Determine your Website Objective

Determine Website Objective

Before searching for a web hosting company, be sure to have a clear objective for your website. A well stated objective will allow you to make a better decision when choosing your web host.

Goals and Expectations - What goals do you have for the web site?. What is the web sites primary idea? Do you have expectations of visitor traffic, sales or downloads?

Once you have decided on your objective try to break it down into smaller segments.

For example:

Objective: My website will be used to sell products online.

This can be broke down into smaller parts, for example:

1. I may need a shopping cart and storefront
2. I may need to manage my customer accounts
3. I may need to display images
4. I may need a database available for my products
5. I may need credit card processing
6. If I choose to handle credit card processing I will need SSL
7. I may need to have a merchant account
8. I may need shipping capabilities
9. I may need to convert US dollars to another currency
10. I will need to know how sales tax is handled
11. I may need a web analytics tool to track visits and product sales
12. I may need more bandwidth
13. I may will need FTP access to upload/download files

Objective: My website will be used to share information with others (family, friends, colleagues, interest groups, etc.)

This can be broke down into smaller parts, for example:

1. I may need to display images
2. I may need a database available for dynamic content.
3. I may need a web analytics tool to track visits to my website
4. I may require a lot of bandwidth
5. I will need FTP access to upload/download files
6. I may need pre-built website templates for my content
7. I need to allow users to download files from my website
8. I need an email address associated with my website
9. I need to allow users to submit web forms on my website

Or, for those interested in simply Blogging:

1. I need to find a blog provider
2. I need to display images
3. I need to be able to create categories
4. I need to control comments and kudos
5. I need to allow users to download files from my website
6. My blog needs to be search engine friendly

Or, for those interested in hosting a Forum:

1. My web hosting provider needs to offer a forum add-on with their solution
2. I need an easy to use, and configure, forum tool
3. I need to allow/deny visitors and their comments
4. I need to be able to archive postings
5. I need to be able to track forum stats
6. I need to be able to all users to create profiles
7. I need to be able to search the postings

Your objective is the starting point for bigger and hopefully better things to come.

If you want to sell your products online, be sure to think about how many products you will want to show on the site. If you plan to expand your product selection to over a hundred in the next 6-18 months, be sure to look for a hosting company that can handle your bandwidth need, and an eCommerce solution that is not locked into a limited number of products. Adding more products may cost you more in your monthly fees for using certain commerce packages. Read more about understanding the basics about selling products online at Commerce 101 .

If all else fails, contact a sales representative from some of the better known hosting companies and inquire about their commerce packages. Or use our list of commerce resources to learn more: