With all the various options available for web hosting, business owners need to understand what to look for when shopping around.

1. 99.9% uptime guarantee! This means that 99.9% of the time, your website will be available. Every website experiences some downtime at some point or another because of maintenance or connectivity issues, but it should not be down for more than 1% of the time. This is less than 45 minutes every month on average.
2. Great support! You want to be able to reach your host as soon as you notice that your site is down.
3. Weekly data back-up! Losing your data is rare, but you don’t want to take the chance. If you have a host that conducts a weekly data back-up, you can rest assured that your site and content won’t be lost.
4. Affordability! Many web designers will charge you $20 or $30 for web hosting when in most cases, this is not necessary. Most small businesses do not need to pay more than $10/month for hosting. We offer hosting packages starting at $6.99, or $4.99 for websites that we design.

We guarantee all these things at Goebel Media Group. Check out are web hosting packages to see what plan best suits your business. Don’t see a plan you like? Create your own! Contact us for a price quote.

We usually find that business owners, especially small business owners, seem to work very locally within their markets and don’t think about exposing themselves to the larger audience that the web can draw in for them. And while they are limiting themselves, they continue to do business offline because the prospect of building a website is overwhelming or confusing to them. However, it doesn’t have to be that way.

So what do you need to get started building a website? Let’s talk about some of the real basic concepts that we need to understand. This is how we break it down for our clients– think of it in terms of building a house.

• The first thing you need is SPACE to put your house– some “land.” In the web world, the space to store your website is called hosting. A web host runs servers, which are computers connected to the internet at high speeds 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. These computers can be accessed by anyone who has an internet connection all over the world.
• You also have an address so people know where to find you. For your website, you will have a web address, or domain name. This would be something like www.goebelmedia.com or www.google.com. Dot com’s, net’s, and org’s are generally better for SEO and since they are running on short supply nowadays, it is important to buy your domain right away. The cost is cheap, around $10/month. We find the best place to buy domain names is at www.GoDaddy.com.
• Typically, you aren’t going to design your own house so you would need an architect– or for your website, a web designer. You are going to need a web designer with experience not only with web design but ideally with programming, graphic design, SEO, and internet marketing.
• Your house is the actual site design. This is code, typically HTML, that will be place on the hosting, or the land, at the domain, or the address. Just as there are certain critical elements of a house, there are some things you definitely want to include on your website. You want to make sure you have your logo and slogan in a prominent place on your site. You also want to include ways for your customers to contact you, and ways to convert traffic into sales. You could add a sales component to your site or include “lead forms.” It is also important to include analytic tracking code on your website so you can understand where your customers are coming from, how they found you, and how they are navigating through your site.
• Finally, if you buy a house, you have to maintain it. The same goes for a website. It will turn a customer off if your website always looks the same and search engines such as Google or Bing prefer fresh content. Think of these updates or design changes as a fresh coat of paint. As far as redesigning your website, I have heard that this should occur every 2 years. For small businesses, we believe that every 5 years is sufficient.

So, that is some of the basic information you need to know to bring your business online.

In order to get your business on the web and see results, you are going to need four essential things:

• A Domain Name
• Web Hosting
• A Site Design
• Maintenance

Domain Name

Your domain name is your company’s address on the web. An example would be www.example.com. Short domain names are generally better than long ones. You can check for available names at www.ConnectivityPro.com. You can also purchase them there. If you need help purchasing a domain name, we can help you.

Hosting

After you have a domain name, your website cannot be accessed until you have hosting. When you buy hosting, you are buying space on the web. It is important to put your site on a reliable server. Our hosting has a 99.9% uptime guarantee. This means your site will almost never go down.

Design

A strong site design is important to the success of bringing your business online. You want a website that reflects your company image. The design needs to be clearly organized and have accurate information that is easy to understand. We offer a variety of design options for small businesses, ranging from simple online storefronts to complex sites with shopping carts, forms, and just about anything you can dream up. Our rates are extremely reasonable, and we pride ourselves on excellent client support, both during and after contract.

Maintenance

After your site goes online, you should have it updated regularly. Whether you want to update information or add pages, it is important that your website have a current feel. Updates are also an important factor in search engine optimization. Search engines favor sites with content that is regularly updated. You can pay a little more initially and have us develop an administration area where you can easily manage your site and update it yourself, or you can pay per update. All e-commerce sites come with an administrative backend that allows you to add products and to manage orders, payments, and shipping.