A lot of small business owners find themselves in this situation – with their time, energy and attention spread thin across all aspects of running their business. It can be exhausting.

But small business budgets are tight and you wonder how you could possibly afford to have it any other way.

But here’s a lesson I’ve learned, and I’ve seen it work over and over again: You don’t have to do everything. Do what you do best, and hire other people to do the rest.

No, really. It works.

Let me explain. If you’re spreading yourself over all these different areas, you’re not giving any one of them the time and attention it deserves. Everybody starts this way, but as your business starts growing, it gets difficult to keep it all going. And chances are, you’re not actually good at all these things you’re doing.

Because it’s what I do best, let’s take creating your website as an example. You can create your own website. There are lots of ways to go about it, but no matter how you do it, it’s going to take up a lot of your time. If you are not, and do not want to be, in the business of building websites, then that’s not where you should be focusing your time. Even if you’re really good at it.

Building websites is what I, on the other hand, do best and it is my business. You might think that you don’t have the budget to hire someone to build your website for you, but here’s where that lesson I was talking about comes in. If you do hire someone else, you’ll free up valuable time, energy and attention that you can then focus on your business – on growing your business, on bringing more customers, or on making more money from the customers you already have.

I get a lot of suspicious looks from people and potential clients when I try to explain this. They think I’m just trying to sell my services and make a quick dollar. And I guess I am trying to sell my services, but for a really good reason: I love helping small businesses flourish and grow. I watch so many small business owners spend 10 or 15 hours every week struggling with their websites, trying to figure out why one feature is broken for some of their site visitors, even though it works fine for them, or trying to learn enough about CSS to make their homepage look the way they want.

And that’s where the lesson is really powerful – it’s 10 or 15 hours for you, but it’s 1 or 2 hours for me, because I already know CSS and I probably already know why that feature is broken, and exactly what has to be done to fix it. So instead of spending 10 or 15 hours feeling frustrated and often getting nowhere, you hire me for an hour or two, and then, just like magic, you have 10-15 hours to spend building your business. Maybe you take on more appointments. Maybe you attend some networking events and meet some new potential clients. Maybe you use the time to create a product that you can sell.

A lot of entrepreneurs are reluctant to give up any of the things they’re doing for their own businesses and trust someone else to take over for them. They worry about their budget and they worry about losing control. But you know what? I’ve seen a lot of businesses grow and blossom after their owners let go, hired help, and really focused on what they do best. I haven’t yet seen anyone who took these steps not grow their business.

So, the lesson is focus on what you do best, and hire other entrepreneurs to do what they do best. Everybody profits and everybody’s business grows.

But let’s focus for a minute on the customers of those banks that were taken over, and more specifically, let’s focus on me. Because I happened to have accounts at two banks that were taken over by other banks. The new banks handled the transitions in each of those cases in radically different ways – one was an excellent user experience for me as the customer, and the other was such a nightmare, I’m going to be closing my account.

There’s a lot to be learned about customer care and user experience from these stories – all businesses go through some sort of internal upheaval at some point. The challenge is, how to deal with that all while taking care of your customers in the best possible way.

The Excellent User Experience or
Washington Mutual becomes Chase

Shortly before the takeover of Washington Mutual by Chase, I’d actually had a pretty rotten experience which involved someone cloning my debit card and using it to withdraw upwards of $1,000 from my checking account without my consent or knowledge. The way Washington Mutual handled that was abominable, and I was on the verge of closing my account there when I learned the bank was being taken over by Chase.

I braced for the worst. I had no idea what was going to happen. Did I need to get a new debit card? Did I need new checks? Would I have to change my direct deposit information? Would I have access to my money? I was a little stressed out about the whole thing.

But you know what? It went off flawlessly. I continued logging into my account at Washington Mutual’s web site until one day I tried to visit and was greeted by a message telling me I now had to log into my account at chase.com. I headed over to chase.com, and lo and behold, the exact same username and password I’d used at Washington Mutual worked at Chase.com, and there was my account, every penny intact.

Shortly afterward, I received a Chase debit card in the mail. My Washington Mutual debit card continued to work until I activated the Chase debit card, making the transition from one to the other seamless.

I never changed my direct deposit information, it just continued to work.

My checks continued to work, and still work to this day, even though they say Washington Mutual on them.

In short, this was an excellent user experience. I was taken care of every step of the way. I did not have to call customer service even once for help figuring out what was going on. I always had access to my account, always had a debit card and checks that worked, and could always access my account online. Chase did it up right. Kudos to them.

The Horrible User Experience or
California National Bank becomes US Bank

A few months after Washington Mutual became Chase, I got word that my other bank, California National Bank was being taken over by US Bank. Lulled into a false sense of security by the beauty and simplicity of my experience with Chase’s bank takeover, I shrugged off the news and went on with my life.

Oh, how naive I was.

Everything that Chase did right for its customers, US Bank did wrong. All those worries I’d had when I first learned about Chase taking over Washington Mutual were realized.

