Website advice for a techno phobe!!!

[jules9203]

I used to have a website for my livery yard (with Wix) which, a few years ago, I stopped paying for as I got so fed up with people saying they had seen the website and then asking questions that, if they had bothered to look at the website, they would have known.
However I am now looking at expanding my coaching and bit fitting service and looking at designing another website. Anyone got any suggestions for what has worked for them?

 

[Skib]

To have a site requires the site itself plus a platform to which to upload it.

I made my own websites using MS but later moved them to Google Sites.

4th South Midland Brigade RFA

This site commemorates the 4th South Midland (Howitzer) - later the 243 Brigade - of the Royal Field Artillery - which was composed of the 4th Warwickshire Howitzer Battery (Coventry), the 5th Warwickshire Howitzer Battery (Rugby) and its ammunition column. It is based on the war papers of Frank

sites.google.com

My genealogy website is created using Gedstar software (paid for) and up loaded using FileZilla software which is free

I bought a handbook on how to make a website, and I copied and edited the site of another academic which was already on line. I dont think there is copyright in websites so you could have a look at the sites of other businesses like your own.
Mine is not perfect as you need to pull it out sideways to see the various sections of the site and there is too much text on the front page.

 

[Trot_on]

Hey! Digital Marketing person here Take a look at SquareSpace, it’s very simple to use and templates help keep it looking stylish and user friendly.

Top tips:

1. Most people are visual, so make sure you have good quality imagery
2. Keep text big and easy to read - you want people to know what you’re about in a really short time period
3. Always have a clear call to action - make it as easy as possible for people to contact you
4. People these days prefer digital enquiries over a phone call initially so make sure you offer that option
5. Keep long text blocks to blog posts that showcase your experience and expertise
6. Video content is great so long as it’s good quality. It’s worth investing in and can be used across multiple channels

Happy to support if you need further help/tips and happy to check it over if you need that too once live (FOC - it’s my full time job but I do enjoy it a lot!)

 

[2ndtimearound]

My top piece of advice, wherever you host your website, is to make absolutely sure that you yourself own the domain, not the company you’re hosting with. By that I mean buy the domain directly from either 123.reg or Heart Internet. That way, if anything goes wrong with the hosting and you need to move to a different supplier, they won’t be able to stop you.

I was having issues with my website and emails, and my hosting company wouldn’t respond to emails and had stopped access via live chat and phone, so I wanted to move to a new host. At the time, I ‘owned’ both the .co.uk and .com versions of my domain name, but on their system (in my profile), the hosting company was listed as the owner for both. My new web hosting company was able to change the owner name on my old host profile to be my name on the .co.uk version (which was the one I was actually using) so we could port it over to the new hosting platform, but we couldn’t get at the .com one to do the same. In the end, we had to wait until the end of the year when my domain ownership ran out on the .com one for it to become available again so I could repurchase it. If we hadn’t been able to prove to Heart Internet (who the domain had been purchased from by the original hosting company) that I owned the .co.uk domain (with having changed the owner to my name on the old system), I would have lost my website.

I’d also suggest using WordPress, as it’s far easier to move to a different hosting platform if you ever need to.

 

[cremedemonthe]

I use freeola. I put my own shopping carts in I swipe free from PayPal. Very easy to make a commerce website these days.