If you are more of the “do-it-yourself” type, here are our tips and recommendations:

Getting Started You Need to:

Register a Domain Name -every website has an address, sometimes called a URL for “Uniform Resource Locator” (see why they use the acronym?). The domain name is your address on the Internet. It points visitors to your website and it also directs email to you. You must register your domain name with a company called a “registrar” so that you become the legal owner of that name.

Much like paper phone books, your domain name is registered with an international organization BUT you go to an independent business to process the registration for you. You pay this company a registration fee for the right to own and use this domain. This registration is paid annually, or can be paid for longer periods of time. Costs vary by company, but can be as low as $9.99 per year and up.

I generally recommend Go Daddy as your registrar. Their prices are competitive and their account management website is easy to use.

You often can register a domain name AND get hosting at the same company (Go Daddy obviously also offers hosting) and there can be deals to combine them, but, in general, it is recommend keeping your domain registrations and your website hosting at separate companies. This allows you flexibility to change your hosting company very easily.

To search for and register a domain, go to GoDaddy.com – World’s No.1 Domain Name Registrar

Arrange for Website Hosting

If the domain name is your address, a website is your physical location on the Internet. This is the “home” of your website. A website is a combination of data files, images and small programs that, all together, can be viewed in a browser, which is a program that allows you to see this collection of files all put together. The most common browsers are Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari and Chrome. Those data files need to be on a computer (called a “server” or a “web server”) connected to the Internet. Like domain registrations, there are many, many companies that offer website hosting with varying pricing. And, also like domain names, web hosting is generally charged to you as the owner of the website on a monthly or annual fee. Think of it as renting space for your website on that computer. Some web developers also offer hosting (Compass Strategies does offer hosting) The advantage to this is that we can manage your site and any necessary changes, updates or issues very easily as part of our overall service and our prices are competitive with other companies. However, you should have the right to have the site anywhere you want to have it hosted. Just ALWAYS be sure to have the information you need to access all your files, in case you ever want to move them. You will need the user name and password to the place on the server where your site is hosted.

Contact us for information on our hosting and support plans or visit Host Gator, which is the hosting company we recommend.

Set up Opt-in Boxes and Choose an Email Service Provider

Once you have your website up, you want to capture as much information about your site visitors as possible. This is where an “opt-in box” is critical. An opt in box is a place on the website for visitors to give you their information so you may continue to market to them. Typically you should create something of value in exchange for their information. A special report on whatever is important to know in your area of expertise, a free consultation with you or something else that would motivate your visitors to give you at least their name and email address. Note that sometimes the more information you try to get from them, the less successful you may be, so start simply and build a relationship as you go along.

Once you have this information, what should you do with it? Email marketing is still an important method of building relationships and communicating with your prospective customers. Having a regular email newsletter (also called an “e-zine”) is critical to staying top-of-mind with your prospects. However, be very careful NOT to use your email account to blast out marketing emails to lots of prospects! Major providers like Yahoo, AOL and Google Gmail could shut you down if they suspect that you may be “spamming” people, which is against the law. You could get in BIG trouble! A service such as Constant Contact, Mail Chimp, Vertical Response, etc. are set up to manage email marketing in an acceptable manner. They will be very careful to ensure that your lists of contacts were generated with the contacts’ permission and there will always be a way for contacts to stop your emails if they wish (opt-out).

These services are also helpful as they provide reports after every email campaign that will tell you how many people actually opened the email, clicked on a link or forwarded the email to someone else. This can be very important information for your continued marketing efforts.

Most of our clients are on Constant Contact and we do recommend them. You can get a free account for 60 days to try their service. They also have add ons for creating surveys and managing events.