Before you start building your site…

With your business idea and detailed plan in place, you are nearly ready to start building your e-commerce site. However, the operative word here is nearly, as there are certain steps that you need to take before you can start the site building operation.
The first thing that you need if you are starting a business for the first time is a domain name under which your e-commerce site can be built. Most importantly, this must be a domain name that is related to the business that you are about to launch, because by having a domain name that is related to your business, you are doing something that is search engine friendly, and this is extremely important and advantageous.
You will no doubt have used a major search engine like Google, MSN or Yahoo yourself, and you will therefore know that when you type in a particular search word or phrase, the search engine presents you with a page of results that are related to that search term.
In order to do so, the search engine algorithm tries to find individual web pages or advertisements that feature the same phrase you just used to search. In online marketing terms, the search engine looks to match the keyword terms that you have used when building your site to the search phrase, and the domain name of your site plays a very important role in this.
So, you need to register a domain name that either matches the name of your business or one of your main keyword phrases, to help the search engines find your site.
However, because domain names have to be unique – there is only one Google.com or Yahoo.com – you should try to create a short list of half a dozen domain names that match your business in this way.
Once you have done this, you need to check the availability of these names using a domain name registry company such as this one.
Continuing with the earlier idea that you are creating a business that is going to attack the weight-loss product market, let’s imagine that you have decided to call your business ‘Total Weight Loss Essentials’. This should be a good name, because it tells prospects and customers exactly what you do, it is easy for them to remember, and it contains weight loss related keyword phrases such as ‘total weight loss’, ‘weight loss essentials’ and ‘weight loss’ itself.
So, is this available as a domain name (always use a.com is possible, because it is still the default that people choose when they search by domain name from memory):

Click the blue ‘Search’ button to the right-hand side to check whether this is available:





Great, it is, so go ahead and register it.
The next thing you need to do is set up a web hosting account, an account with the company that will rent you a space on their servers (internet connected computers) where you can ‘house’ your site to present it to the world. There are dozens of web hosting companies, but amongst the best in terms of service provided and monthly hosting fees charged is Hostgator.
In particular, their $7.95 ‘Baby’ account offers outstanding value, and as basic shared hosting is all you need to get started, this will more than suffice.
There is one other extremely powerful reason for using Hostgator called a cpanel, but this is something I’ll come back to.
Now, you have a domain name registered through one company, and web hosting set up with another. You therefore need to tie the two together by changing the DNS, and while this might sound a little complex, there are detailed Flash video instructions about how to do this roughly two thirds of the way down this Hostgator support page. While there are no specific instructions relating to The Internet Company, changing the DNS is fairly generic, so check any of the available video tutorials, and you should be able to do the job pretty quickly.
It will take anywhere between 6-48 for the DNS changes to take place, but all you can do now is wait for it to happen. Once it does, you’re ready to start building your site.