Good luck with your new venture. You must be busy researching on collecting data and information for your new business. Writing business plans, talking with CPA, coming up with a name and registering it. Would be searching sites (location) for office space or digital workoffice. Miles to go.
Let me provide you with few tips that is applicable to the virtual world.
1. Domain name - get a .com domain and make sure before you register your name in your state, that your businessname.com is available and register that rightway. If you do not want to change the business name and the domain is not available - try domain names like businessnametech.com, businessnamefurniture.com, etc., If you are investing a lots of money consider purchasing other domain extensions as well.
2. Before looking for a good domain hosting company, make sure what softwares you would need to run your website. Whether you have shopping carts, database, etc., Once you identify the technologies (you can post this question in answers.yahoo.com or any other public forum) - then look for a hosting company. Make sure that the hosting company provides those technologies, good uptime, telephone support and google them to find out what people say about them. Look for catch in their website, they might promise unlimted domain names and then have a * somewhere at the bottom and you will end up paying additional amount. These hosting company will have limits on the number of domain.
3. Before finding out a web-designing company for your website, have the content/portfolio ready. What services you provide, contact details, etc., If you have some technical knowledge you can download lots of free templates that are available online. This should not be too pricey if you even give it out to any designing company to develop. It might vary based on your requirements - make sure you ask for quotation with atleast 3-5 companies before deciding on one.
4. In between time, you can work on Registering statement mark, trademark logo, etc.,
5. Not all web-designing company provide SEO (Search engine optimization) support. This is a very important task and once the site is uploaded - have robots.txt (this files acts as a security guard and can instruct search engines to not to access your website) not to crawl your website. Then have a SEO company take a look at it and get website analysis. Some Internet marketing agencies do provide free website analysis and do not be surprised if they ask you to fill forms - they have to know you as well and that you are a potential customer and not someone misusing their system.
6. If your budget does not allow you to hire a SEO company, you can teach yourself. The best SEO is you, surprisingly because most Internet marketers wants to find out what is in the head of a normal user - how they would search online, what kind of keywords they would use, etc., and if you decide to do yourself - you have to keep in mind that some mistakes are not irreversible right away - as Search engines will penalize your website. Be very careful in what you modify and how you modify.
7. People in general like to see something happening in a website. So have a blog, write about what you would like to do in your business, you can use that as a online diary (you have options to keep a post private/public).
8. Constantly update yourself with what is currently happening in your business and blend it with your own thoughts.
9. Make sure you have auto renew option selected with your domain registrar. Normally, it costs around 8$ for a year - I bought my domain with http://www.godaddy.com (you can use coupon codes such as Chris, david and search for few online). The reason to choose auto renew is that, if you forget to renew the site - one of your competitor might backorder and buy that domain name. After months of work you do not want your website to go in wrong hands.
10. Enroll yourself in http://www.linkedin.com and other such professional networks, create a group in http://www.meetup.com, signup with http://www.twitter.com - this not alone ensure that you are active - but you let others to find you as well.
11. Ask yourself this question, how would I want my business to be found by people and then with what words or sentence people might search the website to find your website. Now, use the same keywords and check for the sites that are listed. You will get to know exactly whether you wanted to be there or not. For example: If you want to get airtickets, what kind of keywords do you use - cheap airline tickets, best deal online for airtickets, lowest fare to fly “city name” etc., and when I used these keyphrases I did not search online to see what results show up - why don’t you see for yourself - I bet there will be lots of major sites showing up. Imagine what if you are listed there?
12. Above all, another most important factor is, you can ask SEO company to research and collect data for your business. To do a SWOT (Strength, Weakness, Opportunity and Threats) analysis for your business geographically/virtually.
13. It takes lots of energy and time, and business is not an easy task for everyone to do. Be prepared for ups and downs, but as you stay focussed and commited - success is just a pluck away from your reach.
14. We are not done yet, look for partners, buyers, check things where you could save money, even if you buy stationaries make sure you look for coupon codes and if holiday season is a week away - wait and do the purchase. You have to order business cards, portfolio’s, letterpads, envelopes, credit cards, insurance etc., - if you search in an effective way you can always find a better deal.
15. If you have any specific question or an experience to share it with rest of the world - why dont you consider taking time to comment here using your good karma 