some questions..

tether

hi, i asked these q's at creativeireland too..

i'm thinking of setting up a small business. my start-up costs need to be really low, so i'll need to do the web design myself, and though i'm happy enough from a graphic design point of view, my web-design skills, factoring out the graphics side, are not too hot - i want to keep time spent learning it to a minimum too.

my site can be fairly simple, but there's a couple of things i'd like to know whether theyre going to be simple, difficult, or what:
-the site will need an online form so visitors can send me some snippets of information - is it easy enough to build that into a site - so the info goes to my email?
- (this is the one i'm more concerned about). i need some method of secure payment, so visitors can send me money. it also needs to appear reasonably professional, so i dont really want to say, 'hey, send me your payment details in an email to gff@gff.com' - it would seem more professional to have visitors send me payment details in an online form, or something. is there an easy way to receive online payment securely? i know there's paypal, is there an easy way to have visitors send me paypal details or something? (i've never actually used paypal, so i don't know exactly how it'd usually be used to pay a business), or is there another third party that deal with web-based payment who i might be able to use?
- (and i'm guessing this might be the really tricky one for me) for the thing to work, i'll need to get good google rankings. the business is not a new one - there's plenty of people doing it, and those doing it would be fairly web savvy. how (oh how) am i going to be fixed in terms of getting onto the first page of a google search? any suggestions of what i myself might be able to do - is it a job too big for someone like myself? what other person /company could i employ to do the job? would someone who does that type of a job accept payment in percentage of my income?
thanks.

grahamor

-- you could get a php script to mail the form details to you, its handy enough to integrate.

--use paypal for minimal transaction costs or realex (costs more and you will need a programmer to set up a few things)

--good google rankings will be the hardest of all, you should pay for adwords or pay per click, a well made site isnt good enough to get ranked well if your business type is quite a common one.

Eoin

tether wrote:

hi, i asked these q's at creativeireland too..

i'm thinking of setting up a small business. my start-up costs need to be really low, so i'll need to do the web design myself, and though i'm happy enough from a graphic design point of view, my web-design skills, factoring out the graphics side, are not too hot - i want to keep time spent learning it to a minimum too.

For some design ideas, www.oswd.org is an excellent resource.

tether wrote:

my site can be fairly simple, but there's a couple of things i'd like to know whether theyre going to be simple, difficult, or what:
-the site will need an online form so visitors can send me some snippets of information - is it easy enough to build that into a site - so the info goes to my email?

This is the easiest part of what you are looking for - there are countless scripts out there that you can use. What particular ones you need will depend on the type of hosting plan you go for. This is a totally impartial opinion; I would recommend you check out www.hosting365.ie for an affordable plan.

tether wrote:

- (this is the one i'm more concerned about). i need some method of secure payment, so visitors can send me money. it also needs to appear reasonably professional, so i dont really want to say, 'hey, send me your payment details in an email to gff@gff.com' - it would seem more professional to have visitors send me payment details in an online form, or something. is there an easy way to receive online payment securely? i know there's paypal, is there an easy way to have visitors send me paypal details or something? (i've never actually used paypal, so i don't know exactly how it'd usually be used to pay a business), or is there another third party that deal with web-based payment who i might be able to use?

I don't think you would get anyone to email you their credit card details. A form that emails you their credit card details is no better.

As I understand it, if you set up a business account with Paypal you just have to add your products / services to your account details and you will be provided with the custom link that you put on your site. This link will go to paypal and they will process the payment and you will get the relevant details. From what I have seen, it seems to be one of the better options for sites that don't do a high volume of sales. Also, your customers don't have to sign up to paypal.

2Checkout.com is another company that offer similar services, but their costs are slightly higher (5.5% commision, and a $5 fee for wiring you the money). The advantage of this place is that it isn't paypal, which many people are getting sick of.

The advantages of the above two services is that you don't have to worry about implementing a shopping cart, or dealing with credit card transactions personally.

tether wrote:

- (and i'm guessing this might be the really tricky one for me) for the thing to work, i'll need to get good google rankings. the business is not a new one - there's plenty of people doing it, and those doing it would be fairly web savvy. how (oh how) am i going to be fixed in terms of getting onto the first page of a google search? any suggestions of what i myself might be able to do - is it a job too big for someone like myself? what other person /company could i employ to do the job? would someone who does that type of a job accept payment in percentage of my income?
thanks.

This probably won't be easy - especially if you are competing with other sites that have a larger marketing budget and if there are already a load of sites that would appear in the search results for the keywords your potential customers would be searching for.

If you google "Search Engine Optimisation", you may get some tips on what you can do to improve your hit results. This will range from structuring your markup (using h1 tags properly etc). You could also look into Google Adwords but I would imagine this could rack up the marketing costs. Getting other sites to link to you should also help.

tether

many thanks for that..