Do you plan on hosting your own site, or having a service run it?
This is very important because of the different direction you can go.
On my website, I can log in from my IPAQ anywhere and update the status of my databases. Clients can log in and run status reports, order appraisals, etc. Other appraisers in my office can even log in from home and do a host of things, from completing appraisals to updating record status. My complete office management system is online and accessible from anywhere there's an internet connection...I can completely run my office from my web-enabled phone!
You might not be able to do much more than simple mail forms if someone else hosts your site, which would be good enough to get customer orders and the like. But if you do it yourself, you can bring your productivity to a whole new level. Of course, some hosted sites can provide this, as well, provided that they let you run the types of scripts you need...
Which brings us to a whole new area. Web sites can no longer be "static." they have to dynamically work with the user. This means you may need to write (or have written) programs to interact with visitors to your site. It all depends on how detailed you want to get. It really isn't as hard as one might think, though, but is more a matter of what you are allowed to do.
Honestly, though, I've never thought of my internet site as anything but a customer service. It is NOT a business builder. So, from my persepctive, I think of a web-site as being something more than just a place to show your name and phone number. If that's all you want, there are plenty of cookie-cutter sites available for you to build upon.
MHO
John-David Biggers
on my web site. Your welcome to give me an honest review.
