I need a website built...help!

mollymoo45_2

Hi everyone I need some help please.. I can use the internet, i'm an expert on shopping on the internet aaaaand that's about it. I am setting up a online shop, selling home and garden furniture/accessories, and i need a website. I have looked online and found lots of 'make your own' website's and i really want something that's more professional (also i don't want it to say at the bottom of the page, made by mr site/me@useless.com or the like ) I have no idea what these more professional websites cost? does anyone have any idea where i would look? or anyone had any experience/knows a good website developer..i'm not even sure if i have posted this in the right place?..any help or advice appreciated

Thanks for reading
Mollymoo x

CKhalvashi

I'd recommend Moonfruit for a small start-up business, as it's easy to design and upload on your own, and you can edit the site for small cost. I think it's about £80 for the year, with a domain name, and they're praised by those with small businesses around here.

CK

nonnatus

For a Company to do it all for you, the design, the shopping cart features, the security, the page content etc etc the cost is anywhere between £800-£1000.

I've been looking for months and this price seems to be the "Norm" unless you have a friend / relative who's got great contacts...:cool:

Norman_Castle

Spend a few hours building a site on moonfruit, weebly or others just to see what you can do. On weebly I've built a site without putting it online.

Flyonthewall

Hi.

Weebly and Webs.com are both easy to use sites, but far from professional really due to the limited number of templates. They use a drag and drop feature so if you want a text box you just click to add it and drag it to where you want it.

I haven't used Moonfruit, but I remember looking at it a while back and there was some reason why I didn't use it lol. May just have been other software offered more.

Anyway, I'd suggest Wordpress. Professional themes/templates and plenty to choose from, it's free to use, you can add any features you want, there's no coding involved and you can set it up on a free hosting site first and have a play around with it to see what you can do.

Wordpress looks more complicated than it is. Bascially you search for the features you want e.g. a shop. It then tells you all the plugins available. So for a shop there's a number of different e-commerce plugins. You simply click to install them and there it is, ready to use!

You have a dashboard where you can view all the plugins and go through their settings. So with a shop, you can add items, decide what payment options you want, add different categories and so on. If you have a contact form you can add different options to it.

There's pretty much a plugin for everything and each one has settings so you can customise it to the way you want it.

There's even SEO plugins which will help you with the page ranking so you hopefully won't be at the bottom of the search results.

Once you've got the site how you want you can buy a domain name and transfer the site you've done from the free host over to a paid one and properly get your business up and running.

If you were to pay someone I'd say you're looking at at least £700 if not well over £1000 and a lot of developers will just use Wordpress themselves which is an open source program (meaning it's free) so it's well worth having a go yourself.

nixxster

Hi
I was in the same position about a month ago, whilst I am an expert at buying on line - I have no experience whatsoever of building a website and frankly didn't know where to begin!
I got a few quotes from professionals (gulp) and friends of friends, but decided to give it a go on a build your own. I tried a few on a trial basis, but settled on shopify. It has been relatively easy to use, and there are loads of support pages that talk you through any tricky bits and the support responses have been fast if I have had any problems.
The downside is there is a monthly fee and they take a small % of the sales (2% on the basic package) but I worked out that I could use shopify for about 2 years before I reach the numbers I was previously quoted (and it's monthly rather than upfront)
Have a look on ninjakiosk.co.uk to see if it's the sort of thing that would work for you.

Percy1983

As mentioned, something like wordpress is a safe bet, I use it to build sites and it really is simple to get a basic site up but you you can then push it and get professional results.

I believe there is some wordpress sandboxs you can play in, past that buy a domain and get a cheap server deal and off you go.

I am willing to let people on my server to get up and running if wanted (for free), I will say I offer this as its the same kindness which got my website off the ground.

adpod

I have sent you a pm

Brassedoff

I own a domain registry company as part of what I do. I have ready made website features, but if you are looking at THE BEST, go to wix.

Www.wix.com, I year premium website £60 (thousands of templates that can be up in hours) + Facebook website + mobile website,, you get £100 in vouchers for Facebook and Google Ads too, so basically it's free but very professional.

mehera

Its all load of rubbish!

You can spend and spend and still get nothing on the web. EVery Tom, !!!!!! and Harry thinks you can throw up a site and start making money and it is not true.

I will give you some very good advice. Use a small local designer only . . .

There is no way you can design a successful eshop using the pre-built packages people are suggesting - no way!

If you had a great designer £8000 would be more like it! You can design a website of course but without proper SEO on it, no one will find it . . .

Triker

I use create.net and I've found them very good with support and queries.