How to Make Your Own Website to Sell Gift Baskets

Sell gift baskets through a website.

Many talented artisans and craftspeople create inspired and beautiful artwork but fail to make a living because they don't know how to market their work. Some artisans sell through galleries or print catalogs, but others search for ways to make their work available to the public. Many artisans have set up websites to highlight their work and make it easier for interested customers to see the work and purchase it. Today even a non-Internet-savvy artisan can set up a website quickly for a few dollars per month.

Instructions

1. Locate a web host to host a gift basket site. Thousands of web hosting companies compete for business of new web developers. Find a web host that meets the needs of the gift basket site. Look for names of web hosts with good Better Business Bureau (BBB) reputations and rankings. Contact a few web hosts (through the "contact us" email on their site) to request names of other clients of the web host company. Contact the webmasters on some of the other client websites to ask for their opinion about the web host company.

   Some questions that a potential customer should ask include: Does the web host's technical support team assist the web developer quickly and efficiently when a problem arises? Does the web host company provide easy uploading of prepared files? Is the web host's template easy to work with?

2. Review the contract that the web host company offers you. Ascertain what the web host company offers in terms of its responsibilities regarding your website's accessibility, performance, image and uptime. Check to make sure that ownership of any content uploaded on the web host does not revert to the web host if the web developer moves the site to another web host.

3. Choose a domain name for the gift basket site. A cute name will sound nice, but a domain name should reflect the gift basket business to allow people who search for a gift basket website to find it easily through a web search. "Peek-a-Boo Baskets" might sound sweet, but it probably wouldn't come up very high on a web search for gift baskets. Find a domain name that clearly indicates that the site serves people who want to buy or send a gift basket such as DenverGiftBaskets.com or SendItInABasket.com. Register the domain name through a domain name registry (for instance, DomainRegistry.com or GoDaddy.com).

4. Prepare the webpages as PDF or JPG files on the web developer's hard disk to upload directly to the web host. Alternately, explore the web host's template to learn how to navigate and submit information directly to the template to directly create the web files for your business's webpages.

5. Organize the website clearly so that web surfers can see gift baskets for various seasons, holidays, events and lifecycle occasions. Each season, holiday or occasion should have its own web page.

6. Cross-link the gift basket web pages to allow for easy site navigation. Website cross-links can also push the site up higher in a search engine ranking.

7. Consider how to make the web pages more creative. In addition to pictures and descriptions, add vignettes about people who have purchased such a gift basket or some information about the artisan's inspiration when creating a particular basket. Give the website visitor a feeling that it was worth his time to visit this site and give him a reason to return to the site.

8. Add keywords to the site. Keywords describe the site in a few chosen words and, when repeated frequently on the site, place the site prominently on a search engine for a web surfer who searches for such a site.

9. Add a web calender to the site to notify website visitors of upcoming crafts fairs and exhibitions the gift basket creator will exhibit.

Tips & Warnings

• Prepare all files for the website offline on a hard disk and upload them only after they exist somewhere other than the web host's site. If files upload directly onto the web host's template, copy the information onto other offline files.

References

• YouTube: Create a Website
• Homestead

Resources

• Better Business Bureau