Now that you’ve registered your domain and setup with a host, it’s time to
get down to business. Second in a two-part series, this article offers
tips on setting up your company e-mail and website.
In my
I explained how to acquire a domain and register it with a hosting service.
Once that’s taken care of, you can setup e-mail addresses and create the
website.
Certainly, you’ll want an e-mail address for yourself. That’s for the
business cards. But you are many people to your clients: billing contact,
technical contact, and so on. Do you want you@domain to be the
sole point of contact? Likely, no. So create separate, role-based e-mail
addresses to keep your mail sorted.
These don’t have to be full-blown e-mail accounts, with their own separate
mailboxes and passwords; they can simply be aliases, which point
to a real e-mail address behind the scenes. As your company expands, these
aliases can point to different people but clients don’t have to update
their address books. In the meantime, while you’re still flying solo, you
can have your mail program sort mail for each alias into its own folder.
You’ll have to be creative with the alias names to avoid spam. Addresses
such as customerservice@, info@, sales@ get hit
pretty hard. I’ve also seen a lot of spam sent to admin@,
tech@, home@, and support@. Using
somecompany-info@ instead won’t stop all unwanted e-mail, but it
should stem the tide.
web design
A snazzy website won’t necessarily land you clients, but something that
looks too homemade makes you come off as an amateur. Also, do you even
have the time to do this yourself? Consider farming the design work out to
someone else, so the project gets the skill and attention it deserves. An
added bonus is that the web designer may optionally create your corporate
logo, which you can also use on business cards and stationery.
Hiring a professional doesn’t mean you have to go glitzy, though. Too much
sparkle can be an unwelcome distraction to (potential) clients. Skip the
Flash intro, skip the music, skip the JavaScript animations that load funny
in certain browsers. Keep it simple and tasteful.
Finally, make sure your web designer leaves you with a site you can
maintain yourself. You don’t want to have to call someone just to update a
mailing address or phone number.
website content
You can pay someone else to do the website layout, but it’s up to you to
whip up the content. Do yourself a favor and keep it short and simple.
Your company’s website should be an online brochure, a way for people to
get a glimpse of who you are and what services you provide.
Ideally, your company website should have just a handful of pages: an
introduction, “who we are,” “contact information,” and maybe a page for a
portfolio if your work calls for it. In turn, each of these pages should
be fairly brief. You certainly don’t have to list every client you’ve ever
had — depending on your line of work, this may not be possible for reasons
of client privacy — nor do you have to go into too much detail of what
you’ve done. Save that for the resume or, better yet, the interview.
To avoid spam, a lot of companies forego posting e-mail addresses on their
website and put up a contact form instead. If you go this route, be sure
to test it regularly. A contact form that loses messages will make you
lose business. Along that same line, avoid contact forms that store the
recipient e-mail address in the HTML itself; that field may be “hidden” to
browsers, but spam bots have no trouble seeing it.
A company website and e-mail addresses enhance your professional image.
Use these two articles as a guide to getting started with your company’s
technology side.