"I have a small business with just a couple of employees and I don’t think my product can really be sold online. Do I need a web site?"

In this day and time, there is very little that can’t be sold over Internet. There are over 20 million people shopping online, buying everything from movies to cars to real estate property. Research predicts that revenues will be over $200 billion in 2004 and will grow at a rate of 30 to 50 percent over next few years. These numbers alone should be enough to persuade you that you and your business should be online.

Regardless of whether you sell your product online, you should at very least have an online presence so that customers, potential employees, partners and even potential investors can easily and quickly find more information about your company, products and services you have to offer, as well as how to contact you.

But Can I Afford a Web Site?

Given competition and current market trends you can’t afford NOT to. Think of your web site as your new marketing tool which, when applied correctly, will generate a return on investment. Your competition is probably already on-line and you need to use every possible avenue just to keep up. You should look at having a web site as an investment in you and your company’s future.

All of us knowingly or unknowingly, use a standard decision making process in our day-to-day lives. The very first step of this process is to decide whether TO DO or NOT TO DO. If choice is TO DO, we think of various ways and means of attaining our objective/s, compare their pros & cons and take a final stand.

This aim of this write up is to make you aware of resources that are needed to achieve your TO DO objective. The TO DO objective is to conceptualize, build and publish your web site. The first step is to decide what you want from your web site. Do you want a site that your near and dear ones can visit from time to time (I assume you are far away from them.) or do you want a site that sells a product, service, brand or image? Whatever purpose of your web site, absolute essentials to have a site up and running are as below: -

The 5 Essentials: Spare Time - You must have lot of spare time at your disposal. So if you are a house maker whose kids have grown up, a worker who has just been shown pink slip or college student on vacation then time shouldn't be a problem for you. Those hard pressed for time can contract web page design work to a professional web master or use a Site Creation tool.

HTML Knowledge - HTML is NOT a programming language. Its basics can be mastered within a month and learning curve is not too steep. The fact that anyone can learn HTML and create Web pages is reason why Internet is so popular and has such varied content. Learn HTML tags and how to use them. Skip complex topics like frames, style sheets, CGI, JavaScript. Buy a good book on HTML. It will teach HTML and also give links to various online HTML resource sites.

HTML Page & Site Creation Tools - The main reason for using these tools is to speed up process of page / site creation. However, most of tools do not produce correct HTML and editing by hand is necessary. Your HTML book will provide reviews of these tools and links to their web sites. If you know HTML and plan to have 5-6 web pages in your site, a rudimentary editor like Netscape Composer will also suffice. For managing a site with huge number of pages you will need to use a Site Creation Tool.