Make sites for offliine business with iWeb....good or bad?...

6 replies
hey
i'm thinking of starting a business to charge for hosting and domain name and give the offline businesses a free website for this charge...

the thing is that i dont have to much experience with building websites...(a little knowledge with html,css )

and i found the software iWeb on Mac which i think is very easy software to do websites...

is there a reason i shouldn't build my websites through iWeb?...

i heard it can do problems with seo ...because the script there is very messy
what your thoughts are on this?....thanks!
#bad #business #iwebgood #make #offliine #sites
  • Profile picture of the author DaveManTheCaveMan
    Banned
    Xsitepro is easy to use and a lot of people swear by it.
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  • Profile picture of the author Adam Moran
    by the way i'm going to build my sites on hebrew you think it should be a problem?...
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  • Profile picture of the author hommi_16
    Hey Molan,

    I use NVU which is a free to download software that you can use to build your websites. When I first started using it, I went to youtube and watched some great turorials on how to use it and they were great.

    Check it out

    Peter
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  • Profile picture of the author Marko Vel
    You can make your site with blogger also
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  • Profile picture of the author CashIn88
    While Xsitepro and Nvu are two popular choices, I prefer Wordpress. It's free, has a ton of plugins, and clients can update their content themselves.

    I would reconsider offering the sites for free though. You will be shoacked at what people expect for free. They'll want full flash, ecommerce capability, etc. - for free!

    Also, many people won't believe you're actally going to give them a website for free. And as soon as you tell them they have to pay for hosting, they'll scream, "I knew there was a catch!"

    Better to offer them a "Custom Designed Professional Website" For only $XX. When they ask why so cheap, tell them it's a special to build your portfolio.

    PLUS, charging ($47 - $97) weeds out the ones who will likely cancel their hosting and want refunds in the first 90 days. (And the extra money in your pocket won't hurt either!)

    Also make it crystal clear what they're getting for the website. Example:

    5 Page Site Including

    Home page
    Contact Page
    Privacy Policy
    About Us
    Service or Product Page
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  • Profile picture of the author Andyhenry
    Hi Molan,

    There is a reason not to use iWeb - the code is really search engine unfriendly.

    I have used iweb and I now never use it for other businesses.

    There are a lot of things to consider when building sites for businesses, this is something I cover a lot when teaching people how to sell IM to offline businesses.

    Here are some things to consider:

    Most businesses will not know the difference between the many ways of building a site - they think it's all the same.

    They think that a website is a website and as long as it looks nice that's it done.

    They don't understand the importance of being able to get their website found, apart from people have told them they should show up in Google.

    They often pay a lot of money for a really nice looking site that doesn't get them any business.

    You'll need to be able to guide them in this process.

    If they really need a flashy website due to branding etc. - then they can have one, but targeting their customers online might be a separate process that goes on alongside that website.

    So - iweb is great and nice and easy to use - but it is really badly coded in the output and very unfriendly for doing any seo with.

    I suggest not using it.

    If that leaves you thinking that you can't create a good site for them - don't worry - I suggest you focus on getting up to speed with Wordpress.

    I know wordpress is a blogging platform but it's also a damn good content management system that can easily be made to look good and be very search friendly.

    If you educate your customers about the importance of being able to get their site found and convert well - they should be happy with you doing it however you like. Again, they won't understand what wordpress is anyway - they just want a nice looking site and once you explain that there are things which need to be considered (their target market and it's search terms and then converting them well), they should let you get on and do it.

    It's easy and cheap to get someone to create a wordpress theme, so you should be good to go, just seo it nicely, focus on getting found for their market and getting customer details and new business and you'll be fine.

    Many people overcomplicate things and let the customers ignorance of sem confuse matters, so educate them and make sure they let you do things your way to get their desired results.

    Also - as the other poster said - don't give this away for free unless there's a VERY good reason to. People will think it's low value if you give it away and you don't want to work and make nothing for your time.

    However, with that said - I built a site for free recently to help out a company that are starting up and they were so happy with the site they gave me £500 and a bottle of rum - which was nice

    Andy
    Signature

    nothing to see here.

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