After your domain name registration is complete, you must start to think about what your website address will be, you will also have to make sure that it is not too long, for example the BBC stands for British Broadcasting Centre, but that name would be far too long to use as an address, so therefore their website name is bbc.co.uk. So it is important that you name is short and sweet, so therefore people searching can feel finding your website very straight forward. Many people also use search engines, such as Google, Yahoo, Ask, etc. People when searching in these engines do not type in the full address of the website, instead they type in key words in relation to what they are searching for. Therefore having key words in the address, as a result will lead to more people visiting your site.
Once you have chosen your domain name, you will be ready to start to design your website. As Clowning Around, you are a small business partying organising business, therefore you must make sure that your website is very attractive to people who visit the site. It does not matter weather you are a small business or a large worldwide business, if your website is not attractive and is very difficult to navigate, people will move on to another site. This implies that if your site is attractive, you can compete with any business in the world online. Furthermore, you will have to think what kind of products and how you will advertise your business through the website. You should advertise what service you provide to the public, and also advertise your products. Such as spoons, party hats, fancy dress costumes, balloons etc.
Being connected to the internet does come at a cost; you have to pay a certain amount of money each month depending on the speed on your internet. There are different speeds in which you can have the internet. For a 2Mb connection it will cost you roughly £14.99 a month depending on which internet service provider you are connected through. As other internet service providers, such as Bulldog, Tiscalli and BT will desire for a different price. A 4Mb connection would cost you around £25 a month. If you wish to receive a high speed connection, for instance a 10Mb you would have to pay a much higher price, possibly in the region of £35 to £40 a month. So I would personally go for the 4 Mb connection, as it would be perfect for basic web surfing, and e-mailing, uploading blogs etc. Another cost would be to keep your website running; you have to pay a set fee every year. Also you will have to pay money to use .com or .co.uk at the end of your address.
Now that your website is set up, you have to make sure that you and the website are protected. There a huge amount of hackers and viruses circulating online. If you do not take the correct precautions you may lose all your data regarding your business, and could give away crucial information to strangers who as a result will have access to private files. As a result it is imperative that you are protected. You must have Anti-Virus protection software on your computer. I would recommend that you use Norton Anti-Virus or McAfee. Running these Anti-virus software(s) at least once a week will help maintain a virus free computer. You will also need to have a firewall to protect yourself. I would recommend Sygate Personal Firewall, you can choose which programs you would like to access the network and have the option to block programs from accessing the network. This firewall will also notify you if something or someone is trying to gain access into your computer. So make sure that you are protected, so you are not at risk of losing crucial business files.
