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Designing website for small business

PostPosted: Fri Apr 11, 2014 10:10 am
by ReidS
Myself and a friend recently set up our own local t-shirt printing business and so far we've primarily been using social media to promote the company. However, we feel it's time to set up a website so we can eventually receive online orders and increase the popularity of our business. The problem we're having is that neither of us are particularly tech savvy and we don't really know much about website design so we need some suggestions of what host to use. We need something professional looking but easy to use. We like the look of http://website.1and1.co.uk/website-builder but would be good to hear from anybody who has used them? It seems simple to design the site, but we want to make sure we're not missing anything. If any other small business owners have set up websites or anybody who has any experience we would love to hear from you.

Re: Designing website for small business

PostPosted: Fri Apr 11, 2014 11:05 am
by HelenD
Long time since I've been involved in anything like that, but I think you need to talk to someone about SEO - "search engine optimisation". Having a presentable website that's easy to read and navigate is important but more importantly, you need to make sure people beat a path to it, ie that search engines place it higher up their listings than your competitors.

Re: Designing website for small business

PostPosted: Fri Apr 11, 2014 11:11 am
by edward carolan
The best way to work out the design your web site is Google "Best and Worst web sites". It will allow you to avoid the most common design mistakes and give you ideas as to best function and look for your products. There are numerous style guides and advice on the net.If nothing else you should get a laugh out of some of the hideous web sites out there. Drupal is open source and free, and easy to use. Good luck.

Re: Designing website for small business

PostPosted: Sat Apr 12, 2014 10:53 am
by Sharon
I am assuming you want to have a bash yourselves, if so hosted web services are the way to go, keeps the technical stuff away from your door.

For budget selling online have a look at http://www.shopify.com/

For a marketing website have a look at http://en.wordpress.com/features/ if you later wanted to do more with your site and have put work into it you can export from here. Lots of themes are available which make it pretty easy to get started and looking decent http://theme.wordpress.com/ - many are free. Like Helen said, don't forget your SEO, I haven't used the hosted service - but this is what they say about SEO http://en.blog.wordpress.com/2013/03/22 ... press-com/

If you were talking to me in a professional context I'd recommend a wordpress marketing website, this could be later extended to include ecommerce, or shopify if you just want a simple, lightweight ecommerce solution.