name or web address is a unique name, identifying a specific web site, for example, yourdomain.com.

Hosting. You'll need a reliable hosting company that can handle your current and future needs. A server is a computer that is connected to the Internet and uses specialized software to make web pages available on the Internet at fast speed. Because obtaining and maintaining your own server is expensive and requires specialized skill, small businesses usually rent space on a hosting company's server to store their web pages. When Internet users enter your web address into their browser, the host directs them to your web site.

A merchant account processor, payment gateway, and shopping cart to accept payments online. Credit cards are the most popular way to pay for products and services on the Internet. The majority of online customers will pay by credit card, debit card, electronic check, or PayPal. Very few people will mail in a check. If you are not accepting credit cards online via a secured server, you will lose sales.

Web design software. If you want to design your own web site, you probably want to use a web editor. A web editor is software that creates the HTML code for you. WYSIWYG editors allow you to design your web site using a What You See Is What You Get interface. This is similar to a word processor where you can see what your page will look like as you're typing it. But even when using a web editor, it helps to learn the basics of HTML to solve some design problems.

Images. You'll need images to spruce up a web site. These can be photos, illustrations or clipart.

Statistics. You need to know the number of visitors you receive and where they come from. Make sure to get statistics capabilities when purchasing a hosting service.

The right knowledge and the right tools will make it easier to develop, design and maintain a successful site.