Owning a Website in Nigeria
If you are thinking of running any type of business at all, sometime someday, you will need a website to compete in today's information driven economy. Business models are migrating from paper, files, brick and mortar to e-applications.
Nobody wants to get stuck in traffic when he can accomplish everything he needs to do with a phone call and a click of the button from the comfort of his office or home.
Hence owning a website is not subject to debate. The issue is, how do to go about it.
First and foremost, you need to understand that owning a website is not a big deal at all, neither does designing one by yourself, if you desire so to do. All you need is to understand english, have access to a computer, an html editor like Microsoft FrontPage (which comes with Microsoft Office), or other free editors you can download from the internet, and you are in business.
In terms of cost, for a medium website, you need about N6,000 per annum to pay for your hosting and renew your domain name. This will be dealt with in details later. So for N6,000 per annum, you can own a website, and if you choose to design it yourself (which we will walk you through later), that is all it takes to have it up and running (for a medium website).
The first and most crucial step is to decide what you want to do with your website (function). This will determine what type of website to go for, and if it is something you can do by yourself, or have a professional design one for you.
Also as important is the decision whether to build just a website, or a business.
Whatever route you take, we strongly recommend that you learn html which is the base code for most websites. All it takes is to go through a tutorial, and a bit of practice, and you are off and running. When you understand html, you can update and manage your website by yourself, even if you used a professional web designer to design your website for you. This way, you will not be at the mercy of anybody, to update your web content, or do a minor re-design of your site to suit your taste. This may not make sense to you now, but down the line, you will get to realise that launching your website and clinking glasses is not the end of the journey, but the beginning. The website will require updates, maintenance, fine tuning and optimizing (search engine optimization) to make it rank high in search engines and pull in prospective customers.
Ideally, each business should manage it's out website, and not contract out this function, effectively leaving yourself out of control. The other party can hold you to ransome, as they are the only ones that have access to the passwords and control panel. If you cannot afford to hire an in-house webmaster, you need to do it yourself. You cannot succeed online if you cannot update your website as and when due, instead of begging someone to update your site after they have been duly paid.
If you are just starting out, and you intend to run an online business, settle it with yourself upfront that you will be the webmaster, until the business is up and running, and makes enough money so that you can hire a webmaster to free yourself to focus on business development.
There are various types of websites, but in the Nigerian scenario, we will reduce it to five. These are not strict categorizations, as a site can have characteristics across the categories
a) Web Presence
b) E-commerce Website
c) Information Resource Website
d) Marketing Website
e) Forums
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