First, let’s talk about online account access. When the California National Bank web site stopped working, I headed over to US Bank to sign in. But the username and password from the CalNational site didn’t work. I tried a few times, then remembered seeing a letter about online account access in the mail from US Bank. I dug it out of my pile of mail and read through it. It gave step by step instructions for setting up online account access. Basically, my account had been moved over to US Bank, but online account access didn’t get moved over.

I tried to follow the instructions in the letter, but they were complicated and I kept running into roadblocks. Frustrated, I called US Bank customer service. The department handling transitioned accounts was closed for the day. I had to call back the next day.

The next morning, I finally talked to someone who could help me out and got online account access set up for my account. Whew. One thing done.

But now, let’s talk about my debit card. One Sunday evening, I headed to the ATM at the bank to deposit my birthday check from my mom. I noticed the ATM had been replaced with a US Bank ATM machine. I walked up, put my CalNational debit card in the slot and…nothing happened. Nothing.

The screen never updated, pushing buttons did nothing, and I couldn’t get my card back. I had to go into the bank the next morning to deposit my check and tell them what had happened to my debit card. The teller checked with the manager to see if my card had been found in the ATM that morning but it had not. They marked the card stolen in their system, and told me that they couldn’t order me a new debit card that day and that I would have to wait for my US Bank debit card to arrive in the mail, which should be within the next two weeks.

Two weeks went by, three weeks. I called customer service to ask how much longer it would be before the US Bank debit card arrived. The customer service rep said he did not know and could not tell me but that it shouldn’t be much longer. A couple weeks later, I called back again and was told the same thing. A couple weeks after that I called again, and was told the same thing.

Finally, I went into the bank to speak with a teller directly. She looked up my account and said I had not been issued a US Bank debit card simply because there had been no active debit card on my account when the account was transitioned. I had to fill out an application for a debit card and wait 10 more days before I finally had the card in my hands, about three months after it was eaten by the ATM.

Do you really even want to get me started on direct deposit? I never received any notices from the bank that my direct deposit information had to be updated. Just suddenly one day, my employer attempted to deposit my check and got a message saying the routing and account number were invalid. This was just two weeks ago, months after the bank takeover. I’m now waiting for my checks to be returned to me for the same reason, even though I’ve received no notices about needing new checks.

I tried to go on US Bank’s web site and order new checks, but the user experience for ordering new checks is absurd and horrible and I couldn’t figure out how to place an order for checks that cost less than $80.

Customers Come First

No matter what is going on internally in your business, customers come first. Without customers, you have no business, and they should be treated like first-class citizens. They should know what to expect, and you should do everything you can to provide an excellent user experience for them, no matter how they choose to interact with your business. That means your web site is easy to use and helpful, whoever answers the phone when they call is helpful and friendly, whoever is there to greet them when they walk through your door is helpful and friendly, and so on.

There are so many ways that your business touches the lives of your customers. Make sure that each and every time it happens, the experience is as great as it can be. Be like Chase, not like US Bank.

And don’t get me wrong – I do love WordPress. It’s incredibly powerful, super flexible, and it allows me to build sites that my clients can then take to the next level on their own without having to learn code.

But what about other technologies and techniques – don’t those deserve a fair shake too?

Of course!

I don’t choose WordPress so often because it’s better than the other solutions out there. I choose it when it’s the best tool for the job at hand.

If the job at hand is putting a nail through a piece of wood, you can use a wrench or a screwdriver, but I think we can all agree that either a hammer or a nail gun is the right tool for the job. Likewise, if the job at hand is a blog or a small business web site that the client can update themselves when necessary, WordPress is very often the right tool for the job.

As WordPress continues to grow and mature, it becomes a suitable tool for more and more types of sites – from photo galleries to shopping carts and other things you might not even imagine WordPress can do.

Best. Feature. Ever.

But probably the best feature of WordPress can’t be found in the downloaded zip file. The best thing WordPress has going for it is the community of talented, generous, and friendly people who share knowledge, contribute themes and plugins, answer questions on the forums, and write tutorials.

I got excited about the community surrounding WordPress a few years ago when I decided to attend WordCamp San Francisco 2007 on a whim. I was blown away by my experience there.

When I learned about Meetup.com, the first thing I searched for was ‘WordPress’. And I was so happy to find a local group! I joined immediately. The group seemed to consist of 5-6 people who met for coffee Sunday afternoons in Long Beach.

Then, unexpectedly, the organizer of the group decided to step down. A new organizer had to step in or the group would cease to exist. I waited past the first, second, and third messages, and then finally bit the bullet and decided to become the organizer.

That was in May 2009. Since then, the little group who met for coffee on Sunday afternoons has grown to be over 350 members strong. At our last meeting, ten WordPress experts in a variety of fields graciously fought rush-hour Los Angeles traffic just to donate their time to answering the questions of the people who gathered that night. It was nothing short of magic.

You can’t ignore the power of such a community when considering WordPress as a solution for your project. You’ll find this community is the ultimate resource for figuring out any problems that pop up or helping you add functionality to your site that WordPress doesn’t support out of the box. It seems like no matter what you’re trying to do and how crazy it seems, there’s always someone who’s done it before. And not only are they willing to show off the results of their work, but they’re usually willing to show you how you can do it too.

