This article was carried in the February 2004 issue of NZ PC World - you might find it helpful.

 

	The small business website Malcolm Burgess Monday, 26 January, 2004 Let’s face it, no one wants to work for the man — that’s just so 90s. But to run your own small business successfully in the 00s means using all the techie tricks of the trade to stay ahead of the game. And that involves having a website, at the very least. But it’s no longer a matter of chucking up a homemade site with off-the-shelf web editing software. That kind of approach can actually damage your brand if done sloppily. There’s certainly a dizzying array of options now available to the small business person when it comes to how much you want to be involved in your website, from full control to total outsourcing. Sure, adding yet more paper­work to your small business is undesirable, but are you really still your own boss if you turn over the web side of your business to someone else entirely? Here are some pithy axioms to consider when seeking the right balance for your own tentative steps along the super­highway. Show and sell Let’s say you have a few employees and a reasonable turnover. But you’re still chasing the gold at the end of the rainbow. You might consider some kind of a brochure site to get your name out there so at least you have a web presence that offers contact details and an overview of your business. On a poorly arranged business trip you may have found that your products were particularly popular in, say, Moldova, and that you’re getting an increasing number of misspelled email enquiries requesting more information on your dazzling array of ear-warmers or the like. With very niche markets, sometimes you’ll only ever have an online relationship with a client from overseas. This is one reason for a professional website. And you might want the ability to sell a few things online. But do you select custom elements according to your own perceived needs — hey, I know! A chat room, or web auction site, like eBay! — or turn your internet presence over to a designer? Some services will do it all for you but if they charge an arm and a leg, what was the point in going virtual in the first place? After all, it’s not an internet arms race — rather, you need to choose your weapon carefully. Do it yourself vs do it right While there are many ways to slice an orange, there are basically two types of internet-enabled small business person. 1. The first are those who have made their own site, acquired their own designs, images and content, and just want a place to park it and let their off-the-shelf e-commerce applications tick over quietly with orders from far flung reaches of the globe. This might involve changing the information on their own pages using a web editor like Microsoft FrontPage or Macromedia Dreamweaver, and uploading the changes to a web host using file transfer protocol (FTP). 2. The other type employs a web designer to create an online presence that complements their business, is secure and won’t degrade over time. To understand the whole process, it’s best to divide the equation up into its constituent parts. A web host is basically a service that provides a space to park your site. You might think of their costs as being similar to the rates you pay on your property. These include iServe, Xtra’s XtraHost, Web Farm and Free Parking, to name a few. Charges for web hosting — including secure servers, FrontPage extensions, graphics stats, mailing lists, databases and so on — can range from around $400 to $1000 a year, depending on your preferences. Master of your own domain Whatever web host you’re with, the domain name (website address, such as pcworld.co.nz) is still yours to take with you wherever you go (as long as you keep paying for it each year). Don’t confuse domain hosting with web hosting. James McGoram, art director of Messiah, an Auckland-based web design firm, says: “The party from whom one buys their domain name might have nothing to do with the person with whom one hosts their website. The domain host will point to the web host’s server, and often mail services will remain separate.” Another domain-related issue to consider is that of close variants on your desired name. The last thing you want is someone who slips while typing in your name to be sending off their credit card details to a scampster. Some web hosts offer URL redirection services, which, of course, involves separate registration fees for the various permutations of your chosen brand. Messiah’s Leon Matthews says his company considered registering the name “Mesiah”, with one “s”, but decided against it as the misspelling only returns an error message, not someone else’s site. There have been some cases where companies law has overruled the first-come-first-served egalitarianism of domain name rules, says Matthews. Of course, if your name’s been out there for some time without a web presence, some enterprising goon may already have seen fit to register your company’s name as a domain name. What are your chances of kicking such cybersquatters off your intellectual property? Although Pierce Brosnan succeeded in regaining his name from the dirty clutches of some data snatchers in a recent high-profile case, it’s not always clear which way things will swing in this particularly changeable domain of intellectual property