The bare minimum you will need to get a web site up and running are these three things.
- A domain name.
- A hosting account
- A web site
A Domain Name
Your domain name is like a folder on your hard drive. It doesn’t actually do anything on its own except hold your files. Registering a domain name provides other computers the ability to find your files online.
A Hosting Account
A hosting account is the actual folder that gets created on an actual hard drive in cyberspace that you can access from any computer or device with Internet access.
You can use this hard drive space to store all sorts of files and run online software. The basic hosting account has software to handle your email and software to run your web site but you can use this space for other things as well.
A Web Site
The main idea behind the business web site is to provide a central point for business marketing purposes and customer support.
Having a web site allows you to put words, pictures, galleries, flyers, catalogues and forms up on the web, to interact with your customers online.
A good web site will reflect an accurate virtual representation of your real-time, physical business and should be able to answer your most frequently asked questions for customers who visit your web site.
In fact you can arrange your online presentation much better than your actual real-world space having your online customers easily find what they need. The idea being a web site is available to anyone that you can get there.
More and more businesses are using their web space to help them perform their team administration functions online. Whilst the front end marketing and customer support is available to the general public, the back end administration can be used for team administration such as staff rosters, task lists, invoicing, staff payroll and more.