Undoubtedly, you’d share information about the products and/or services that your business offers. You’d give your office hours and contact information so that people could do business with you after reading the article. If your business had a physical location, you’d talk about that too – how to find it, what it’s like, where to park, etc.

And then you’d probably include some information about yourself – who you are, why you started the business, what you want to accomplish. You might talk about and introduce any employees you have working for you.

Think about all those things you’d want to make sure to include in a book or magazine article profiling your business. Write it all down, then use that to start your web site.

Start with content

What? Start with that? A boring text document that goes on and on about your business? Yes! That’s how you’ll figure out what kind of content your web site should contain.

Any web site worth its salt is going to start with content. Not with a pretty design, not with a pre-selected content management system, not with a stunning logo. But with content. With a capital C.

What if it really was a book?

Think about it this way – what if you really were writing a book about your business? Would you start by designing the cover and layout of the book, then write to fill in the layout you’d created? Do you suppose a magazine starts by creating a layout each month and then fills in the holes in the layout with content?

No!

Books, magazine articles, newspapers – they all start with CONTENT. The design, the layout, the look and feel, are then based on the content, not the other way around.

Content really is king

If you’ve spent any amount of time reading articles on the web, then you’ve probably come across the saying that ‘content is king’. And you might have surmised that this meant you really needed killer content – that it needed to have keywords for search engines to find, that it needed to be easy to read, that it needed to be interesting and relevant.

And all of that is true, certainly.

But it goes even further than that. Content should be the driving force behind your web site. You should create and edit all of the content first, then build up the design and layout around the content. Once you’ve decided what type of content your site will have and how often that content will have to be updated and by whom, that’s the time to figure out which CMS solution is going to fit best. Content should be driving the entire process the entire time.

Write it out first

So, start your web design project by writing that book (if your business is big enough for a book) or that magazine article. Figure out what you want to say, everything you want to include. Then start working on the look and feel, the design, the layout and selecting a solution for managing the content.

You can hire help for this, but don’t expect that help to necessarily be your web designer. Web designers have many talents, but copy writing or copy editing is not necessarily one of them. If you can’t even think where to start or detest writing, then hire a copy writer to interview you and write all the copy. If you think you can get most of the copy together and know what you want to say, but aren’t confident that your writing skills are up to par, then hire a copy editor to go through and polish and organize it all after you’ve written it all down.

The content should be turned over to your web designer before your web designer ever starts working on the design. And your web site will be custom-designed to perfectly accommodate your content and will capture and reinforce the tone of the copy. And the quality of the site will be top-notch.

People have a lot of different reasons they want to learn to build web sites. Sometimes the first question somebody asks me after they learn that’s what I do for a living is “How did you learn to do that?” It’s such a hard question to answer.

In the beginning, there was HTML

I started building web sites around 1996. If you wanted to build a web site in 1996, the only skill you needed was HTML. That was all there was. And HTML, being a markup language rather than a scripting or programming language, is relatively straightforward and easy to learn and understand. I’d surf around the web and when I found a layout or trick that I liked, I’d just view source in the browser to see how it had been accomplished. That’s pretty much all there is to learning HTML.

Then complexity was introduced

Building and updating sites in HTML was simple and straightforward, but it was also tedious and time-consuming. I heard a story about eBay changing the background color of their site from yellow to white – it took a team of developers days to open every single HTML file and update the background color for each page individually.

Slowly, different technologies were introduced to take away the tedium and to add new features and functionality. On the front-end, CSS made tasks like background color changes simple and quick, and JavaScript allowed for dynamic color changes and other interactivity. On the back-end, scripting and programming languages like Perl and PHP were introduced to help make the process of generating many similar pages simpler and quicker.

As time has gone on, the introduction of new technologies hasn’t stopped. People who build web sites are constantly looking for the next new thing – the thing that will make creating web sites faster and easier, the thing that will make updating content simple and fast, the thing that will make complex interactions like online purchasing easy to implement. To learn to make web sites now, you have to learn a lot.

The business of making web sites grows up

Sometimes it’s easy to take for granted how ingrained into our lives the internet has become. We rely on it for everything from personal messages, to running a business, to checking news and weather, to getting the latest movie showtimes, to buying products and services. It can be hard to remember that the entire industry is a baby by any standards.

Back when HTML was all there was, web sites were often monstrosities of confusing navigation and animated gifs, and garish color combinations. There weren’t any conventions, any set ways of doing anything, so the people building the sites experimented. They tried out new things – a few of them worked well, but many did not.

Over time, the web standards movement started advocating for a better quality of markup – using semantic tags to describe the content and CSS to style how that content appeared. Usability and user experience experts started paying attention to the ways people interacted with web sites and started publishing their findings. Search engines grew more powerful and became a force to be reckoned with – you had to build your web site a certain way for a search engine to recommend it to searchers as useful.

The web industry is still juvenile. Things are constantly shifting and falling into place, only to be shaken up and fall into new places. New roles are created all the time as people recognize needs that aren’t being fulfilled. Old roles are phased out. The lone webmaster who once managed every single aspect of your web site alone has been replaced by a team full of information architects, interaction designers, usability specialists, back-end coders, front-end coders, database administrators, graphic designers, content strategists, internet marketers, copywriters, user experience professionals, business analysts, and more.

