Most rural businesses will benefit from having some sort of presence on the internet. You can either set up your own website or join someone else’s. Unless you’re planning a major online trading site, it probably doesn’t matter in the early days as long as you get a mention somewhere. This means that when someone does a search for your type of business, your name pops up.

DO I NEED MY OWN WEBSITE?

If you’re new to this, think of a website as space you rent on the internet. It can either be a single page on the screen or as many pages as you want. You can include as much or as little detail as you want.

At its simplest, your website could include a couple of photographs, a brief product description and your contact name and phone number. At its most sophisticated, the site should include photos of all your products or services, lists of colours, fabrics, materials, ingredients, whatever is relevant, plus up-to-the-minute prices and availability. The customer can buy immediately, using their card details, or go off and have a cup of tea and think about it. The first is the equivalent to an advertising hoarding, the second is an online shop.

Websites can also be used to get valuable feedback on your business. Invite visitors to the site to leave their comments, take part in a survey or email you with comments and queries. You can also keep a running check on the number of visitors to your site.

If you’re not sure if you need your own site then have a look on the internet and see what’s out there already. Look at competitors’ websites and other websites relevant to your trade before deciding.

If you decide you don’t need your own dedicated website, or don’t want the hassle of setting it up and then running it, think about joining someone else’s. If for example you offer bed and breakfast accommodation, could you register on a local tourism site? If you have a shop in a small market town, does that town have its own site? If you’re a specialist craftsperson, look at ways of getting onto sites that promote your particular field, whether it’s jewellery, bespoke furniture, stained glass windows or wrought iron work.

QUESTIONS TO ASK YOURSELF

Don’t be bullied into thinking you must have your own website. Despite what your teenage children may tell you, or what you read in the newspapers, the world will still turn if you decide not to. If you’re aiming for a purely local business then there probably isn’t much point. You’re far better off spending your time and money on buying a new delivery van or developing better products or skills.

But if you decide in principle that you want a website then think about these points:

• The internet is global. How will you feel about taking orders from Ecuador or Oman? Are you prepared to specify on your site which countries you’ll do business in?
• Are your goods easily packable? Either for a UK or a global market?
• How much would you charge for postage and packing?
• Who is going to pay? You or the customer?
• What about after-sales care? If your handwoven rug falls apart in a week and your customer lives in the next village they can easily return it. But if that customer lives at the opposite end of the UK or on the other side of Europe, what then?
• Is your product likely to need spare parts? If so, how are you going to get them to the customer quickly and simply?
• Do you have the time and money to set up your own website?
• Do you have the technical ability?
• Do you have the time and money to maintain your own website?

TO BUILD OR NOT TO BUILD

It’s perfectly possible to build your own site if you’re prepared to put in the time. There are scores of existing websites out there designed to help you do it. Go to a search engine (a facility that helps you find things on the internet). Google (www.google.co.uk) is one of the best. Type in the words ‘build a website’ and you’ll find quite a bit of choice. On the day I tried (January 2005), more than 40 million separate entries came up worldwide, and more than nine million in the UK alone, so you should be able to find something to suit you.

If you do decide to build your own site you could find yourself typing in a lot of code (called HTML) which is easy to follow but can be laborious. Other options include buying a shop-in-a-box system which builds your site from a database. Or it’s now possible to choose from a variety of templates which you then customise to suit your business.

If you decide to employ someone, then broadly the more complicated the website and the more it can do, the more it’s going to cost you. A basic website built by a professional will cost from about £1,000, though if you can find a competent teenage geek working in a bedroom you can probably halve that. If you want to make your own changes to the site, for example to update price lists and availability, this will probably cost about £500 more. If you decide on an all-singing all-dancing site with flashing logos, pop-up boxes, music, graphics and interactive facilities, the cost will run into several thousand pounds. You also need to budget to spend about £200 a year on running costs, which will mostly go to the host (the company that actually puts your site on the internet).

Even if you settle on a basic website, you can’t just get it set up and never look at it again. You have to make sure it’s up-to-date because nothing looks sloppier than a two-year-old price list or out-of-date phone number. You also need to change the content of the site every now and then in order to maintain customer interest. Visitors to the site will get bored and won’t return if it looks the same month after month. So change the photographs, include news about you and your business, personalise it, make it relevant to the seasons, anything really to make it an interesting site that visitors will want to return to.

