Calling all website savvy people

The_Poznan

Hi everyone,

Me and my brother are thinking about building a basic website for family business, this is something I know little about so I thought I'd ask you guys.

Can anyone recommend a good website building company that allows a novice web designer (no code or great knowledge!) to get a domain, produce a simple website, provide simple analytics, and any other functions that a basic website would require for their business?

We are fully aware of the benefits of hiring a professional but want to do it ourselves..everyday is a school day and all that!

Thanks in advance,

Momento Mori

You'll have to get the domain separately. I suggest Godaddy or Namecheap

For a very static and basic website you'd be looking at
http://www.wix.com/
or
http://www.ipage.com/ipage/index.html


In my experience I find that many small businesses make the mistake of building a
static website that is ultimately useless to people unless they have the actual domain
address of your website. With no SEO (search engine optimization) you will not be ranked
and (most importantly) found in search engines.

Say you're a mechanic and someone searches for "mechanics Dublin City". Unless you have
SEO'd your website with relevant keywords, you will not be found.

Just a note for you (and other) small businesses to keep in mind.

However, if you're not interested in being found in search engines and you want a very basic and
limited website, then have a look at the links I provided.

You'll need a media budget - understand and learn Google AdWords. Research your online market using the Google Keyword Tool.

Building the website is the easy bit, promoting it and getting targeted traffic to your site and shifting your stock is the hard bit hence an ongoing media budget, a strong proposition. SEO is fantastic but that's only one ingredient. Think how people will find out about your site i.e. you need to advertise.

What's the business?

Mrs OBumble

The_Poznan wrote: »

... and any other functions that a basic website would require for their business?

Apart from this bit, I'd say Blogger.

Many would say Wordpress - but I'd only advise that if you have enough tech-savvy and interest to make sure that your installation is kept fully up-to-date, and to assess the various third-party plugins that you might use and make sure they're regularly updated too.

But that phrase about .. it really depends on what you mean by "basic".

Others have commented about needing to "do" SEO (keywords, on-line marketing, etc): whether you need to worry about this or not depends on whether you care about getting business through the website (via search-engines), or whether you just need a website 'cos "everyone" expects you to have one. For many small businesses, a Google Places listing + a Facebook page is all the "seo" they need.

bowlofcherries

www.youonline.ie seems like a good bet.
The set you up and allow for certain amount of changes throughout the year. They charge a yearly fee. Might be worth looking into to see if they would work for you.
And they're irish!

Eoin

Moved to the web design forum.

Can anyone recommend a good website building company that allows a novice web designer (no code or great knowledge!) to get a domain, produce a simple website, provide simple analytics, and any other functions that a basic website would require for their business?

We are fully aware of the benefits of hiring a professional but want to do it ourselves..everyday is a school day and all that!

I'm sure you've taken this into consideration, but just in case - do bear in mind how you want someone's first impression of your company to be presented. It could be a false economy by not getting someone with experience to help you out.

stapolinhosting

I would suggest name.com (if not looking for a .ie) and use their website builder. I have over 300 domain names purchased from them over the last 4 years and I would highly recomend them. They will provide domain, hosting and website builder... other than that, you could start with wix, but what Im finding lately is after so long with a wix website, I have a good few clients who are trying to get away from wix and develop a 'real' website.

But as Eoin suggested... sometimes calling in the pros can be the difference between people leaving your site within the first few seconds of looking at it, or actually making a sale by having a site that is well designed by someone who knows what keeps your website visitors on your site.

ivanc

Q: Why don't WIX use the WIX platform themselves? A: Because it's a piece of sh1te and should be avoided at all costs!

In answer to the OP - Start with a WP blog on the WP platform - get your head around the basics and when comfortable transfer the knowledge (and content) to a self hosted version on your own domain.

Or- hire someone to put together and upload a basic self hosted WP site for you and then go from there.