So…where do I start?

It seems overwhelming doesn’t it? I had the advantage of being able to learn technologies one at a time as they were introduced. Well, until a few years ago, when the number of technologies being introduced easily outpaced my ability to learn them. I’ve had to pick and choose, finding my way to the things I love and do best, finding my place on each web site building team that I’ve been a part of.

If you’re starting from scratch, you’ve got a lot of potential roles that you can fill. Start playing around – build a few web sites. It’s fine if they’re just 1996-style HTML pages. Pick a topic you love, whether that’s dogs or food or video games, and build a web site about it. Then keep playing – keep adding new features. Learn as you go along.

There’s no one way to learn it all. Everyone has different learning styles and preferences. Some people actually enjoy just diving in head first and seeing how far they  can get on their own. Other people want a more structured approach.

Unfortunately, you’ll be hard-pressed to find a college course worth taking to learn the topic. We’ve discovered over the past 15 years or so that our higher education system just isn’t equipped to deal with a constantly changing and evolving topic – where a technique that’s cutting-edge on the first day of the semester can be positively outdated by the last day. As things change faster and faster, college courses on building web sites fall further and further behind. Learning how people made web sites 10 years ago may be interesting, but it’s not useful, and you’re not likely to end the course with any marketable skills.

The thing you should know is, there isn’t any one course you can take, or any one teacher you can learn from, or any one book you can read, or any one skill you can master that’s going to make you great at building web sites. The key ingredient is passion. Be passionate about learning new things, be passionate about doing the best job you possibly can. Realize that this is not a field where you will ever be able to relax and rest on your years of experience and expertise. There is always something new to learn, some new technology to learn about, some new skill to master. To be successful, you have to really love what you’re doing.

That said, here are my recommendations for where to go to learn:

Best bets if you like to just jump in and figure it out

W3Schools (http://w3schools.com/): Has a huge collection of quick and fast introductory classes to dozens of different topics. Most can be completed in an hour or so and give you a great foundation for jumping into something and figuring it out afterward.

StackOverflow (http://stackoverflow.com/): When you find yourself stuck or unable to figure out the next step, you can jump onto this site and ask a question about absolutely anything to do with building web sites. Just be sure when you ask your question, you include the code you’re asking about or a link to the page that’s giving you trouble so that people can help you out.

Smashing Magazine (http://www.smashingmagazine.com/): Articles, tutorials, and roundups of useful web site building information in a variety of areas of interest.

Net Tuts (http://net.tutsplus.com/): Simple tutorials on just about anything you might want to learn. Step through these to get the basics of MooTools, jQuery, Python, PHP, JavaScript, CSS and more.

Best bets if you like a structured approach

Google Code University (http://code.google.com/edu/): Tutorials and structured courses on lots of different languages.

Opera Web Standard Curriculum (http://www.opera.com/company/education/curriculum/): A series of articles from various experts in the field acts like your text book. Also includes resources for further reading. Highly recommend this.

WaSP InterACT Curriculum (http://interact.webstandards.org/): This one could be a little harder to follow if you’re a student. It’s excellent, but is aimed at professors and teachers to help them develop courses teaching the latest techniques and standards.

And of course, once you’ve got a foundation down, any of the recommendations in the section above will be helpful to you as well.

Start learning!

My best advice is just to jump in and do it – why not start today? Will your first web site be awful? Probably, but you’ll be proud. A year down the road you’ll look at it and groan at your own bad choices and naivety. And guess what? That should never stop. I still look at things I built a year or two ago and want to hide in shame – because I’m always learning how to make things better. If you ever reach a point where you look at something you built a year or two ago and you can’t see any way to improve it, that’s a bad sign because you’ve stopped learning. Remember what drew you to the field in the first place and keep your passion alive.

Getting the right domain name(s) is the second step in our Six Steps to a Successful Web Site.

What’s a Domain Name?

Every computer that’s connected to the internet is identified by an IP Address. IP addresses look like this: 72.21.210.250. IP addresses work great – if you’re a computer. But for a human, it’s not so easy to remember, and seeing that address doesn’t tell you what site that will take you to.

To solve that problem, we have domain names. Computers don’t need domain names – people do. It makes it easy for us to find the web sites we wan. So instead of having to remember 72.21.210.250, you can just remember amazon.com.

But how does that magic happen? How does my computer know that I want 72.21.210.250 when I type in amazon.com? The answer is Domain Name Servers or DNS. There are domain name servers all over the world. They hold a simple database that matches domain names with IP addresses. So my computer doesn’t actually know – I type in amazon.com, and my computer asks the nearest domain name server which IP address it should go to. If the nearest domain name server doesn’t know, it will ask the next domain name server, and so on, until an answer is reached, and then I’m sent on my merry way. Luckily for us, most of the time computers can do all of this asking and answering in less than a second.

Two Part Name

Each domain name contains two parts: a domain name and a top-level domain name, or TLD. In amazon.com, for example, amazon is the domain name and .com is the TLD.

