Having a business website lets you establish an online presence, educate customers about your business, and perhaps create a new revenue stream with an online store.

But what about building the site? What does it take to get an effective site up and running? A site that makes customers feel good about doing business with you.

	TIP: You can find dozens of books about how to build a website using FrontPage. But before you make an investment, work through the FrontPage training courses (U.S.) offered online through Microsoft Office Online. These free courses will help you learn the basics of website building and decide if you want to proceed with building your own website.

Creating a simple site is not technically difficult - thousands of new sites are tossed up on the web every day. And "tossed" often describes the way they look and work. Here are six steps to creating a site that leaves a positive impression with customers and potential customers.

1. Plan the purpose, look and feel of your site
Start your site planning by evaluating other sites produced by those in your line of business. Determine what you think is effective and ineffective about them. Ask yourself the following questions:

• What does the design, use of graphics and colour, and tone of the writing say about the business?
• Does the site offer easy access to the information that most customers what to know right away?
• Is there a reason to come back to the site? Are there indications that the information is updated regularly?

Reviewing other sites can help you focus on what you want to accomplish with yours.

2. Sketch your site
After you have a sense for the feel and purpose of your site, use a pencil and paper, or computer drawing program, to sketch your site and page layouts.

• Site layout. Your site layout serves a visual outline showing all the pages you plan to build for your site and which pages link to others. Try to create a structure that has a logical flow that your customers and visitors can recognize. Draw little boxes for the pages and add lines with arrows that illustrate the links between pages. Many site designers use a hierarchical approach to site structure, with your Home page at the top, with second and third level pages branching down from it.
• Page layout. Draw a layout that shows the structure of a page on your site. While the content will change from page to page, this basic structure should serve as a template for all pages on your site. Having a standardized layout keeps from disorienting visitors. Some important page layout issues to consider include where to place navigation links to other pages and whether to follow the colour, font and graphic schemes used in other marketing materials. Again, look at the layouts of other web pages to help determine what works best.

3. Register a domain name
Your domain name is the address internet users type into their browser to find your site. For example, www.yourcompany.com. You must register any domain name you select in order to own and use it - and keep others from using it. InterNIC provides a list of accredited domain name registrars. Most of these services can help you determine if the name you want is available. Be prepared to use some variation on your domain name in case the name is taken. If you plan to build a website but don't expect to do so for awhile, you may want to go ahead and register the name in advance so others don't take it.

4. Find a host for your site
Your website must live on a computer called a web server. The web server delivers your web pages to users who request it using their browser. For most small businesses, it makes sense to pay a hosting service or internet service provider (ISP) to keep your site on one of their web servers. Professional service providers know how to monitor, maintain and secure servers so your site is available to visitors almost 100 percent of the time. Pay special attention to reliability statements in service level agreements you sign with hosting services. It will reflect poorly on you when customers trying to access your site receive a "page cannot be found" message.

If you're only interested in creating an internal, "intranet" website for your business, you might consider hosting the site on a company PC. Windows Small Business Server 2003 includes Windows SharePoint Services and is designed to help you easily operate an intranet on your office network.

5. Build and test your site
You can hire professional web designers to build your site, and probably should if you plan to create an e-commerce site that requires you to process orders and credit card payments online. Check the Microsoft global listing service for Web Presence Developers for designers who specialise in building sites using Microsoft Office FrontPage 2003, a sophisticated website building tool that comes with Windows Small Business Server 2003 premium edition. However, if you're a creative person and challenged to learn a new and useful skill, you can learn to build your own site with FrontPage with some training. Learning to build your site will also help you make updates to it. Remember to ask for honest feedback from others as you build your site. And thoroughly test the performance of your site in several browsers or over a private network numerous times before publishing it to the World Wide Web.

6. Publish and maintain your site
After you've tested your site, you or your web designer can upload your website files to the hosting service you've contracted with. Then go online and type your domain name and watch for your site to appear on the World Wide Web! After celebrating your site launch, understand that the work continues. For customers to believe you're a dynamic and successful business, you will want to add or change your site content on a regular basis. Sites with dated references to events from previous years will make customers wonder if you're even in business today.