law. Calling in the experts Hiring a webdesigner might seem tantamount to ceding control of your web presence to a stranger — but that’s just separation anxiety, pure and simple. By stipulating your exact business requirements in a brief, you hold a legally defensible document should anything go wrong, or if the designers attempt to up-sell you with expensive bells and whistles. To make sure you get what you want, you should discuss your aims up front. Funnily enough, you can often find a good list of web designers on a web host’s page. The designer may also suggest that they host your site on their own servers. One of the benefits of this approach is better security, on a number of levels. Web designers with a portfolio of clients will frequently offer their own custom-built applications through which you can alter parts of your site that regularly need to change, such as photos of products, or news. You can decide on this at the initial design stage for your site. By recognising what parts of the site will change regularly in the brief, a designer can offer limited interaction without compromising the integrity of the site, security and overall look. By hosting only the sites that they design on their server, the web designer can also protect your business from security problems that could arise from having a host of unknown sites on the same server as you. Says Matthews: “If you use PHP or ASP scripting, for example, it’s very hard for an ISP to stop it from trying to access other parts of their website” Such cross-site attacks are one reasons that Messiah only hosts its own clients. Another DIY downside for the small business person is site degradation. For example, editing with something like FrontPage and uploading via FTP means you have to edit an entire page — and so lose the ability to edit small page elements. As a result, you may make wide-ranging changes to the site by mistake. Not only that, but the HTML code may also suffer as a result, because of the tendency for commercial web editing software to rewrite the code by taking a graphical snapshot of what you have changed. “Web editors like FrontPage don’t open files as a string of bytes,” says Matthews. “They don’t see it as a text, but as an image from the screen. The worst possible way to do their own updating would be download via FTP, change via FrontPage and then upload via FTP. Such things usually end up looking bad down the line.” Instead, coding sites by hand can avoid such degradation and also give the designers the ability to make sure the site works across all possible browsers. Master webmaster Unfortunately, there’s still no universal standard by which to judge a web designer. McGoram recalls that there was briefly a web designers’ institute, but that no longer exists. There are, however, signs to look for. Messiah, for example, is a part of the Designers’ Institute of New Zealand, which has its own code of ethics. And if you still think the de rigueur mode of transport for designers is a Vespa, think again. If watching the pennies in other areas of their lives is any indication of a designer’s value for money, then you’re more likely to see the serious web designer riding the bus. How much is that doggie in the browser? It was always part of Petlogic’s business plan to utilise the web as one of its main channels. After all, owner Vivian Wilson did most of her market research on the internet, so it only seemed logical to make sure that base was covered for her own small business. Established in 2002, Petlogic imports doggy lifestyle products from the US and Italy for Kiwis and Aussies wishing to pamper their pooches. Its stated goal: “To redefine the boundaries and become the leading supplier of innovative, unique and stylish products, accessories and gifts for dogs and the people that adore them.” Wilson hadn’t always planned to hire a web designer. But after looking at different options, including hosting a DIY site with an ISP, using off-the-shelf software, she contracted Messiah to create and host petlogic.co.nz for her. It seemed the amount of time spent trialling options without finding anything that would suit her own needs just wasn’t worth it, she says. Petlogic needed visitors to be able to order products through the site, update categories, drill down through different features and access detailed information. “Because we’re product-based, the main problem is the different levels of information required. Sometimes you can use one or two photos, and sometimes you might need half a dozen images at different angles to show a product.” Petlogic offers Wilson tools such as traffic reports, the ability to edit photos for the product catalogue, create categories, upload pictures and edit the entire product categories, by using customised templates. There’s also a shopping cart on the site, but orders still have to be completed by phone. But it’s by no means finished. Later plans, when budget constraints allow, include the greater flexibility of more templates that allow for more and larger pictures, and the ability to pay online with a credit card. Only doing business in New Zealand and Australia, Wilson hasn’t really thought about registering variants of petlogic.co.nz. She considered registering the com.au version, but says this wasn’t possible, as you need to be registered company in Australia to do so.