Even thought more and more TLDs are being introduced all the time, the best choice is still .com. Wikipedia has a comprehensive list of all the TLDs currently available and what the restrictions are for each. For example, .museum can only be used by registered museums and .eu can only be used by businesses, organizations and individuals located in the European Union.

Choosing a Domain Name

If you’re just starting your business and haven’t registered a name yet, you’re in a great position – you can check each of the potential names you’ve thought of for your business to see if a matching domain name is available.

If your business already has a name, the first domain name you should check is your business name. For example, if I owned a dog-walking business named Walk That Dog, I’d first check to see if walkthatdog.com was available. If it was already taken, I’d have to get creative and figure out a way I could incorporate the name of my business or my primary product or service into my domain name. There are some really great services online that will help you with this process. Here are a few of my favorites:

• http://domai.nr/
• http://www.123finder.com/
• http://www.pickydomains.com/
• http://www.nameboy.com/
• http://www.bustaname.com/
• http://www.domainsbot.com/

Take your time picking a domain name if your first choice is taken. Sometimes it just takes a little bit of brainstorming time to come up with a great alternative. Try to include some keywords about you or your business in the name. Keep it as short and and easy to spell as possible so that people will have an easy time typing it in. Make sure it’s as different as possible from your competitor’s domain names – you don’t want anyone confusing you with your competition!

Don’t Stop at One!

Also, keep in mind that are no rules about how many you can have. Multiple domain names can be pointed at the same web site. So if you think up two really great ideas, go ahead and register them both.

If you or your business has a hard-to-spell name, then consider registering all the possible misspellings of your name. For example, my name is Natalie MacLees. Natalie is commonly also spelled Nathalie and Nataly, and don’t even get me started on MacLees – I’ve seen McLees, McLese, McLeas, McLeese, MacLees, Macklease, Mackleez, MacLese, MacLeaz, Makleze, etc. If I wanted to make sure that anybody could find nataliemaclees.com, I’d go ahead and register as many of those misspellings as I could afford and point them all at the same web site. Just for the record, I’ve tried to avoid that whole mess by registering nataliemac.com – it’s shorter and easier to spell and remember.

Registering a Domain Name

When you’ve got the name you want, you’ll go to a domain name registrar to purchase the registration of the domain name. Most of the time that should cost you about $10/year. If you’re being charged significantly more than that, then do a little research and find out what’s included. Sometimes hosting, email services, etc. are included, but not always necessary. Make sure you know what you need so you don’t pay for services or features you won’t end up using.

Be aware that when you register a domain name, you’ll be asked to enter contact information for the owner, a billing contact, an administrator contact, and a technical contact. All of this information is published to a public database and is searchable and viewable by anyone. If you’re registering a domain name for a business, be sure to use the business address and phone number rather than your home address and personal phone number. If you’re registering a domain name for personal use, be as smart about it as you can. Is there a PO Box you can use instead of your physical home address?

Some domain name registrars will also offer you a privacy service for an additional fee. If you opt for this option, the contact information for the privacy company will be published to the public database instead of your own information. This can be a great option if you don’t want your personal contact information made public, but be sure to read the fine print carefully. Sometimes the privacy company is actually the owner of the domain name instead of you.

Be on the Lookout for Scammers

Because your name, email address and address are published to a public database when you register a domain name, it’s easy for companies to contact you with sales and offers for your web site. You’ll have to learn to ignore the piles of spam emails from fake SEO companies with false promises of promoting you to the front page of Google.

One of the hardest scams to spot is the mailed domain name registration renewal. It will come in an official-looking envelope, often printed in red, white and blue, and will have a fake bill for around $50 to renew your domain name. Careful inspection of the notice will reveal ‘This is not an invoice’ or some such in fine print somewhere. Remember which company you’ve registered your domain names with and pay renewal fees only to that company. Throw away any other notices you receive.

Why Are So Many Good Names Taken?

Sometimes, finding a domain name is an incredibly frustrating process – all the names you can think of that are short, easy to spell and relevant to you or your business are taken. Why is that? Buying up available domains has become big business – it’s called domaining and the people who practice it are called domainers. They buy up dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of available domain names. Then they’ve got two main ways to make money from them – either resell them at a considerable markup to the first person who’s interested, or park the domain and fill up the page with ads that generate revenue every time somebody clicks on them.

I’ve purchased domains from domainers for as much as $900. There’s no real guideline for the price – it’s worth whatever you’re willing to pay, so be a smart negotiator when buying from domainers. As of this writing, the most expensive domain name purchase was the sale of insure.com in late 2009 for $16 million. As you can see, sometimes domain names are big business – be prepared to walk away if you can’t afford the domain name you really want.

Now That You’ve Got It,  Guard It Carefully!

Domain names typically have to be renewed each year. Make sure that you stay on top of your domain name. Your domain name registrar will likely email you multiple notices that the name is due for renewal. You can also often set up your domain name to renew automatically with the fee charged to your credit card each year. Just make sure that when your card expires you remember to log in and update the information.