INTERNET VERSUS CONVENTIONAL ADVERTISING

You have to think about how much of your business is likely to come via the internet. If you guess it could be the bulk, then you should be spending most of your advertising or marketing budget on setting up a really good site and making sure it has good links to other relevant sites. This is particularly likely if you’re planning to work in anything tourism related, such as bed and breakfast accommodation, because many people now research their holidays entirely online. If on the other hand your business is likely to come from more local sources, then save your money and spend it closer to home where it’ll have more effect.

THE DESIGN

Regardless of whether you employ a professional to design your website, you should still have some ideas about the overall look and content. Draft something first, keeping at the back of your mind what you want to get across.

Is the website meant to be:

• an advertising platform
• or a fully functioning online shop?

Then think about:

• What you want on the front page.
• What sections or pages you want (products, price list, about the business, about you, map to find you, and so on).
• What photographs, illustrations or graphics you want to use.
• Whether you want to include pop-up boxes or music.
• How it’s all to be laid out.
• How you’re going to part people from their money. Make sure the section which takes orders is particularly easy to find and easy to order from.
• What fonts you like (think about the image you’re hoping to get across – traditional, contemporary, funky).
• What colours you like.

Generally the front page is where visitors first enter your site so think of it as your shop window. And like any shop window, it has to grab attention and entice people to enter. Unless you’re being deliberately obscure, an obvious map or overview of the site is always welcome. And make it easy for your customers to speak to you. Put your phone number and other relevant contact details at the bottom of each page. Yes the internet is a world-changing invention, but many people still want to speak to a human before they buy.

Other points to consider:

• Adding your own pictures is easy. Either use a digital camera to take your own or copy and paste material you’ve found on the internet, but be careful about copyright.
• Think about copyrighting your own unique logo or other branding mark.
• Make sure your site is designed in such a way that customers see terms and conditions or disclaimers before placing an order.

A website designer can advise you on all these points. If you use one, at least go in with a couple of ideas of your own.

COMMON MISTAKES

Big isn’t always the best: some of the worst websites are those of the largest and most powerful companies. They’ve probably spent tens of thousands of pounds on website design and the results can be awful.

Common mistakes include:

• Far too many photographs or graphics, especially on the front page. They take too long to download and the customer gets bored and goes off and looks at something else.
• No explanation of what the company actually does. That’s fine if you’re Manchester United and the whole world knows you play football. Otherwise include a sentence or two; it doesn’t have to be a book. Something like ‘Lancashire’s largest supplier of boat hooks’ or ‘the only kipper smoker west of Argyle’ is fine.
• No obvious way into the site.
• Badly named navigation buttons.
• No obvious address or telephone number (is this often deliberate?).
• FAQs (frequently asked questions) or help guides which are of absolutely no help at all. Get a trusted customer to write this section.
• Infrequent updating (price lists from 2002).
• Pages that are inexplicably not available.
• Boring text.
• Text written in jargon.

An easy way to check if the site is user-friendly is to ask an internet novice to try to navigate their way around it.

LINKS TO OTHER SITES

No website should be an island. Many sites are linked by the click of a mouse. The link should benefit both parties. Perhaps, if you’re that bed and breakfast provider, you may have reciprocal links with your local tourist board. Or if you run an organic bakery, you could have a link to the website of your local provider of organic fruit and veg.

TAKING PAYMENT OVER THE INTERNET

You have two basic choices: set up a credit card facility on your business bank account or sign up with one of the online payment handling companies. These companies can securely receive, process and send on transactions on your behalf.

Which method and organisation to use will depend on the volume of business you expect to do online and the level of charges levied. Have a look at something like www.worldpay.co.uk or www.paypal.co.uk

SECURITY

Think about the level of security you need on your website. There are the payment transactions. Some business may ask customers for sensitive information. You may want to set up a whole secure area of your site for registered users only, which would be password protected.

