dazza Posted September 4, 2012 Report Share Posted September 4, 2012 Looking to start up a website for our family buisness, atm we use yellow pages who do everything for us but they want rediculous money a month for it and we dont really get any control over what is on there, we have just finnished our contrat with them and are now able to leave when we want. can anyone recommend a good website for website building? im not a genious on computers but im certainly not the worst on them. ive seen www.1and1.co.uk and it doesnt look to bad and the prices seem reasonable, has anyone used this or can anyone reccomend one they have used. thanks daz Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
C17RSF Posted September 4, 2012 Report Share Posted September 4, 2012 if you know abit about websites and how to work them, you can pick up hosting quite cheap, then download a template and adapt it quite easy. I like using wordpress type sites as it has its own content management system and work really well, but really depends what you want the website to do. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
suhail97 Posted September 4, 2012 Report Share Posted September 4, 2012 Depending on your business, you can get a local graphic designer to make 3 x page templates for about £1500 and a web designer will code it all for £3-5k and you will have a pretty decent looking site. If you're handy with a bit of basic coding and photoshop easywebstore might be ok for you Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
C17RSF Posted September 4, 2012 Report Share Posted September 4, 2012 Depending on your business, you can get a local graphic designer to make 3 x page templates for about £1500 and a web designer will code it all for £3-5k and you will have a pretty decent looking site. If you're handy with a bit of basic coding and photoshop easywebstore might be ok for you that sounds expensive to me Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dazza Posted September 4, 2012 Author Report Share Posted September 4, 2012 if you know abit about websites and how to work them, you can pick up hosting quite cheap, then download a template and adapt it quite easy. I like using wordpress type sites as it has its own content management system and work really well, but really depends what you want the website to do. its mainly just for a bit of extra advertising, me dad has had the buisness going for 26years and we get most of our work through word of mouth but as he is slowly getting me more into the paperwork side of the buisness he wants me to find other ways of advertising and bring the buisness more up to date if that makes sence? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
M3NXN Posted September 4, 2012 Report Share Posted September 4, 2012 I used 1&1 for about 9 years and couldn't fault them for stability/reliability, customer service, server speeds etc. They have templates if you need them and they also offer you a wysiwyg editor for building your own sites. You can make some cracking looking sites with all the features using those things and learn a bit in the process. I'm currently using streamline.net, who aren't too bad. Took a while for the propogating but other than that, not bad. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RoryW Posted September 4, 2012 Report Share Posted September 4, 2012 www.one.com Cheap and have an online design program as such. Very easy to set a page up and get it running. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sam Posted September 4, 2012 Report Share Posted September 4, 2012 Never been a Fan of 1and1, despite all of my domains being registered with them (they are cheap!). I use loads of different hosts for the actual site. Saying that, 1and1 do have templates etc, so good to start out on. You should get something basic up, and learn how to code a site your self, it isn't that had for a basic site. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Colossuss Posted September 5, 2012 Report Share Posted September 5, 2012 Depending on your business, you can get a local graphic designer to make 3 x page templates for about £1500 and a web designer will code it all for £3-5k and you will have a pretty decent looking site. If you're handy with a bit of basic coding and photoshop easywebstore might be ok for you No where near that price! The company I work for does £90 per design (This is the design across the whole site) then about £500 for a custom CMS to let you edit the pages. The problem with templates is it's never really going to look like your own. And depending on your business it might not do the best it can do for you. What's the business? What is the goal of the site? You should also wait for a post from mit before making any decisions Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Blair Posted September 5, 2012 Report Share Posted September 5, 2012 Making a page isn't rocket science, I've done a few of my own over the years. But making one that works well across all web browsers from mobiles and is search engine friendly is where you need a pro. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sebgreen Posted September 5, 2012 Report Share Posted September 5, 2012 I'm a web dev and run a web design company. 1&1 is a shocking service. Yes the website loads etc, but in terms of the code it creates - lets say a chimp could write better code. If you want to use it as an advertising tool it need to perform well on google. Their recent updated (panda etc) really put emphasis on the quality of the code and the best code will be by a decent web dev/designer. I'm not saying come to me for it, but don't use 1&1. 