Stuart McHenry - My Internet World

People often ask me how to start out in the dot com business. The first thing I tell them to do is to read the many books, blogs and forums that are out there. Once you have a good idea of what you are doing then it’s time to get a website design. What does that involve?

You cannot just go to a designer and say I need a site for (insert idea) but rather you need to surf the web and see what designs catch your eye. When we launch a new site we spend anywhere from 4-6 hours looking at site designs and colors. The layout and design of your site can effect conversions and your overall profitability. Once you pick the colors and layout it’s important to communicate this to your web designer. What comes after the design phase?

Now it’s time to find hosting for your new site. There are different hosting plans out there from business web hosting to ecommerce web hosting and going through the plans is important. So offer more bandwidth while others offer more storage. If you’re launching an ecommerce site then more than likely you’ll need a hosting plan with a MySQL database and not all hosting companies offer this.

Once you get the design and hosting complete then it’s time to learn about search engine marketing and optimization.