A Technological Terror – a.k.a. Taking The First Steps Into The World Of E-Commerce

WEBSITES.....

.....  they’re everywhere these days!

Retail outlets have long been on the website bandwagon but they are no longer alone!

Celebrities have them; money spent on their own personal version of ‘Hello’ or ‘OK’ magazine!!!!  Network channels use them to promote your favourite channels and programmes in an effort to increase viewing figures; even sporting personalities now have a website presence!

Like it or not online retail is BIG business and the big players spend a lot of money getting noticed!

So here I am starting out in the in the big bad world of enterprise and trying to stake my claim as a business owner – the thought of setting up and running a website a tad frightening.

Funnily enough that’s probably a good thing.....

Okay first things first; I am not a website expert, never have been and probably never will be – all that technical stuff goes in one ear and out the other. Still I do like learning, have never been very good at being told I can’t do something and I like a challenge, so let’s talk websites.....

..... or not; well not yet anyway!

Before I could even start building a website I needed to decide how I wanted to brand my products, I figured the web page would lead the way for all the other areas of marketing. Simple enough; or so I thought, as I sat down with paper, pen and a large pot of coffee ready to do some serious research into this wonderful branding that I was going to devise. I made lists, lots and lots of lists – what I liked, what I didn't like, who my target audience was, who my competitors were – it just goes on. The lists were refined, reduced and starting to make sense, time for the simple process of registering a domain name. Simple – no, no, no you silly woman what are you thinking of? Well just sticking ‘www’ on the front and ‘.co.uk’ on the back of my business name actually, surely that’s all you need to do …. Isn't it!

So off I went to a domain name expert and typed my proposed business name in only to find that it was already take, as was my second and third ideas. After a fair bit of head scratching I finally came up with a variation that was available, my excitement knew no bounds FINALLY I was getting somewhere. A brief look at Facebook and Twitter confirmed that no one on there was using the name either so in a rush of emotion I registered my name then went to lie down in a darkened room.

After all that things can only get easier but I’ll leave that for another day!