You are at the stage in the development of your business when a website is the natural progression. With over £50bn of business conducted on the web per annum can your business afford not to take advantage of the web?

But where do you start? We understand that the technology and the jargon can be really confusing. Taking on board your concerns, we have put together some top tips to help you on your way to making that all-important decision of joining the internet highway and going ahead with that much needed website.

Transform your business in 2009. It's affordable and well worth making the investment.

The first step to commissioning a website is to purchase your domain name.

Your domain is basically the name of your website, for instance www.yourbusiness.com or www.yourbusiness.co.uk

Technically speaking, the domain is simply a placeholder for an IP address. Whenever you type a domain name into the browser, the browser will then send that name to a server which will translate the domain in an IP address. The server will then forward the request to the server that contains that IP address. What then appears on your screen are the contents of that final server.

It's important that your domain name is as short and snappy as possible and will, as far as possible, reflect the very nature of your business. Ideally, if possible, we would recommend choosing a domain name that is not hyphenated.

Here, at Vantage, we will advise you in respect of your choice of domain name and alternative choices if your first choice is not available.

A domain name must first be registered with a domain registrar before your web site can go live. Once your domain is registered, no one else can use that domain name. However, because the internet is worldwide, you need to get your domain name registered NOW before someone else does.

You are busy running your business - by subscribing to the Vantage Web Studios' Hosting & Maintenance package we will take care of purchasing the domain name on your behalf. Please note that the ownership of the domain name will remain with you - it's your property. What would we do with www.tastysnails.com? Should you decide to opt out of the Hosting & Maintenance Package then the domain name will be transferred.

The registration of your domain name will be for either a one year or two year period. At the end of this timescale, your domain name will be due to renewal. You MUST have your password, username and credit card details ready for when the registration of the domain name is due for renewal. Domain name renewals will, however, be taken care of as a matter of course when you subscribe to the Vantage Web Studios' Hosting & Maintenance Package.

Once you have purchased your domain name then you will have to find a fast and reliable Hosting Server which plugs your website into the www (world wide web). There are a huge range of companies offering a hosting service. It is essential that you choose a server that will offer you a secure and reliable service. The server space should be guaranteed to host your website 24/7 - don't lose out on business with an unreliable server.

A Little Bit About Our Server - apologies in advance for going on but this is VERY important to the success of your business!

Vantage Web Studios utilises the facilities at two private data centres. By using specifically chosen third party hosting providers this will guarantee us to provide our clients with a fast, secure and reliable performance at all times. The Vantage Web Studios' server setup has been designed specifically to accommodate clients demanding the highest quality network performance. This is a central focus on redundancy allowing our network to rapidly self-heal failures without interruption to connectivity.

On-Site Security - Data centre access is strictly limited to technical staff only. Electronic security systems control data centre access and are accompanied by a full compliment of motion detecting security cameras which monitor the entire facility. The data centre walls are constructed of reinforced poured concrete. Technicians are on site 24 hours per day, allowing incident response times to be kept to a minimum.

Power System -The power systems feature extensive fault tolerance and resilience at every layer. Incoming service is routed underground to a dedicated on-site transformer. This system routes to the automatic transfer switch which monitors power quality and automatically transfers to the emergency generators in the event they are needed. Each facility is also protected by one or more Uninterrupted Power Supplies (UPS), featuring redundant battery cabinets and full maintenance bypass cabinets allowing for service and upgrades without interruption of power to the servers. Each facility has multiple emergency generators waiting on standby, featuring over 24 hours of autonomous run-time before requiring re-fuelling. Each generator is test run at least once a week to ensure they are ready in the event they are needed.

Cooling - Temperature and humidity are precisely regulated year round to ensure optimal equipment reliability. Each unit contains an independent compressor and cooling loops to further enhance fault tolerance and reliability. Air infiltration systems actively remove foreign particles from circulation and cycle the entire data centre air supply in a matter of minutes.

By continuing to keep up-to-date with all aspects of technological advances in respect of website design and creation and internet solutions, we endeavour to provide our clients with a truly exceptional service.

When you have purchased your domain name, then you will also be able make plans for multiple email addresses for your site - these are called email forwarders. The choice is yours basically, sales@mybusiness.com; info@mybusiness.com - each individual employee can have their own email address.

Email is an absolutely vital part of your business and Vantage Web Studios will arrange up to 50 email forwarders when you subscribe to our Hosting & Maintenance Package.

Your website will have to be designed in such a way to be displayed by many different browsers. Common browsers include Microsoft Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Netscape Navigator and Opera.

The 'three click rule' means that users starting at your home page should be able to get to the information they require in three mouse clicks. While this is not always achievable, by taking this into account at the site design stage, you are more likely to get close to it.

Your website is completed and online. But how will anyone find it?

Being easily found by search engines such as Google and Yahoo is of paramount importance. With the clever use of special tricks Vantage Web Studios will get your site ranked highly on search engines. As specialists in search engine optimisation we could now blind you with techie speak in respect of search engine algorithms, etc. If you are interested, we would be only too pleased to go into detail because this is what we do!! ADVICE IS FREE - JUST ASK!

It's not one way traffic though - we will do out bit in respect of making your website competitive but you will have to do your bit too. It's absolutely essential that you keep your website up-to-date. It's your shop window and MUST BE up-dated at least once a month.

We hope that the above has helped but WHY NOT MAKE THINGS EASY?

You are an expert in your field - we are experts in ours - we're human and very good at what we do.

NOW WHY NOT MAKES THINGS EASY AS WE WILL TAKE CARE OF ALL OF THE ABOVE WHEN YOU SUBCRIBE TO THE VERY POPULAR VANTAGE WEB STUDIOS' HOSTING & MAINTENANCE PACKAGE. It will only cost you £24.99 per month and, for this very small outlay, you will have peace of mind knowing that the hosting and maintenance of your website will be professionally taken care of and you will be free to run your business.

Make things happen for your business and contact us today.