Setting up a web site is a high priority by most new businesses. But not everyone has the experience to do it for themselves from scratch – or the money to buy in the expertise from somewhere else.
This is where simple Do-It-Yourself solutions come in. This post updates previous discussion on this topic (see Internet category for earlier posts), and renews two offers we’ve been running for some months.
1. Getting British Business Online – a free basic business web site from Google and BT
There are many approaches you could take, but let’s start with something that is entirely free. Getting British Business Online is backed by the UK government’s Department for Business, Innovation and Skills. It’s run for them by campaigning group Enterprise UK, but the technology comes from Google and BT.
We’ve just had confirmation that this scheme now continue at least till 31st of December 2010. So far 20,000 businesses have taken advantage of the scheme.
To get a web site going you need to register a domain name – which is the web address such as example.co.uk for you web site, find a hosting firm which is where your site will actually live, then design your site and upload all your content. One way simple DIY packages achieve simplicity is to guide you through steps and offer all these services on one place.
With the GBBO package you get:
A free web address provided by BT: Choose from any available ‘.co.uk’ domain name. This is free for two years, after which you can pay to renew it.
Free hosting, provided by Google. Google told us this will remain free forever as long as your site remains below a certain size limit, currently 100Mb. This is big enough for the great majority of simply sites, but you can pay for extra space should you need it.
A free site-building tool: You build your site using an easy Wizard-type tool provided by Google, which lets you upload your own words and images, and alter them later whenever you want. You choose your initial design from a selection of pre-defined templates. You can swap to a different template later or tweak the design if you want to.
To register go to www.gbbo.co.uk
You need to have a working email address and a mobile phone. The mobile is only used once, during the initial registration process. You give the set-up wizard a mobile number, and it then immediately sends a text message to it containing an activation code. You type this code into the on-screen setup form, which lets you continue on to set up your free web site.
The type of web site you can build with the free Google tools provided by the GBBO scheme are fine if all you want is a fairly simple site containing pictures, text and videos. It can do a good job of describing you and your products in a kind of online brochure.
However, if you want to sell products off the page and take payments from customers online, it’s not so good. It is possible to link a GBBO site to Paypal and take credit card payments this way, but currently it doesn’t provide a proper shopping cart facility. This is more what you need if you have number of products you want to describe and sell from your site.
2. Your own online shop from Mr Site
There are several options here, but one of the simplest for newcomers to building web sites is Mr Site. This is a paid-for commercial product, but PRIME has just renewed an offer we ran at the end of last year, passing the full 40 per cent discount on to PRIME Business Club visitors.
One reason we like Mr Site is that it is well documented, so if you don’t know what you are doing it you can read an explanation which by web standards is relatively free of jargon. It also has a business focus that makes it very appropriate for PRIME’s audience.
With the discount a year’s use of the Beginner package will cost you £15 rather than £19.99, a year of the Standard package £22.74 rather than £34.99, and of the Pro package £59.9 rather than £99.99.
These prices include the registration of your own domain name (such as www.example.co.uk or www.example.com), the use of Mr Site online web site creation tools, templates and shopping cart, plus hosting for a year. You can use an existing domain name you have already registered.
To get these prices go to the special PRIME discount link and enter the word “PRIME” into the offer code box. You can upgrade between the levels at any time, so you don’t have to worry too much about making the right choice now. If you want to continue using the Mr Site service after a year prices revert to the normal level – these are shown at the foot of the page. Currently they are £20.28 annually for Beginner, £34.88 for Standard and £95.88 for Pro.
The different levels differ mainly in the number of pages you can display and the amount of space you can use for your text and images. The Pro package has the best ecommerce support and features to help make the site more visible to search engines. But all come with a shopping facility with images and stock control, the ability to take payment from customers via Paypal, and with email box.
Paypal is a large international electronic payment service owned by eBay. This means that you have to sign yourself up separately with Paypal for a Paypal account, and pay Paypal transaction charges. But the big plus is that you can get up and running fast and you don’t need to worry about processing credit card payment or getting credit card merchant status.
Customers can pay you straight off your web site (or by email) using a credit or debit card – they don’t themselves need to sign up with PayPal. Paypal can also handle cross-border payments and currency conversion, for an extra fee.
3. Other options
Of course Mr Site and the GBBO scheme aren’t the only way of getting a web site up and running cheaply. We cover some of the others in the site credits description of how this web site is done. For www.primebusinessclub.com we use a lot of Open Source software, which is cheap or free, but unfortunately sometimes quite complicated.
For a person starting out on their own without existing Internet skills the learning curve could be high, and the time spent could divert effort from other areas of the business that need it more urgently.
This means that only some of the many cheap options are worth considering, especially those aimed at beginners with the hosting included, so there is much less of a technical nature to do. Some of these services are free, usually because they are advertising funded, and they can be good way of getting something up quickly and starting to learn about web publishing.
You can instantly set up a free blog at Blogger.com (owned by Google), and at WordPress.com, to name two well-established and well supported ones, with huge communities of users. Typepad only has a 14-day free trial, and thereafter is quite expensive, but is also very beginner friendly and tends to appeal to people in the media or arts or who have visually-appealing products.
Social networking tools such as Facebook and Twitter may be enough if all you require is an online presence that is mainly about yourself, and they are all free. But all three suffer from a trivial image, and Facebook in particular is still blocked by many traditional businesses that fear their employees will waste time on it. This means that though such sites can be very helpful to your business if it relies on word of mouth and personal contact, you may also need a conventional web site too where you can present your offer in a serious manner.
Another option worth investigating if you plan to start trading from your site and taking payments for goods is BT Tradespace. The basic service is free, and you get a shop and the ability to take payments using Paypal. This service also offers opportunities for networking to find customers and suppliers, and for some businesses may be a good place to start.
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