With the encryption standards in place today, the internet is virtually as safe as an ATM machine. If you have product to sell on the internet and your store is not set up for credit card transactions, statistically you will lose up to 60%-70% of your business by not providing this service.

Neither the internet service provider (ISP), nor the site host has anything to do with credit card transaction. This is an arrangement between you, your bank, and a transfer authority. In order to take credit card transactions you must have a merchant account with your bank. Once that is done your ISP or site host can set up a cgi script for a secure site and make the arrangements with a transfer authority for the processing. The process of taking credit card orders can be somewhat difficult for those not familiar with these transactions, but well worth the effort in terms of increased sales.

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With the exception of possibly losing the specific name you would like to register there is no immediate need to rush into domain registration. If and when you decide you want your own domain you can still remain at your present site location through a series of links. You have the added benefit of direct access to your site from directories, search engines and FFA's. If you are well positioned in the search engines there is a marked increase in site traffic.

If you utilize an outside systems administrator their services would remain available for maintenance and up grades just as before and they would be fully capable of moving and uploading your site to your own domain even if you choose to change ISP's or hosts.

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If you do not have a systems administrator to up grade and maintain your web site, usually your ISP or site host will have some provisions for upgrading. The degree of frequency will determine the charges. If you are an auto dealership for example, you may need weekly major upgrades. Although this can get a little costly, it is still far less expensive than weekly print or broadcast media advertising.

Montana Net Mall is a host site and as a comparison, they provide quarterly minor upgrades included in the monthly service fees, more frequent or major changes are priced based on the specific requirements of the site. However, the costs involved are far less than other sources of advertising.

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Physically moving your site location is not a difficult, nor time consuming project. If you decide you would like to move to a different site host, normally your site design belongs to you, so there is little problem moving. This is one of the items that should be fully understood before you have your site designed.

It gets a little more complicated if you have your own domain. The domain registry authority requires that you modify your site registration if your server IP address changes.

The other considerations are the costs involved in printing new stationery, business cards, etc. and the potential lost business if your new site cannot be located by your previous customers.

As you can see it becomes apparent that a little forethought and consultation with a professional can help make the first choice, the right choice, and avoid additional expense later on.

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Other than relying on your site host to bring you traffic, most web site managers rely on registration and positioning in directories (YAHOO), search engines (Infoseek) and FFA's to bring traffic to their sites. Or if you want to spend the money, sometimes lots of money, you can run banner ads on major high traffic sites, such as AOL.

Unless you have an in-house systems administrator, equipped with the latest registration software, you likely will find it advantageous to have a professional do your site registration for you. In most cases this seldom costs much more than a couple of hundred dollars.

The above refers primarily to your own domain. If you are a hosted site you should make certain you understand exactly what your site host is going to do to help bring traffic in. Contact Miltec Internet Service Providers at www.mt-isp.net and ask them for details on what they do to generate traffic before you get too far in the decision making process.

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Look through the rest of our site, and if you feel we can be of assistance to you in bringing your presence to the World Wide Web, to find contact information click on "INFORMATION" link at the bottom of the menu and we'll take you there.

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