One simple mistake can lead to you losing your domain name. It can often be expensive or impossible to get it back, so pay careful attention. After it expires it goes into a sort of limbo period, and can often be recovered for a few hundred dollars. But once that limbo period expires, it’s open season. Anyone can grab the domain. Domainers are infamous for grabbing domain names as they expire (for around $10), then turning around and offering to sell them back to the original owner for hundreds or thousands of dollars.

Manage your portfolio of domain names diligently. If you’ve got multiple domain names, add it to your calendar to log in once a month and check on them – make a note of any that are expiring soon, and update your billing information as needed. Also keep the owner, administrative, technical, and billing contact information for each updated. This is the only way your domain registrar can contact you if one of your domains is expiring – and you want to make sure you get that message!

1. Avoid black hat SEO tricks

Chances are, if you own a web site, you’ve been contacted by SEO agencies promising to get your site to the front page of Google or to increase your traffic 1000%. What they never tell you is that the results will be temporary, and by the time you discover that your site has been blacklisted from Google and other search engines, they’ll have disappeared along with thousands of your dollars.

SEO isn’t magic – it’s mostly common sense. Stick to a few simple rules, and you’ll be happy with the results.

2. Everyone will experience your web site differently

Never assume that the web site you see when you open your web site is exactly what everyone sees. With the rise of mobile browsing, this is more true now than ever before. There is a tremendous variety of monitor sizes, screen resolutions, operating systems, browsers, and devices out there. Your web site won’t act and look exactly the same on all of them, nor should you expect it to. What is important is to make sure that everyone can get to the content they need, no matter how they’re viewing your site.

3. Always look for ways to engage

Publishing a simple brochureware site or broadcasting news updates through Twitter won’t get you nearly as far as actually engaging with your audience. Look for ways to make it easy for people to initiate a conversation with you. If you’ve got a simple brochureware site, set up a Facebook fan page where your fans can gather and talk about you. Enable people to add comments or testimonials to your site. Look for any way you can to create a community around your business or your ideas to keep people interested, to make them feel heard, and to make them feel welcome.

4. Knowing HTML does not make you a web professional

HTML was purposefully designed to be simple and easy to learn. Anyone determined enough can sit down and grasp the basics in a single afternoon. On one hand, this is wonderful, because it has empowered almost anyone to publish publicly-available content. On the other hand, it’s bad because it’s opened up a lot of business owners to paying non-professionals with a basic HTML knowledge to build their sites. Before you pay someone to build a web site for you, make sure they’re a professional. Even though HTML is the backbone of the web, there is so much more to learn to be able to build truly dynamic, wonderful, cross-browser compatible, professional, search-engine-optimized web sites.

5. Content is king

I don’t even have enough fingers and toes to count the number of clients who have thought all they needed to do to have a web site built for their business is write me a check and wait a few weeks before it would magically appear. Your web designer probably knows next to nothing about you and your business. All of that information that’s going to be available on your web site? You’re going to have to provide it. In fact, it should be one of the first things you do.

Sit down and think about a) what you want to tell your customers and potential customers about you and your business, and b) what your customers and potential customers want to know about you and your business. Sure, there will be some overlap, and that’s a good thing. There are the basics, like hours of operation, contact information, pricing, services and products available, physical address (if relevant), what payment types you accept, etc. But just as importantly, there are the reasons they should want to do business with you and what sets you apart from your competition. Think about everything you want your web site to include, then work with your web designer, and possibly a copy writer or copy editor, to get it all organized and into a structure that’s going to make sense for a web site.

6. Your web site is never finished

Most of us are quite used to print design projects like brochures, business cards, and signs. Once they’re printed and delivered to you, the work is done – there’s nothing else to do. But a web site is never finished. There will never be a point where you can just relax and stop thinking about your web site. There should always be new information to add, new features to think about, and content to update. Plus, you can work consistently to keep the web site’s look and feel evolving so that it never feels stale or out of date.

7. You get what you pay for

That’s not to say that you have to pay through the nose to get a simple and professional site done. Just be wary of anyone whose price is extraordinarily cheap. Unfortunately, you’ll find out later why the price was so low. Then you’ll be in a situation where you need to hire someone else to fix the problem or scrap the mess and start from scratch if it’s bad enough. And the money you spent on a cheap fix turns out to be money wasted.

8. Take the time to plan before you start

Even though you’re really excited and raring to get started yesterday, do spend a few days or even a few weeks working with your web developer to plan the site properly. Discuss your budget and the features you’d like on the site. Don’t start work until you have a nice road map of what’s going to happen when, and what the due dates are for different things. Remember, you’re providing all the content, so you’ll have just as many deadlines as your web designer does.

Keep in mind that if you fail to meet your deadlines, your web designer is held up from being able to do any further work. That’s going to delay the entire project and keep things from running smoothly and on time. Also, keep in mind, that if you make major changes to the plan after it’s in place and already in the works, that that’s going to run into extra time and effort for your web designer and extra time and money for you. Make sure the change you’re requesting is worth it.