1&1 recent advertising push is actually technology that other hosting companies have been offering for years, its just that 1&1 have only recently decided to advertise it. Its outdated. With websites as with anything in life there is no such things as cheap and cheerful. You get what you pay for. Your better with a hosting account, wordpress and one of the free wordpress theme which are available all over the web. Or maybe try something like squarespace. Never personally used it, but heard good things about them. PM me if you want any advice. C17RSF 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mit Posted September 5, 2012 Report Share Posted September 5, 2012 Just having a website isn't going to help your business at all unless you have a way for people to find your website and the services you advertise. That's what you're paying Yellow Pages for at the moment, so if you think just setting up a website will replace your Yellow Pages advertising, think again. Firstly the people using Yellow Pages to find you are a different demographic to the people who might use an Internet search engine to find you. Secondly how do you think Google makes money? Yes that's right. If you want to increase your google rankings you better get your wallet out for some search engine optimisation and Google sponsored results. You may find this ends up costing you more than Yellow Pages. These days you're better off setting up a facebook fan page and a twitter account and using social media to promote your business. It's also a really good way of getting customer feedback (good and bad) which will help you improve your offering. Chimp Choker 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sam Posted September 5, 2012 Report Share Posted September 5, 2012 Mit's idea is best, get Facebook and twitter. Post offers etc, do people follow and 'like' you. Also link to te site, people will visit it. SEO is key, do some reading up on it Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Colossuss Posted September 5, 2012 Report Share Posted September 5, 2012 Social Media again depends on his target audience Better advice could follow with a better idea of the business Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dazza Posted September 5, 2012 Author Report Share Posted September 5, 2012 We are tree surgeons and most of our customers are in 45+ We wouldn't completely remove our yellow pages add just would take the website from them and do our own. The yellow pages one is good but we don't get any real control over it, for instance when we do some quite large trees with cranes etc any pictures/videos we have that we want to put on the site all had to go through them, same goes for special offers when we run them. would just be nice to have more control over it all our selves if that makes sence? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mit Posted September 5, 2012 Report Share Posted September 5, 2012 Aah so you're going to keep advertising through Yellow Pages but with your own website? In that case my suggestion is to set up yourself an account on www.blogger.com (this is Google Blogs) and use an out-of-box theme. You can then write new posts that tell stories about the jobs you do, and make yourself a nice splash page for the first hit on the site. You can customise this with your own domain name and most people wouldn't even know it was a free Google hosted site. Have a look at my blog to get an idea of how well you can hide it: http://blog.mital.net The only bit I pay for on my site is the actual domain registration which is about £10 a year. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Colossuss Posted September 5, 2012 Report Share Posted September 5, 2012 Mit is full of wonderful knowledge Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sebgreen Posted September 6, 2012 Report Share Posted September 6, 2012 Wordpress is a better option than blogger. Also, you don't need to spend money on pay per click with google. You can go down the organic route with link building and keyword optimization. It just takes longer. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Colossuss Posted September 6, 2012 Report Share Posted September 6, 2012 You can go down the organic route with link building and keyword optimization. It just takes longer. And you need to write unique content that targets the keywords you want your site to resolve for. And don't trust SEO companies that say they can get you on the front page within a week, they use black lsited techniques that can get your site removed from Google search results Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mit Posted September 6, 2012 Report Share Posted September 6, 2012 Wordpress is a better option than blogger. Also, you don't need to spend money on pay per click with google. You can go down the organic route with link building and keyword optimization. It just takes longer. I used blogger as an example. But I actually immensely dislike Wordpress. No actually, I hate it. Turdpress more like. It's the most fiddly complicated pile of crap ever. I can't understand why so many people use it. At least blogger doesn't claim to be amazing for everything whilst failing miserably to be remotely useful. We had a Wordpress Intranet site where I worked a year or two ago. Can you tell I'm still bitter? And you need to write unique content that targets the keywords you want your site to resolve for. And don't trust SEO companies that say they can get you on the front page within a week, they use black lsited techniques that can get your site removed from Google search results Yeah totally agree with this Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Colossuss Posted September 6, 2012 Report Share Posted September 6, 2012 I used blogger as an example. But I actually immensely dislike Wordpress. No actually, I hate it. Turdpress more like. It's the most fiddly complicated pile of crap ever. How can you say that when you code in .net!? Blogger vs Wordpress, both are OK. I prefer Wordpress, but I have made templates for it in the past. I find it very simple. Blogger i have never used. But you can test both for free and see which you would rather use. Both are pretty SEO friendly, as long as you fill all the fields out Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mit Posted September 6, 2012 Report Share Posted September 6, 2012 I don't code. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Adrianc333 Posted September 6, 2012 Report Share Posted September 6, 2012 One route would be Wordpress, it offers a lot of functioanlity out of the box, and you're not that restricted. Alternatively, you could hire someone to create you a site, exact to your specs. The prices posted up earlier in this thread was redicuously expensive. I'm a full time web developer, and so is my colleage. He does freelance work and his prices are very fair too, I can give you his details if you like? mit 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DJ Jonny B Posted September 6, 2012 Report Share Posted September 6, 2012 1&1 are a nightmare!! I used them for a bit and while the actual site design and ease of access cant be faulted for a newby when you try and cancel your subscribition and close your account they are hard to get rid of. I had to keep phoning them and telling them to stop taking money and claiming money back! cost me a fortune! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
