Website Hosts

marvin

One novel idea is Office live http://smallbusiness.!!!!!!!!!!.com/en-GB/

It is Microsoft (based on MSN live hotmail and all that) it is free can even register a domain elsewhere (good idea if there is ever a problem with the host for the website all you do is have a mirror site running and redirect to that) and direct it at the space.

It has templates to build a site and, although not certain on this, they must have some sort of payment mechanism set-up you can certainly integrate paypal in to it.

Otherwise most of the bargain hosters will do the job for you.
123reg
oneandone (if doing either of these do not forget to go through a cashback site for them)

will both do full packages but cost a little more than those who simply charge an annual fee.

There are also free hosts out there other than MS (netfirms as an example) who may be worth considering, (they place 1 adsense advert on your site at the top.)

paulsad

I used these for years with no problems
https://www.lcn.com/

jm2926

I've set up with UK2 recently. I had a problem with my email redicts and emailed them at 6.09 this morning. Reply from them at 6.25 explaining the issue and confirming they had fixed it !!!

I'm only on the £3.99 package so really pleased. They give you lots of tools and support php/mysql for that price.

marvin

Forum of webhosts for research

http://www.webhostingtalk.com/

bevan840

thank you everyone for your help Will have a look into all of them. I had thought of a domain name but after my Dad spoke to a friend of his he didn't think it would get me much traffic, wondering what you guys think of 'SMB Jewellery' (I'm making homemade jewellery and SMB are my initials)

marvin

bevan840 wrote: »

thank you everyone for your help Will have a look into all of them. I had thought of a domain name but after my Dad spoke to a friend of his he didn't think it would get me much traffic, wondering what you guys think of 'SMB Jewellery' (I'm making homemade jewellery and SMB are my initials)

What are your dads friends qualifications for this statement?

Like all shops you get what you design and pay for you will need to factor in to your business plan advertising and the like this will build some traffic as will link building and the correct seo in your code.

I don't advertise any of my sites as such but still get 500-1000 visits a month as the code that spiders (google is the best known of these) use is good on my sites and often I rank high in search engines for my keywords (words used by people using search engines). The domain name as such does not matter much in that respect all it should be is memorable to people the background code is all important.

Sign-up with the right ISP and they will give you vouchers for Adwords which will help you see what this does for you (In fact sign-up for Adsense and Google will send you vouchers for nothing I have found. Place a few ads on your site it may pay your hosting costs, certainly will if it is free like Office live).

Registering a domain will cost only a few pounds (5 or so if a .co.uk as it has to be registered for 2 years) so little to lose if it does not work for you.

bevan840

With the business bank account I'm looking at it was offering £75 Google Adwords if I sign up online and there was a hosting site which offered £60 if I went with them.

The person has a business which is mainly online and his turnover is £1mill a year, but he gets his IT information from someone else and he has given me his phone number to give him a ring which I will do this week.

Do the keywords need to be in the title or domain name? Or can you set them up separately so that your site will show up more often.

I'm trying to find everything I will need out so that I can assess what will be coming in and going out so that I don't just jump in the deep end and find I can't swim

marvin

bevan840 wrote: »

Do the keywords need to be in the title or domain name? Or can you set them up separately so that your site will show up more often.

To try and illustrate the point that domain name is not everything see this google on the word jewellery

http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&rls=com.microsoft%3Aen-gb%3AIE-SearchBox&rlz=1I7HPEB&q=jewellery&aq=f&aqi=g10&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai=

Not sure any of the names on the front page is different to yours.

The keywords are on the background code that makes the site work.

Google seo (Search Engine Optomisation) for more indepth reading.

When you talk to your dad's friend ask him why he feels as he does and how he got his sites to where they are now. I bet it ws not by domain name alone unless his role is too sit on domains that often get hit by mistake.

Anyway good luck and yes do the research first.

paulwf

OP why don't you try Ebay and any craft sites (Etsy? Folksy? not really my area) first? They are fantastic sites to do a trial with, providing all the hosting and templates and most importantly payment method and customers. Try it for a month and then you know what sells and what doesn't, and what your price points are. You'll then be in a much better position to form a business plan than when everything is theoretical.

paulwf

bevan840 wrote: »

thank you everyone for your help Will have a look into all of them. I had thought of a domain name but after my Dad spoke to a friend of his he didn't think it would get me much traffic, wondering what you guys think of 'SMB Jewellery' (I'm making homemade jewellery and SMB are my initials)

This may be just a personal thing but I can never spell "jewellery" and my spelling is usually reasonable. I think it is because Americans use a different spelling. Obviously with domain names you need to type it 100% correctly so I'd always prefer to see short simple words used. Also if you ever want to attract an international audience you need to make sure spelling is consistent between countries.

Hope that doesn't make me sound thick! The easier you can make it for customers to buy the better.