Considering starting a small business?  The following list of resources will give you some ideas for consideration.

Useful Web Sites

• Canada Revenue Agency -  For everything tax and legal related, this section of the CRA website has useful information for new and small businesses.  Find out if you should run your business as a sole proprietorship, a corporation or a partnership.  This resource also helps you figure out when and if you need a provincial business number, how to collect GST and how to choose a fiscal period that fits your business needs.  

Having an online presence, whether your business is based online or if you have a storefront, is essential to people finding you.  Some topics to consider when embarking on the job of building a new website follow.

SEO and Design

How will people find my site and how will they find what they're looking for in my site?  SEO is the practice of optimizing your website so search engines like Google, Yahoo! and MSN can find your website and in return display it on search results so users find you.  Usability is of paramount importance to ensure that people stay in your site so you can convert visitors into business.

• Web Design Best Practices - This short article from Search Engine Watch gives 25 best practices tips to consider to design a smart small business website.
• SEO and Usability- Another great article by SEW that sums up the importance of an SEO strategy that is coherent with the usability of your site, something we strongly believe in here at Eighty8 Online.
•  Don't Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach To Web Usability: This book by Steve Krug is an excellent resource on web usability.  A great place to start.
•  Hire an expert - that's us!

Development

Should I get developers to do my site or should I build it myself?  The answer to this one usually comes down to cost.  Most people, even novices to the world of technology, are able to use a template to build their own website, the low cost option.  Note that this does not allow you much flexibility for personalizing the look of the site.  Templates also don't allow you much control for SEO enhancements.  If you can afford to hire your own developers you will come out with a much more customized product.

• Yahoo! Merchant Solutions- Set up your own online store or website with their templates.  Note that this option only allows you to sell in US$.
• Elance - If you have the time and patience to manage an outsourcing company to build your website, post your project on Elance.  You will get numerous responses, be careful selecting someone who seems trustworthy and be sure to check references.

Hosting 

Hosting can be an overwhelming topic when you haven't dealt with it before.  No one told me I had to know about storage, memory and bandwidth when I decided to start a small business!  The options are plenty but the product is very standard.  Most starter hosting packages are sufficient for a basic website that does not expect a large amount of transactions, which is where most smal businesses start. 

The key question when it comes to hosting your website is whether 1. you will manage your website yourself (often called Shared Hosting), 2. your developers will host your website, or 3. your hosting company will manage your site (often called Dedicated or Managed hosting).  Development companies will often provide hosting or at least have a hosting company they work with, while Managed Hosting can be an expensive proposition for a new business.  The biggest difficulty with Shared Hosting is usually the quality of its customer service, which many companies outsource, while you can literally find plans that are only a couple of dollars a month.

• Web Hosting Unleashed - Find out what others think about a particular hosting company.
• Liquid Web - Not at the bottom of the price range but recommended for its dependable (not outsourced) customer service, Liquid Web provides both shared and dedicated options.
  GoDaddy - If you know a thing or two about websites and think you can run it without much support, GoDaddy provides very affordable shared hosting as well as domain registration services.
•  Yahoo Small Business- Yahoo Small Business also provides very affordable shared hosting, as well as options for creating your own site using a template.

Marketing 

There is lots to be said about marketing online (including SEO!) but one technique that should not be overlooked is the power of direct marketing through emailing a qualified and approved list of customers on a regular basis.  Beware of spamming by sending unsolicited emails, as this is taken very seriously in the online world.  A couple of tips on email marketing:

• RunAnOnlineBusiness has a good email marketing checklist to get you started.
• A couple of easy to use products to manage an email marketing campaign are Constant Contact and Vertical Response.  Both give you free trial options and pricing is around $10 - $15/month

Need More Information?

For additional questions on your website needs contact us.

ph: (416) 857-0734

info@eighty8online.com