1. LIST YOUR OBJECTIVES
A clear idea of what you would like to achieve from your website goes a long way when deciding how to approach the project. Prioritise your main goals so that these can be considered at every step of the process.

2. REGISTER A DOMAIN NAME
Your web address must be easy to remember, therefore keep it as short as possible while still succinctly describing your company or your business. You will often need to tell people your website over the phone, so bear this in mind when selecting a name. Contact us or your ISP to find out how to check domain name availability.

I don't know quite what it is about the principal social networking sites that makes site owners direct traffic away from their own sites across to the likes of FaceBook or Twitter.

By all means use a networking site to direct traffic to your site but why on earth ever direct visitors away by putting social networking links on your business site?

Funny, they will invest hundreds or thousands of dollars building a web site with their business profile, contact information, product catalogue and other applicable content plus the time invested in achieving a satisfactory search engine ranking - then on their front page they put a great big sign saying the likes of "Follow us on FaceBook" or similar. Hello! Why direct traffic away. And speaking personally, I don't want to 'follow' anyone on FaceBook or anywhere else. Site owners who do this are definitely being dedicated followers of fashion.

I am amazed at the number of clients who approach me with great enthusiasm to have a web site built, who phone me almost every day to see if it is nearly finished ("are we there yet?") and then, when it does go live they seem not to be prepared to invest a bit of their time to ensure that fresh content is added on a regular basis. In fact it is as if they just forget that the site even exists! Look, if it was a real shop window it would be full of dust and dead flies!!

Wonderful is the world of the open source community. Global e-commerce support for the Drupal web application framework has now reached the stage that online stores can be developed in just a few days. In times not long gone by, many store functions had to be hand coded - a time consuming and consequently expensive process - the cost of which frequently ranged upwards from $5000. With modules for many shop requirements, including inventory control, international shipping, provision for consumer taxes and connection to numerous online payment processing services, assembly is generally a breeze.