Advice needed re creating new business website

ridertothesea_

I'm starting a new business providing consultancy services in the construction sector. I would like to create a new website.

Can anyone advise me of a place to start. As business is quiet and fees may take some time to come in I don't want to spend significant amounts of money on the website.

Does anyone have advice in this regard? I was looking at wix.com which seems to provide a free hosting service - does anybody know if its any good? Alternatively are there other similar/better options

Any advice appreciated.

tricky D

Don't confuse cheap with value and do yourself a big big favour, invest properly in your web presence. Looking for free hosting as opposed to spending something like a mere €75 for a domain and hosting per annum is unwise.

I wouldn't recommend Wix for many reasons, Flash being the most obvious one.

omega42

It's a hard site to understand but it looks like if you want your own TLD IE www.yourname.com you have to pay for their premium service.

You havent said if your in Ireland but as your posting here I would assume so.

Take a look at http://www.gettingbusinessonline.ie, I havent used them my self but blackknight are well known on boards so you could head over to their talk to page and find out more info from their.

You could also look at the Wordpress route. Its easy to use and they have 100's of free designs to choose from if you dont have any design background. There are also a number of plug-in's with it to help you with SEO.

In terms of hosting I'm sorry you get what you pay for, there's usually a catch behind free hosting (No such thing as a free lunch)

Hope this helps

Omega

M.T.D

If you want to appear to be a professional consultant, then do not get a cheap diy website.
This is for several reasons.
A cheap diy website rarely gets found so is a waste any way.
A cheap diy website looks cheap and diy

If you turned up to see a potential client in a dirty car shabby clothes etc. you would probably agree you would have less chance of the job.
Another aspect is that even if you got the job the fee you can charge is probably smaller than if you had been clean and smart.

This also applies to your website if you have a well constructed website with targeted informative content, your potential client will infer that is the care you will take with their business, and you will find that you can charge more.
If you have a crap website your potential clients (assuming they even find it) will infer that you are not much good either so less jobs smaller fees.

Save up and employ an online marketing consultant, take their advice and if it involves a website get it done properly

Mrs OBumble

M.T.D wrote: »

If you want to appear to be a professional consultant, then do not get a cheap diy website.
This is for several reasons.
A cheap diy website rarely gets found so is a waste any way.
A cheap diy website looks cheap and diy

As the owner of several cheap diy websites (collectively getting 1500+unique visits per day, for an annual investment of $US40, plus my time) I'd have to disagree.

One of these sites gets perhaps 3-4 visits per day, and generates a couple of days extra paid work for my self-employed partner each month. Though this doesn't sound like much, it's all he wants on top of his existing word-of-mouth client base, and he wouldn't be happy at all it was doing "better", 'cos he'd waste time taking more phone calls that he couldn't service.


OP, it comes down to your goals, and what you want to spend your own time on.

Key questions for you, which might help people here (or in the Entrepreneurship and Business Management forum) to point you in the right direction:

1) What do you want the website to do?
Answers might range from
"be a 10 page sales brochure where I can refer potential clients for in-depth information - I don't care about comign up in search results"
"get me new clients through coming up in a good position in search results"
"collect information about potential customers thru a contact form"
"integrated job scheduling and on-line invoicing for customers".

Think about both the short and medium term. Worry about long term later - if you're that successful, you can pay someone to re-develop it from scratch if necessary.


2) How much website nous / aptitude do you have? Are you prepared to do the work youself, on a first-cut interim site? Is this good use of your time, vs the other things you could be doing that no one else could do?

3) How much can you afford to spend? Don't only think about up-front costs - also consider how much it will cost to make a small change to the content later on. The latter is probably more important, as it's what will kill you in terms of overall costs.



One option, for starters, is just to write a blog about the topic area of your business. Don't even try to hide the fact that it's a blog - though do get a custom domain for it, in case you want it long term. But apart from that, just write informative posts that may get attention.

Whether that's a good idea or not, though, comes down to your objectives.


Good luck with your business.