This is a place where I’d like to share a few resources with you. If you are starting your business, you might find some useful tips here in the future.
1) Get your business cards as early as possible.
For that you do not need a web designer. There are very good platforms where you can design stunning business cards yourself.
Moo.com is my favorite http://www.moo.com/share/2hrgq7
2) Get a professional email address.
It is easier than you think.
First, buy a domain that is www.yourname.com or www.yourcompanyname.com or whatever you please. It will cost you around 30 € per year. Examples of domain providers are „allinkl.com“, „Godaddy.com“, „Host Europe“. You can also google some other.
Then create an email address mail@yourdomainname.com or contact@yourdomainname.com or hello@yourdomainname.com orinfo@yourdomainname.com or whateveryouwant@yourdomainname.com that you please. I recommend choosind an address that is easy for your prospects to remember. You want to make yur prospects life easy, always.
Most domain providers offer you a certain number of email adresses for free and you can use their email server.
It is just much more professional than a gmail.com or @hotmail.com or @gmx.com …etc address.
3) Do not stress out too much about a website if you are not an online business. However, there are ways to create your own website even as a dummy.
If you want to have a website, you can play with creating your own with jimdo or wordpress or wixx.com ..etc. They are called content managment systems (CMS) and give you a chance to experiment. I found it very helpful to experiment with such systems before I work with professional designers or programmers, because playing around helped me better understand what I really wanted to have.
There is an undescriptible fear of web design especially among female entrepreneurs. I can only recommend to face that fear and try to understand how CMS work. Otherwise you become totally dependant of a web designer / programmer. And, that dependency can cost you a lot of time and money. For example, when you have a website were you often upload photos and/ or videos, it is important that you are able to do those uploads yourself. Otherwise you will always have to ask your designer / programmer to upload them for you. It means your upload is done only when he or she has time and of course you pay for it.