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First a disclaimer: We’re not really talking about web design here. We’re talking about something much more simple: Getting your stuff on the web, using resources that are readily available and inexpensive.

It’s easy to be intimidated: professional web design can be a complex art form, incorporating visual design elements like type, color selection, text blocks, widgets, pictures, charts, and illustrations. It can also incorporate elements from the film and music worlds: video clips, moving images, animations, and sound files.  And then there is the organization of content, and the ability to sell products (and collect money).  Not to mention test driving your site on different browsers to see how it looks when it’s loaded with Firefox versus Internet Explorer, etcetera.  And correcting any coding mistakes that make things go kablooey.

But take heart: Most of us don’t need a website that is all that complex. Moving graphics, music, and video clips may not only be unnecessary; they may actually detract from your message. (I remember reading that the fastest way to drive someone AWAY from your site was to have music on it when it loaded. It’s okay to have music clips someone can CHOOSE to listen to, but background music on a website was in most cases a turn-off.)

What most of us DO need (if we have our own business) is a website that acts as an electronic brochure. A website makes you FINDABLE, and it gives you a chance to define yourself and your product or service.  It gives YOU a chance to showcase as much, or as little, of your work as you like, and to talk about it — or not.  It gives people a chance to get to know you, if only virtually.

There are two basic ways small business create a web presence: Traditional websites and blogs. (Social media such as Facebook and Linkedin are a whole other issue; we’ll talk about those in another post.) Neither of them is all that difficult: In fact, I built each of my three websites using standardized templates, and I promise, computer stuff is emphatically NOT my strong suit. if I can do it, so can you. 

Traditional websites tend to be more static than blogs: For an example, my travel writing site, www.KarenBerger.com is a static site with a simple purpose: To establish my credentials as a travel writer to editors who might want to hire me.  The site contains only a few pages: some writing samples, a bio page, and pages describing some of my other writing. The sidebars contain links to the blog you are reading and my outdoor writing website, along with a list of magazines and Internet sites I’ve written for.

I see my travel writing site as an electronic brochure: It doesn’t need much updating, so I visit it quarterly to add information about new markets, or to add a recent clip or links to recent Internet articles.  I’m not trying to drive traffic to it, but if you Google me, it comes right up on the front page. 

My outdoor writing site (www.hikerwriter.com) has a broader purpose, so it’s a bit more dynamic: It’s function is to showcase my expertise as an adventure/outdoors writer not only to editors, but also to readers who might buy my books and to members of the media who might interview me. There is a page on this site where readers can ask questions. The site also has some “service” information intended to be useful for people planning an outdoors adventure, including links to outside resources such as trail organizations. The front page includes information about my new projects and publications. 

Both of my websites, incidentally, use proprietary software provided to writers who are members of the Author’s Guild, and they are both hosted by the Author’s Guild. (“Hosting” is a service you buy from a company that puts your site up on the web.) The software I used to build my site is similar to a lot of software you’ll find at various website services. Basically, you choose a template you like, choose the color scheme, and make other decisions as necessary, such as what information you want in the columns, how many pages you are going to have and what their titles will be, and which widgets you will put where. Then you just start typing.   

Blogs use similar software, but they are more dynamic than websites, meaning that they change more often. They have a different purpose: you can think of a blog as an electronic newspaper for a specialized audience. The posts stay up as long as the writer wants them to, but the fact is that most visitors to your blog start with the new stuff on the front page. While some readers may dig around in your archives, yesterday’s blog is a lot like yesterday’s news — except you can’t use it to line the bird cage or wrap the fish.

This blog, for instance, is updated daily. Some bloggers update two, three or even more times a day, but I’ve decided that I prefer doing one meaty entry a day, rather than two or three skimpy ones.  

If you’d like to experiment with blog-building software, you can go to any of the blog hosting sites and play around with their templates. (This blog is hosted by www.wordpress.com).  You can even use blog software to make a site that contains both static website pages and dynamic blog pages: For example, I could have chosen to set this blog up with a static front page (a welcome page). I could have then included links to other pages, including static pages such my biography and dynamic pages containing blog posts.

So what do YOU do?

• Assess your needs: Do you need a website that is fairly stable, or one that changes daily? Do you want to sell products? Engage the public?  Or simply  tell the world what you do?
• Buy your domain name. (For example, www.YourName.com). You can do this through some of the host companies, or through domain-name companies such as www.GoDaddy.com. If the name is taken, try variations such as Your-Name.com or Your-Name-Studios.com.
• Check out the competition. What kind of websites do your colleagues and competitors have? Can any of them recommend a template, a hosting service, or (if necessary) a website designer?
• What kind of features will you need? A shopping cart so people will buy things? A Paypal account so you can collect money? Blog statistic widgets so you can tell potential advertisers how many visitors you have? Links to companies that will sell products for you (such as on-line bookstores, which give you a commission for every sale you refer to them)?
• You don’t have to get the whole thing right the first time: Start with simple design. You can always add on the extras — and you can always migrate the site to a different host if the old one turns out to be too inflexible or cumbersome. 
• If you find you enjoy web design, take a community college class in HTML, the code that is used to change the way things look on a page. With “what-you-see-is-what-you-get” (WYSIWYG) programs, you really don’t need a lot of HTML, but I’ve found that a very basic understanding helps solve problems and increases flexibility .
• Include a line in your e-mail signature giving the address of your website or blog, and put it on your business cards and business stationary as well.

The best advice I got? I was fretting over which host to use to start this blog, when a colleague said “Jump in. You can always migrate the site. But first you have to get started.”

Just do it.