Making a simple business website - non-e-comerce.

[Mr Noble]

We just need a basic website with about a dozen pages.....a home page, a simple spec sheet type page for each of the 7 product models and an info/contact page.

Would it be easiest to choose a web based company like GoDaddy or Ionos and choose a template they offer, or are there small time web design companies/freelancers who can do the work for a reasonable fee and make a handfull of changes once or twice a month?

[jonamv8]

Simple wordpress theme, secured on decent hosting suited to your industry would probably suffice You are not re inventing the wheel. What's your budget?

[khushy]

Simbla.com job done and mobile friendly

[jammy-git]

Depends on what you want.

A website is 50% design and layout and 50% content. Going down the route of website builders like Wix and Squarespace will get you the first 50% but putting together your own content will often end with the website looking quite amateurish IMO. But if you want to go down this route I'd suggest either Squarespace or WordPress.com + a template from the likes of ThemeForest.

Plenty of freelancers and agencies that will do this work, but not for the budget that you'd spend on a website builder. Let me know if you've got a low four figure budget and I can give you the contact details for a few freelancers and agencies.

[Mr Noble]

Thanks! I’ve had a look at Wix and square space. It’s such a small amount of content and simple site that I hunk one of the Wix templates will be fine.


Presumably I can pay the £8 a month and have them host it for us too? Or is it advisable to have it hosted elsewhere?


Thanks again for he help.

[jammy-git]

Wix generally has issues with SEO, so if you go with Wix don't expect your site to rank well on search engines.

Wordpress.com and Squarespace are both hosted platforms (as is Wix).

[Mr Noble]

Don't need it to rank in searches as it's just a trade site for our retail customers to use really and for end users to go to for info. We are a furniture manufacture supplying trade shops only.

[DRCAGE]

I had a play around with Wordpress and Google, found google quite bit easier to use, seems limited in comparison though.

[akirk]

Mr Noble said:

Don't need it to rank in searches as it's just a trade site for our retail customers to use really and for end users to go to for info. We are a furniture manufacture supplying trade shops only.

We have a client in the same type of industry and produce their website for them...
As a web company we have clients who spend very little with us (sub-£1,000) and others who spend many multiples of that - it all depends on what you want / what the business really needs.

If the look and feel is not important and all you want is a method of sharing tech spec. then it may even be that a file sharing / hosting platform such as Google Docs / Dropbox / etc. may be sufficient - add a PDF and simply provide the URL to your customers... very cheap and very easy...

If you do need for them to feel some association with your business / to see the credibility of who you are / to have the opportunity to see what else you produce (i.e. cross-sell) / etc. then a website would do the job - but it could be very simple, it doesn't need to be complicated...

The suggestions above are good ones if you want to manage it yourself - if on the other hand you want to simply get someone else to sort it out for you, then yes, web companies can do as you suggest - basic website now and then simple updates when needed - some will charge you a monthly maintenance fee, others will simply charge you for their time when you use it...

if you want to drop us an email (details in my profile) then I would be happy to chat through what we can do - and it will give you a good understanding of what is possible...

[Queebecker]

I am a web developer who specializes in WordPress but have worked plenty on Wix and SquareSpace platforms, in addition to custom jobs.

Please for the love of all things holy, don't use GoDaddy. I've had to extricate 6 clients from GoDaddy within the last 6 months. GoDaddy will nickle and dime you to death. And they will dollar bill strangle you because their products - hosting or domain name registration - won't work and you'll have to pay someone like me to eventually talk to them, and figure out what it was you paid for, and what you've actually got. I believe that they have as their working model people who are super friendly to chat with. They do this to take off the nerd-edge of using terminology that can be totally intimidating. You hang up feeling a little good but also a little unsure about what just happened. You'll do this for a couple of years, paying more and more until you can't take it any more.

My advice is to buy your domain separately from your hosting plan if you do use WordPress.

Wordpress sites can be very easy to set up. When you want additional functionality, you make things more complex, which requires hiring someone. But you have so many options with WordPress due to the open source nature of it all.

Anyway, my recommendations:

Namecheap is very very good - buy your domain name from them. A domain name is something like "JoeSchmoeAutoDetail.com"

Then go to hosting: this is where your website files will live.

I've used many many hosting plans but have for the last 3 years recommended that everyone use Siteground. Their customer support is why I love them, but their hosting plans and offerings are also terrific.

You might also try for hosting Cloudflare, WestHost, Digital Ocean. Good companies. Solid hosting.

Your website should come with these options:

- free SSL certificate (unless you're accepting payments online - then you might want to use a paid SSL certificate)
- regular backups (in case something happens you should have something you can put back up even if it's slightly older version of your website)
- some kind of security to make things difficult for bots to break in
- SEO

WordPress offers some good free options for backups and security. You can use their free theme to style your website. And voila, you've got a website. use the Yoast SEO plugin, the free version, and you've got some reach into the search engine optimization world.

Register your website using Google My Business.

Most people want customizations made to their websites. This is usually working with the theme - customizing a free one, or using a premium one that a developer has a license to.

In summary, it doesn't have to be rocket science to have a website. And it doesn't necessarily have to cost a ton of money but if you want a professional to do it, you should feel as though you know exactly what's happening and what it will cost without feeling nervous or slightly unsure about what you are getting.

Sorry for the long rant. I came to this forum to do research on autotrader and am really fed up with people / businesses taking advantage of others.

[akirk]

BrianShow said:

Actually the problem with templates, of course, is that you are going to have a website that looks a lot like hundreds of other sites. I recommend you go to freelancer.com, elance.com or here, hire a designer to design your page, and then hire a coder to turn it into a website. You can find workers that can do both things, but I've been happier posting these as separate jobs. It's nice to have a designer that concentrates on that particular field and a coder who specializes in theirs. The majority of the cost will be with the designer - it isn't too expensive to have a 1 page site built, especially with no shopping capabilities.

Most of the similarity in look is driven by cost and the quickest route to a responsive website being underlying structures based on Bootstrap or similar. Additionally the changes in the way in which websites are consumed (from clicking on a computer mouse to flicking up and down a screen on a phone or tablet) has also driven similarities in structure... Both of these have led to pages structured in horizontal bars of information down the screen - not surprising that so many now look similar...

The danger of separate designers and coders is clear - a lot of designers have zero understanding of how coding works, and so present the coder with graphics which are complex or even impossible to code! I had one client who insisted on a website being coded to match a design their designer had produced - it ended up costing them over £20k more than the website should have cost - expensive site anyway, but the designer had no clue and the website was full of technical / coding compromises to fit the design... where possible, using an individual or company where they have design and coding skills is a much stronger route forwards...

Bringing both back together - in 99% of websites, the need is commercially and functionally driven - as long as there is a clear brand it rarely matters if the design is unique or not -> ultimately it is about building what a business needs at an appropriate cost and not wasting money... bespoke design work or coding is best kept for where it helps grow the business...