* Building your brand
* Cost advantage over "brick and mortar store" and other sales channels

In a 3-part article, Gupta further explains in detail how you can build business online and take it forward. The parts are as follows:

Part 1- Building it: This will focus on effectively building a rich and usable website

Part 2 - Spread the Word: This will focus on Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Search Engine Marketing (SEM) tools available and their effective use to increase website traffic and your sales.

Part 3 - A Step Beyond, Alliances and Affiliations: This will focus on how alliances and affiliations with other businesses can boost your sale and create your brand

Presenting the First Part :Building Your Online Presence

The first and foremost thing you've to do in order to take your business online is to build a website and host it somewhere. IT consultants generally make it sound very easy, but you should take it with a pinch of salt. Proper strategy and planning will save you many blushes (and off-course money) later. You should have your requirements very clear on what you want to build and achieve through it. Let's walk through a 4-step process on doing it right the first time.

1. Study Your Requirements

Don't let consultants or your IT partner con you and build rich and jazzy web application that you wouldn't have any use later. Remember that it's your business and you should be the one deciding what to build. A little research on your part can save you a lot of money.

Gupta broadly categorize types of websites for you to take an informed decision. Please note that this is a very loose categorization for the uninitiated and by no means a comprehensive list of types of websites:

* Static Content Only: These kinds of sites are almost dead, as most sites these days have some dynamic content

* Dynamic Content: Great to showcase your product, create your brand, and corporate image. These sites explain your product or services and usually comprise few pages with only a simple menu system

* Dynamic Content with Database (no ecommerce): This would be useful if you've a large number of products to showcase whose specification may change frequently. It would be helpful if you want to take customer feedback, sales queries, customer registration, maintain customer relationship, etc

* Ecommerce: Including the aforesaid, if you also want to sell your products online, this would be apt. Ecommerce websites require interaction with some third party websites or tools in order for your customers to pay you online via credit card or wire transfer. It can be complicated to create such websites, but a good ecommerce site has the potential to provide an excellent revenue stream for a business.

* Rich Internet application (RIA) and Flash Websites: Flash allows you to make audio or video friendly websites; they tend to be with rich graphics and effects and are best left to vehicle manufacturers and luxury product companies. I generally don't advise building a RIA unless it's what one wants. But, definitely you can use some aspects of flash in your website as well.

2. Buying a Domain Name

Buying a domain name may be the easiest of all the steps, there are several websites that offer domain names in the price range of USD 8-35. The process is as simple as checking the availability of the domain name. Going through a step by step registration process to purchase it; you can buy a domain name for up to 10 years. Following are some of the tips to registering a domain name:

* Decide a name you've to buy, mostly it will be the name of your business

* If possible register all TLD's of the domain name. For example, if you want to buy yourdomain.in also register yourdomain.co.in, .org.in, .net.in, .com, .org, .net, .biz. This helps to protect your business identity as others could infringe on your brand

* Try to buy some of the common typos of the domain. This will help you retain your traffic. Avoid others to cash in on your brand and save you legal hassles later. You can use some of the freely available tools like DomainTools to get most common typo of your domain name. A simple search for "domain typo tools" will give you many more tools, which you can use to generate typos.

* Avoid going for free offers as there renewals may be very expensive. USD 8-10 is what most good registrar offer domain names for. Choose the registrar that offers you the complete control over your domain name. Don't forget to search for its reputation on the net.

* If you can, book your domain name for the maximum available period possible, some registrars also have the auto renewal feature, which can renew your domain when it's about to expire.

* If your domain name isn't available, you can buy it via a domain broker like Sedo. Don't give exorbitant amount to the seller - instead choose another name, which could describe your business. You can also follow a legal recourse against the domain squatter - but it's both time and money consuming process.

3. Building Your Website

The next and most important step that follows domain name registration is actually building your website. You can do step 4 first and buy hosting, but you've to decide the technology on which you will build your website first and then make the decision to buy hosting.

The expectations of your average site visitor have changed with time. Average looking websites are no longer acceptable. The site you build for your business creates your credibility and builds your brand. So, the entire process of designing and hosting it must be taken seriously and should be considered an earnest investment, which will benefit your business in the long run.

Here are some tips to finding the right designers and what to expect from them:

* Don't Rush, Do Your Homework: Finding the right web designer or programmers is the most important aspect and you shouldn't rush into it. Spend your time looking at different websites, asking friends and colleagues, viewing past work of a designer.

When you like a design or get a reference, check the portfolio of the designers, their credibility and the look and feel of websites they've developed.

* Drive it Yourself: After you've decided on a designer, you should point them to any websites you like and express your ideas very clearly. If you don't convey your ideas, designers may present something which you mayn't like and that would waste your money and effort.

It's critical to note at this point that you should have the contract prepared and get everything in writing. Save all important communication that you've with the designers. Things may go off schedule or off track and these communications will come in handy to clear any issues.

* Where Do You Get the Talent? : You can either decide to outsource it to a web design firm or hire a freelance programmer. There are freelance programmers who can provide the same service as a design firm for less money, most of these programmers worked for these firms before going freelance, they provide their service for less as they've no overhead or advertising or marketing costs.

You could choose a designer either in your area or use online service marketplaces like LimeExchange to search from a global pool of talented designers. It's generally very hard to locate design firms or freelancers locally. Moreover, services marketplace provides various tools that make your task very easy to manage.

* Which Technology to Choose? : Discuss with your web design firm on the technology on which they will develop and host your website. Most sites these days are hosted on some flavor of Linux and other open source application. This will save you licensing as well as hosting cost as opposed to paid software.

Some of the key technologies that you should look at for getting your web site developed:

Linux/Apache/MySQL/PHP (LAMP): Most websites, today, are developed using LAMP and is preferred by most open source freelancers and vendors. The combination has become popular because of its low acquisition cost and because of the ubiquity of its components (which come bundled with most current Linux distributions).

Ruby on Rails (RoR): RoR is catching up very fast with both paid software and other open source software. It's designed for developing your website quickly and efficiently, the downside being it's still hard to find RoR talent.

Apache web server and MySQL database server have become the default choice for any web sites that are developed these days.

4. Buying Hosting for Your Web Site

Once you've decided on the technology and designer you need to host your site, somewhere where your customers can access it. You can either decide to host it yourself by buying a server and an internet connection or find a hosting service for your site.

There are a variety of hosting providers and hosting solutions available in the market. You should be able to find a reliable hosting solution with little or no setup fee and no long-term contract for about USD 15 per month.

Here are some of the tips for choosing your hosting provider:

* Don't give in for really cheap service and free hosting. Many hosting companies pack a lot of websites on one server with no customer support. Whatsoever, it's always advisable to go for reputed hosting provider. Your chosen web designer should be able to guide you in selecting a hosting provider.

* Chose clustered hosting if possible. Clustered hosting is a technology in which many servers are clustered to provide you with a more reliable and robust environment, though priced a little higher they tend to have better uptime.

However, building and hosting a website isn't enough. Remember that the first purpose of building a website was to generate traffic to your site and increase sales. Part 2 and Part 3 of this article will focus on getting the traffic delivered to your website - analyzing the traffic and making any modification if required to reap the benefits of your investment.

Stay tuned in for Part 2 and Part 3.