9. Speak up if you see problems

I’ve had an alarming number of clients who find a problem on their site, such as a broken link, slow loading times, or something out of place in their browser who don’t tell me about the problem. After they’ve been experiencing the issue in silence for days, weeks or even months, they fire off an angry email about the broken item and demand an immediate fix. You’d never sit in a kitchen with a stopped up sink and just expect a plumber to show up, so don’t expect your web designer to somehow know that your site has an issue. As soon as you notice something amiss, let your web designer know so they can investigate and fix the problem as soon as possible.

10. Bugs are a normal part of the process

When you’re building a new site or adding a new feature, you should expect that the first try is going to have a few problems. That’s a normal part of the programming process. There isn’t a programmer on earth who can code up something perfectly on the first try. And what’s more, you can expect that occasionally, fixing one bug is going to cause another one. I’ve seen a lot of clients who throw their hands up in the air and roll their eyes when something doesn’t work on the first try, but that’s perfectly normal, and you should expect it. Work with your web designer to get it all figured out and working the way you want.

Hosting is just the first step in our Six Steps to a Successful Web Site.

What is hosting anyway?

A web site is nothing more complicated than a set of files, with possibly some data stored in a database. Some web sites are only one file or a couple, while others are hundreds or thousands of files. Hosting the web site simply means putting those files on a server and making them available to anyone with an internet connection. A server is just a computer – not so different from the one that sits on your desk – with some special software installed that allows it to handle requests to view those files.

When you pay for web site hosting, you’re just renting space on a server to store the files that make up your web site so that your site is accessible from the internet.

Types of Hosting

There are some variations on these themes, but these are the three basic types of web site hosting available from most web hosting companies:

1. Shared Hosting

With shared hosting, you share a web sever with dozens or possibly hundreds of other web sites. This is ideal for small web sites or web sites that don’t get a lot of traffic. The biggest advantage of shared hosting is the price – you can often buy shared hosting for as little as $4 to $6 per month.

With shared hosting, you’re at the mercy of all the other web site owners that are sharing your server. If any one of them makes a mistake with their web site or suddenly gets a lot of traffic, then all the web sites are in danger of slowing down or becoming completely unavailable. Think of what would happen on your own computer if you were running dozens or hundreds of programs at once. You also don’t often have access to modify or change settings on the server.

2. VPS or Virtual Private Server

With a virtual private server, you’re still sharing one server with several other customers, but in this case, there’s software in place that helps keep the different web sites separate from one another. You’re better protected against what your neighbors might be doing on their sites.

You also usually have a lot more control over the server – you can change settings and install software if you like. Of course, that’s only helpful if you know what you’re doing, so you might also look for a managed VPS account, which would include customer support services to help you change settings or install new software.

3. Dedicated Server

With a dedicated server, you actually have your own physical server all to yourself. You can do whatever you like with it. You won’t be affected by anyone else’s web site no matter what and your own web site won’t impact any neighbors. If your web site really grows, you can even have multiple dedicated servers.

Just like VPS servers, these are sometimes also available as managed accounts – giving you access to a server administrator who can help you adjust settings or install software.

How to Choose Hosting

What do you need?

First, you need to figure out exactly what you need. What kind of web site will you have? If it’s a simple brochureware site, then a shared hosting account is probably sufficient. If you’re going to have e-commerce or generate revenue directly from the site, then you should probably consider stepping up to at least a VPS.

Also, identify which technologies you’ll be using. Many web sites these days are built on open source software like WordPress and Drupal, which require PHP and a database of some sort, usually MySQL, so you’ll need a web host that offers those technologies. If you’re building an application in Ruby or Django, then you’ll want to look for a hosting company that specializes in hosting sites built with those technologies.

This question will also help you answer the Linux vs. Windows question. Some hosts offer both Linux or Unix hosting and Windows hosting. Which you choose depends on what technologies you’ll be using to build your site.

How much support do you need?

Next, figure out what level of support you need. Keep in mind that your web site will go down – it’s inevitable. Computers break, hard drives wear out, blackouts leave areas or cities without power, etc. Think about the impact of your site being down. If you’ve got a busy e-commerce site that generates thousands of dollars in sales every hour, your web site being unavailable for a couple of hours could cost you a lot. The hosting package that you pay for should be commensurate with that impact. Don’t host an e-commerce site that pulls in thousands of dollars every hour on a shared hosting account that costs you $5/month. That’s like trying to run an incredibly busy four star restaurant with a microwave and a hot plate.

Make sure you can upgrade to the next level

Then, make sure the hosting company makes upgrading easy. If you’re just getting started and not getting much traffic, it might make the most sense to go with an inexpensive shared hosting account at first. But make sure that your hosting company makes upgrading quick and painless. You should be able to call them at any time and request an upgrade to the next level of service if your site grows or starts getting a significant amount of traffic.

Look for great customer support

Finally, and most importantly, make sure the hosting company you choose has a stellar customer service reputation. Always look for live 24-7-365 support. Search Google or Twitter to see what people are saying about the company. Call their customer service line a few different times at different times of night and day to see how long it takes to get to a person, and how helpful, knowledgeable and friendly the customer service representative is when they come on the line. That will give you a really good idea of what kind of service you can expect when you’re panicked at 3am because your site is down and you’re making a big presentation in the morning.

