If there is one thing that defines the age we live in, it is technology.

We are simply inundated with it. Whether you love it or hate it, your business is going to involve technology.

One of the first strategies is a presence on the internet. Whether a blog, landing page or website, you must have some representation on the web.

And, there are many options available to you with a variety of price points.

Like most anything, the key factors will be: What do you want? How much do you want to spend? How much do you want to do yourself?

The latter is an area where many entrepreneurs balk. Their strengths and talents do not include the technical arena. And, that is okay.

Nobody can be expected to be skilled in all avenues. If your budget permits you to hire out all your technology needs, and it is compatible with your strategy, go for it.

If your revenue is not quite where you want it to be, you don’t have to go without. Or settle for mediocre.

If you want a visually stunning web masterpiece, you will probably pay a graphic designer several thousand dollars. And, when you need changes, you will be paying high rates for those. Trust me – you will need changes. One of the benefits of the internet is the dynamic nature of information. Yours will shift also.

There are several hosting solutions that offer integrated web builders. Essentially, websites in a box. They are pretty intuitive to use once you get in there and start doing.

A key point to remember is that you must have a clear idea of what you want your website to do for you. Just like you would not build a house without a blueprint, you don’t want to start constructing a website without a guideline of how your site will appear and work.

Don’t let this part bother you – you do not need to know anything technical to design your site. You will always have a home page and pages such as About, Contact, etc. Take a blank piece of paper and draw a box at the top. This is your home page. Underneath that, draw a row of additional boxes. These represent the pages you will navigate to from your home page. Note that navigation will be consistent and each page will have the same look & feel.

If you require additional options for a given page, simply draw more boxes underneath the box for the page.

When you get this hierarchy defined, you have just defined the organization and layout of your website. Wasn’t that easy?

The next step is to design how you want your website to look. Look for websites that you like, and that connect with you. You are not going to be duplicating anybody’s work, just getting a clear idea of what you want.

You can then create your template. This will be a base page that will be used to create all other pages from. If you are using your internet provides tools, you will get to select one of their pre-defined templates. Although simpler, you may not get a template that is quite ‘you’.

Presuming you are going for a more custom solution, you will be designing your own template. Again, you don’ need to know anything technical – you are just drawing how you want it to look.
Take the time to get the template looking exactly the way that you want it before you create any pages. If you don’t do this and you need any changes, you will need to change every page that you have created.

Creating the html page is actually fairly straightforward with the right software tools. There are many great html editor programs out there – many of which are free.

If your preference is still to have someone else build the page, consider having them just do the template. Once that is built, you simply copy it for each page you want. This will be much cheaper than paying someone to do all the pages for your site.

I highly recommend you look into either learning how to make simple changes to your web page, or find a resource that is readily available to you. When you do need changes, chances are you will need them quickly, and you won’t want to wait.

Tip: Before you change a page, take a backup copy first.

Whether you do your own changes, or retain someone else, ensure that you receive all the components – html, images, etc. – that comprise your site.

A good technical resource will support you in whatever level you desire. If you want them to do everything and leave you in peace, they will do that. If you want to know how to do some changes yourself, they should be able to give you some pointers on how to do it. You may even get some limited support, dependent upon the arrangements and their fees. More importantly, a good resource will communicate with you in an effective, engaging manner and not baffle you with techno-speak.

Although a good plan now is better than a perfect plan later, take the time to choose wisely. If you are going to use an autoresponder, some have more features, some have better deliverability rates. You want to ensure you have the right choice before you start building your list. Yes, you can transfer them to a new provider if you opt to change albeit everyone will need to opt-in again.

In summary – you don’t need to know how everything works in order to get yourself or your business on the web. You simply need to be clear on what you want and how you want it to look. Obviously, focus your talents & passions where they will serve you the best. Consider learning some of the basic concepts to enable you to make quick changes with minimal expense. Choose your designers, developers and software carefully. Ensure you know what you are getting and that they will support you when you need them. If you’re not sure where to start, check in with those you know and find out what they recommend.

Mark Semple is a Certified Comprehensive Coach, Founder of Successful Together Coaching and the 2007 International Coach of the Year. As a recovering IT guy, Mark enjoys assisting others with their technology needs, in addition to making a difference with his unique coaching perspective, speaking & writing. Click here for details on the web services Mark provides.

Please welcome Allon Bloch, co-CEO of Wix – a free online software that allows you to make your own flash website, blog, MySpace and more!Supposedly, it’s incredibly-simple to use. U know how non-techie I am. While I really want to give it a whirl, “test” it out, and report back to you…something better brewed ov’r yonder. Since time and energy is scarse & after developing a nice rapport with a few of Wix staff while hosting the below interview/article, Wix offered to contribute a weekly series specific to “Internet Branding for Entrepreneurs & Small Business Owners”. How sweet is that!?

Phew! Having Amit share tips, how-to’s, and more, I’m hoping we will all soon have some kickin’ flash websites ourselves.

P.S. Read to the end, and find out how You can be apart of this invitation-only closed-Beta opportunity!

So, what is Wix Allon ?

Wix is a start up that’s venture backed.

