On-line mail is known as E-mail (Electronic Mail).

Allow 10 minutes per mail address required

{WARNING: Please read blog post on Signposts before selecting an e-mail name}

You really need to have an online “Post Office”. This will provide a point of contact between you, your customers and your bank. You probably have an e-mail address with your Internet connection; however, I would recommend a separate account for your business.

Think about your business name and try and include that in your e-mail ~ e.g. if your selling e-books (electronic books) perhaps choose EbookStore.

Hint: Do not pick “funny” addresses ~ this is your business and a “funny” e-mail address puts your customers off. Also after you have typed it a hundred times and expplained it another hundred it ceases to be funny. Trust me, learn from my mistakes!

Do not use this address for testing things, for personal use or anything but your business (the longer you can keep this mail location SPAM [junk mail] free the better.

Customers expect e-mail to be near instant. Usually that means the same day. You need to gain the habit of regularly checking your in-tray (and being ruthless with SPAM, a topic in its own right.)

There are several free on-line Post Offices. I’ve used www.hotmail.com for years without any problem, however there is also www.Yahoo.co.uk, Google Mail and many others.

In fact it is so easy I recommend you have a few sacrificial e-mail addresses NoJunk2008 etc ~ you can use these to test sites, try things and when they become infested with spam you can simply abandon them and get another sacrificial address. It is not so easy to change your main business address, as you can tell from my own e-mail.

Why the warning above?: Later we will discuss (“discuss” is too strong, skim?) site optimisation. One of the things suggested is consistency so you should choose your e-mail, domain name and site title either to use similar words or to use complementary words. E.g.

Consistent
E-mail: EbookSales
Domain: www.EbookMegastore.com
Site Title: Ebook (UK) Megastore

(Ebook runs throught the set)

Inconsistent
E-mail: Harrys E-mail
Domain: Online book store
Site Title: Cheap E-books

Next topic: On-line Banking