MONITORING VISITORS

You want to know how people are using your site, whether they’re new or returning visitors, which pages they look at and for how long. It’s basically the same as counting the number of visitors to your shop or stall. Once you’ve got the information you can use it to improve your site and therefore increase business. The collection of this data is known as traffic reporting. If you want to include it then it needs to be thought about at the design stage.

Be aware of the Data Protection Act. If you’ll be collecting data from and about your site visitors, you need to make it obvious to them that you’re doing so. Depending on what you intend to do with the information, they should have a chance to refuse. Check your own obligations under the Act.

DOMAIN NAMES

All websites have unique names, known as domain names. Allocation of names is on a first-come first-served basis, so even if you’ve formally registered your business name with Companies House or anyone else, that doesn’t guarantee you’ll get the internet name to go with it. It’s probably best to think up a name that you like, then check that it’s available, both for a business and a website.

If you can’t get a domain name identical or similar to your business, then think of something relevant, short, memorable and easy to type in. You can combine any letters and numbers for your name (as long as it’s lower case and the numbers are between 0 and 9), but if it’s too long or too complicated, there’ll be a lot of typing mistakes and no one will ever find your site.

Famously, so the story goes, someone beat the AA (the vehicle rescue people, not the drinkers) to www.aa.co.uk. It had to make do with the next best thing which was www.theaa.co.uk

Be extremely careful that your domain name isn’t close to a name that triggers a porn site. This is far easier to do than you’d believe because the most unexpected names have been highjacked by the porn merchants in order to lure innocent visitors to their sites. So when you’ve thought of your address, and checked that it’s available, sit down and type in variations on your address (as if you were making typing mistakes) and see what comes up.

Don’t bother registering a near identical name or logo to one of the big boys in order to benefit from their fame. First, many large companies will already have registered close variations on their name to avoid that happening, and second, just because it’s the internet and not the real paper world, it doesn’t mean their lawyers are any less sharp.

There is some choice in the ending of the domain name.

• .co.uk is the most usual
• .com if you’re feeling global or plan to lay the foundations of a multi-national corporation
• .biz is for businesses
• .org for non-profit-making organisations
• .info for information services.

And there are other options. But on the whole people expect the.co.uk ending, there’ll be fewer typing mistakes, so it’s probably best to stick with that.

REGISTERING THE DOMAIN NAME

Do a Google (or similar) search on ‘domain name’ and scores of companies will pop up who’ll be able to register your domain name for you, assuming it’s available. These companies are basically brokers or middlemen who register your name with the European body which administers the definitive list of names and makes sure there are no duplications. Many of the companies offer to host your site for you as well. You can register names for up to ten years, but will probably have to renew it every couple of years. It’s not expensive: basic packages are offered from just under £10.

HOW TO FIND A WEBSITE DESIGNER

None of this you’ll have to do yourself if you decide to use a web designer. Most designers will put together your site and if you want, host it, maintain and upgrade it, and sometimes market it. If you decide you want them to do everything, they’ll probably offer you a monthly or a year-long contract. It’s probably better to sign up to a monthly contract which allows you the flexibility to change. On the other hand, you may have complete confidence in your designer and will have other things to worry about, especially in the early months of trading, so a year-long contract may suit you personally.

When picking your designer, ask to see other websites they’ve designed. Ask too for references. If possible it’s always best to find someone via word of mouth recommendation. If you’re down to plucking names at random from the Yellow Pages, try at least to find a designer who seems to understand what your business is about and the image and vision you have for it.

Check carefully on the technical support they’re offering. If your business is going to be heavily dependent on the website and it crashes, this is as devastating as a shop burning down. You won’t be doing any business until it’s rebuilt.

Make sure the contract between you and the designer assigns all copyright to you.

WEBSITE PUBLICITY

Pushing your website name is as important as pushing the name of your business. Make sure the website address is on all your letter heads, business cards and other business correspondence. Email internet and computer magazines inviting them to review your website. Email any specialist publications that cover your field and tell them about the website. Build up a list of customers to regularly email with news and updates on your website: encourage them to sign up friends to receive the regular email.

But make sure you have something interesting to say every month or quarter. Designers can talk about their new jewellery lines for the coming season, florists about their plans for Christmas bouquets, but dry stone wallers or tree surgeons could find it a little trickier to maintain an interesting supply of news.