How to Put Up a Website for Your Small Business in the Philippines

This article is about starting a website for your small scale business in the Philippines.

Whether you are operating a car repair shop, a restaurant, a travel agency, a professional office e.g. law, medicine and dentistry, sell clothes and bags to your friends, a downline for Avon or Natasha, even if you just own a sari sari store, or whatever business you have, most small business will profit and prosper by having a website.

Difficulty: Moderate

Instructions

1. Define and analyze your business.
   
   Write down what are the unique things about your store. Do you serve the yummiest and healthiest pasta in town, offer the cleanest and quickest laundry service, easiest to get to because you are right along the jeepney line? We call these stuff USPs or Unique Selling Points. It would be good to know them now before we go any further.
   
   Identify your priorities. Is it to get more sales, find more reliable suppliers, get customers to buy again, reduce costs.
   
   For many if not all business, making a profit and pleasing the customer is a delicate balancing act. Hopefully your business has found this balance.

2. Decide what you want your website to do for you.
   
   For many small business, the priority is to drive customers to the business. Whether it is to get customers to walk into our restaurant and order the biggest pizza, email for information, or to buy online, the internet is best suited for this at very reasonable costs. With a website you can be accessible all over the world 24/7.
   
   For others, manufacturing business for example, getting access to reliable suppliers with low prices and quality products would be just as important.
   
   Of course for most of us, we want a website that would provide us a continuous stream of well paying customers, get suppliers emailing us or knocking on our doors offering the best products at the best credit terms.

3. Decide on a budget and appoint someone responsible for getting the site up and running.
   
   You should know your business better than anybody else. Plan to invest some of your hard earned money for marketing and advertising. A promotional website falls neatly into this category.
   
   If you are reading this and you own a small family business, chances are you and your significant other will be the team leader and development team all rolled into one.

4. Plan your site and get your materials together.
   
   First the heavy lifting. Write down what you want to say. Collect photos that you think will liven up your page or show off your business to its best advantage. Draw out a simple outline on paper in order to visualize what your finished web site would look like.
   
   It would also be helpful if you surfed the web and tried to find similar sites that you feel would best work for you and your business. Just remember that the more intricate or complicated a site, the more difficult and expensive it is to set up and manage later.

5. Get a web host and domain name.
   
   If you are just starting out and don't really have much going yet, or not ready to pay someone to set up your site, get a free site. People I know make a living by just being on multiply.com, sulit.com.ph, or other similar sites that are communities, forums, home pages and sales brochures all rolled into one.
   
   If you are a bigger concern and don't want to compete with all the other business in your category, as well as being swamped with free advertising, get a website of your own.
   
   Do this by signing on with a web host. I recommend that you sign up with a web host that specializes in small business websites. At philglobal.com small business web hosting is our passion and specialty.
   
   a domain name usually comes with your website package, but it is paid separately. You can get it yourself by going directly to domain name distributors and buying directly. .com and .net domains usually sell between $9 to $12 depending on the vendor. If you buy a .com.ph or .ph (.ph identifies your site as a Philippine site) costs more. $35 per year as of this writing.

6. Putting it together
   
   Now comes the fun part. Assemble your text, photos, addresses, etc on a web publishing software. There are a lot of web publishing software in the market. Some are free and some you have to buy. If you are using Microsoft Office, Publisher is usually included.
   
   Most webhosts also provide free software with templates. All you have to do is drag and drop your content into the template.
   
   Spend some time on it until you get what you like. If you don't have the time or the talent, your best bet is to hire a good web developer who can do the job for you. Remember this is a business website we are talking about. It is best to look at this as an invest in your sales and marketing efforts. But ask around and look for recommendations.

7. Upload your site. Go live.
   
   Send your file, usually thru an FTP client to your webhost and viola! you're online.

8. Promote your site.
   
   Have a plan to make people know that your site is up and running. Email your family and friends, in fact everyone on your email list. Ask them to help you promote your site to their own sets of families and friends.
   
   Include your website address, called a URL (uniform resource locator) in all your other advertising and business media, i.e. calling cards, posters, banners, radio and tv ads, etc.
   
   There are other ways and methods to promote your site. Research the internet and consult with others through forums and chat rooms. I shall be writing another article on this in the future.

Resources

• Please visit my blog at http://philglobal.wordpress.com for more ideas and tips.