It’s a classic story of a few founders frustrated with a big problem – and spending time and energy to resolving it. In this case, Gig Kaplan, Avishai and Nadav Abrahami (brothers) were looking at the web publishing market in 2005 and were frustrated with the inability to create a web site that looks good and is easy to make. To create a good looking website you need to pay many thousands of dollars to a team of coders and designers, and once you have the site published you need to run back to the coders when you want to make a change. The other option is typically a dreary looking template site that provides no creativity, self expression or a true way to tailor a site to one’s needs.

- So the guys (yes sorry all the founders are guys in this case…) felt like they could tackle this problem and moreover felt like it’s a pretty basic problem. During the last couple of years the emergence of widgets as an important part of the web, especially on social networks, have increased the importance of creating a web-top publishing platform that could enable users to create great stuff online WITHOUT the need to code and WITHOUT being constrained by templates.

- I joined as co-CEO in February 2008, and Nir Zohar as head of operation about a year ago. We’re HQed in NY with a large team in Tel Aviv, Israel

- We’re still in private beta, and while I can’t reveal any of our numbers/targets, we are amazed at the kinds of web documents people are creating. The three broad buckets we have are the following:

o Consumers who want to express themselves- creating personal sites, widgets, slideshows, greeting cards etc

o Artists and musicians who create web stuff for their fans

o Small businesses

- Let me elaborate about our impact on small businesses: instead of spending many thousands of dollars creating a site and then spending weeks every time you want to make a change, a small business owner can create their own site, on their own, and publish it wherever they want. Furthermore, despite the fact that we are in flash our sites are searchable like any HTML sites (that’s part of our secret sauce). We provide a lot of professional looking content that people can use. Certain small business owners would want a graphic or web designer to create this for them – which is fine, and in the future we will create a marketplace to connect designers with site owners. This will still cost a fraction of creating a site today – because it takes much less time to make it – hours or a couple of instead of weeks. And you can do a collaborative design – you don’t just provide a general idea and get a black box – the site owner can change anything they want in real time. And once it’s finished they can change whatever they want on their own

- Let’s take an example: let’s say you’re a small flower store with and you want an online presence. You go to wix, create a site and publish it. Now you want to promote a certain event to your customers – you can say create a flyer widget on and email it to your customers or post it on your site or on your myspace profile. And you can prepare that promotion easily on your own – you take imagery from your site, add some text, press publish and voila you have a promotional flyer that you created in minutes – a much easier way to market yourself online

- Business model: wix is now free for our beta testers. In the future we will charge a fee to our business customers for using a premium offering, but it’s going to be around $10 a month (and we host the site – which is what you pay for hosting today in any case). So for the price of two cups of cappuccino

You have a striking presence online….

Since Wix is still in closed beta, they only approached a select number of quality blogs whose readers will most benefit from Wix.
I’m proud and honored that EWM makes the “cut”, and they happily offered to give me AND You advanced access so we can all test the product for yourselves!

Here’s how:

The following video offers a quick look at our editor.
For further information, please see our blog kit. [BTW, I really like that "blog kit" instead of "press kit" ]

I couldn’t leave this siggy for the end: Win a free website package for you or your small business! Ephective Hosting is giving away a five page website, 12 months of web hosting, and 12 months of domain registration. It is free to enter and free to win. The free website contest ends May 31st. No purchase necessary. See http://www.ephectivehosting.com/contest/ for details.

Shopping for a website can be a difficult experience. With everyone in the world claiming to be a web designer these days it can be tough for a small business on a budget.

You can break all the web designers into 3 distinct groups.

1. Independent, inexperienced web designer. The high school student. Someday they will be a great web designer. But right now, they are young and inexperienced. You can pick-up a website for cheap, if you’re willing to sacrifice quality.
   
   
2. Resellers. The absentee. Certain large companies offer the ability to resell their services. These individuals will simply sign up with some large company and sell the service as if it were their own. These services can be relatively cheap and produce a decent website. But why not just go to the source and save a few dollars?
   
   
3. Professionals. The company. A business that is solely devoted to creating websites. Usually with many employees and a corporate structure. They will produce a great website, but at a cost. If you can afford it, a good choice.

The world of web design usually sticks to the old adage, “You get what you pay for.” So what should you look for when shopping for a website?

1. How does the design company’s website look? If they can’t design a professional looking website for themselves, chances are, they won’t for you.
   
   
2. A lot of design companies achieve #1 by having someone else build their website. Be sure to ask the design company if they designed their own website. If they didn’t, why not?
   
   
3. Owning a website is a lot like owning a home. You need to perform maintenance, make upgrades, and put on a fresh coat of paint from time to time. Will the design company take care of maintenance and updates? How much will it cost?
   
   
4. Where will the website be stored? Do you need to provide your own web host, or does the design company provide web hosting? If they do, how much does it cost? A lot of design companies will charge a lot of money for their web hosting when spending a lot of money isn’t necessary.
   
   
5. Clear outline of design process. Building a website can be a complex act. It is good if the design company has a clear process in place that will allow you to follow along where you are in the process.
   
   
6. How long will it take? Small websites should not take longer than a month to complete. Be wary of any design company that will take longer: They may be overwhelmed by too many clients and their service may be affected.
   
   
7. How will you communicate with the design company? Do they have contact numbers? Are they accessible? How will you submit updates?