Wrapping Up

Now you should know enough to make an intelligent decision about buying a hosting package for your web site. You can always get recommendations from other site owners or your web site designer or developer, but always make sure to do at least a little legwork on your own to make sure the hosting company fits and will offer you great service when something goes wrong. You’ll also know that if you suddenly become a blogging superstar, that you’ll be able to upgrade your hosting service accordingly in just a few minutes time.

But it could all be dangerous trap.

To be clear, I’m not saying to avoid these third-party services all together. Just be careful about which ones you choose and how you use them. Here are some guidelines to keep in mind:

Own Something Yourself

Having an online presence spread out over several sites and services is great – you’re in more places and you’re meeting your audience where they are. But make sure you own a home base – even if it’s just simple site with 1 or 2 pages. Have a domain name that’s a short and as easy to remember (and spell) as possible. That way, no matter what’s going on with the online services that you’re relying on, you’ve got a constant, permanent home.

Know Who Owns Your Content and Contacts

I know, I know – the terms of service pages on these sites are long and boring legalese. But read them carefully before you trust too much of your data and community to them. Do you maintain control over your own content? Can the site or service you’re posting to use your content for their own purposes? Do you have control over how the content is displayed and to whom?

If you’re using a service to build a community or contact list, understand if those contacts are yours, or if they are customers of the service you’re using.

Make Sure Your Content is Portable

If a year or two down the road you’re not happy with the service you’re receiving or things change, how easily can you take your content with you to a new service? Remember that everything you post to a third-party site or service resides on their servers, not your own. If you decide to set up a blog of your own or move your email service to a new provider, make sure you can easily export your contacts and posts to move to a new server.

Have a Backup Plan

Free online services like Facebook and Twitter have no contractual obligation to continue operating. They could be gone tomorrow without warning. Just ask the people who were relying on the Magnolia service that went belly up overnight and left them all without access unexpectedly. Make sure that you’re keeping your own copies of the content you post or use a regular backup service. SitePoint outlines methods for backing up your social media content in their article, “13 Tools to Back Up Your Social Media Content“.

In Conclusion

Using various social media sites and third party services can be a great way to get up and running quickly and at a reduced cost. It’s also a great way to meet your audience where they already are – on Facebook and Twitter, for example. Just be careful about which services you use, how you use them, and make sure that no matter what, through it all, there’s something that you own that’s uniquely yours and completely under your control.

But, Search Engine Optimization isn’t everything you can do to promote your site. SEO is just the beginning. Don’t spend a bunch of money and time on building a SEO site only to let it lie unused without much traffic. Here are some other important strategies for promoting your site and getting traffic.

Local Tools

People are relying on the internet more and more to help them find local businesses – restaurants, hair stylists, pet sitters, etc. Make sure you’re easy to find. Both Google and Yahoo offer easy ways to list your business on their maps so that customers searching your neighborhood for your business will find you.

Social Profiles

Chances are, you’ve got a number of public profiles with social networking sites – Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc. Make sure your web site is mentioned in all of your public profiles. Make it easy to get to your site when someone finds you online.

Participate in the Community

No matter what topic you’re interested in or what business you’re in, I can practically guarantee that there’s a thriving blog community around it. Use blog search tools like Google Blog Search to find blogs in your area of interest. Head over and read the articles posted. When appropriate, leave professional, respectful comments. Comments left on other blogs can nearly always be set up to link back to your own site. If the other faithful readers like what you have to say, you can be sure they’ll follow your link and check out your site. The bonus is that you already know they’re interested in the topic.

You can also participate by having a professional blog of your own, either as your business web site, or as a part of your business web site. If you’re not much of a writer yourself, you can hire either a copywriter to write your articles for you, or you can hire a copy editor to take your notes and rough drafts and turn them into polished articles.

Traditional Media

Just because we’re in the midst of a web revolution, don’t discount traditional media. If you do any kind of advertising – television commercials, radio spots, newspaper or magazine ads, etc. – be sure that you’re always mentioning your web site address. People who want a little more information will have an easy way to find out more about you without being worried about being intimidated by a sales pitch. Also, make sure that anything you print for your business, from business cards to catalogs and brochures, has your web address printed on it.

Email Signature

No matter how you handle your email, there’s a way to program a signature automatically to the bottom of your emails. For your professional email, make sure this includes all the relevant contact information for your business along with,  you guessed it, your web address.

Newsletter

Many businesses create a free email newsletter for their customers and potential customers. To encourage people to sign up, ask them to sign up in person when they visit your business or make a free online offer for those that sign up from your web site. Be clear about what people can expect when they sign up – will you email updates, new product information, coupons and deals? How often?

Once you’ve built an email list to send your newsletter to, be respectful. If you said you’d send out newsletters once a month, don’t start sending daily emails. Don’t add people to your list without their permission.

In Conclusion

No one can deny that Search Engine Optimization is important, but don’t forget that it’s not the be-all and end-all of driving traffic to your site and getting new customers. SEO-only strategies fall short because they market only to the people who are already looking for you. Of course it’s important that those customers find you, but it’s even more important to get your message out to the customers who don’t even know you exist yet. Look for new opportunities to promote your site and business – you’ll find them nearly everywhere you look.