Use A Business Website Template To Market Your Products Or Services Online

If you have been living under a rock for the last 15 years and are only now considering

building a website for your business, all I can say, is "Hurry up and get one!".

Not having a website for your business in this day and age basically means you are a dinosaur. E-commerce and the internet has been evolving at a rapid pace since year 2000. What was once relevant in 2001 is no longer.

According to JP Morgan, e-commerce revenue will hit a whopping $963 billion by 2013. And, brick and mortar stores have to adapt to compete with online stores. This is definitely a growing trend which will not go away in our lifetime.

So I will show you how to build a professional website to market your products or services online by using a business website template.

The first thing you must determine is what system you want for your website. Do you want a CMS (Content Managemt System), E-Commerce shopping cart system (for selling products) or just a simple static website.

The web has evolved past the static HTML websites. Now there are much better alternatives which enable you to manage the content and products all by yourself, without having to depend on a web designer.

Top Content Management Systems

The top CMS's in the world, in order of "the most user-friendly" are the following:

1. WordPress

2. Drupal

3. Joomla (sort of tied with Drupal, depending on opinions)

Top E-Commerce Shopping Cart Systems

1. Magento Commerce

2. oSCommerce (rapidly declining in popularity because of bugs and better options)

Personally, I would highly recommend WordPress for professionals, small business or even medium sized business and Magento for anybody looking to sell products online.

For this example we are going to assume that you are an Attorney and you want a website to inform your potential customers about your services. And, you have decided to use WordPress as a content management system.

Step 1 - Buy domain name

You will begin my buying a domain name. A domain name is the address of your site (ie: www.google.com is the domain for Google). You can do this quite easily on GoDaddy.com or 1AND1.com.

Step 2 - Get a hosting account

You will need a place to "host" your site. This is where the files of your website will be stored. You can easily get a good hosting service for aprox. $4-5 per month from Site5.com, JustHost.com or BlueHost.com.

Step 3 - Find a design template

Wordpress templates are called Themes and you can find free and premium themes. If you are serious about your website you will buy a premium theme for $35-70. Very economical when you think about what you're getting. A good place to start looking is ThemeForest.net and WebsiteTemplatePros.com. Once you have picked out a theme (template), purchase it and then download it.

Step 4 - Find a web designer

Once you've gotten to this step it's time to hire a web designer to customize your template and give it a unique look, specific to your company. If you are not technically savvy the it's best to let a professional handle this part. You can easily find one by searching for "website template customization" in Google or going to a job board like Freelancer.com or Elance.com. Simply post a description of what you want to accomplish and people will bid on your project.

This can be a very economical way to have your website built. You can expect to pay anywhere from $500-1500 depending on the level of customization you want.

by: Mitch Desjarlais

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