Building a new website for a business

[brandonkick]

A friend is starting a business and would like me to design a website for him.

I am looking to accomplish a few things here:

1) I want to do this as effectively as possible

2) I want to make this website very "SEO" able

3) I want to make it easily maintainable and expandable.

4) I want to be able to give it a good graphical feel.

5) I want something that is somewhat on the cheaper side to host.

I'll address each item below individually

1: I don't have tons of free time to devote to this, but I want to help the guy out. Are there any services out there that offer an easy solution? I remember someone posting something here that is essentially a tool/service in which a tech can use something along the lines of word press and develop a site to resell to the customer? The customer never knows how the site was built at all... it's not branded all over the place.

2) If people can't find the website, or aren't filtered towards his site when they search for the types of services he offers and or the area that he is in, then his website isn't worth very much at all. I'm pretty sure I remember that godaddy websites aren't very SEO able? I don't know much of anything about SEO.

3) I want to aim to make it simple enough that the average customer can and will update their site. He probably won't and I'll probably wind up doing it, but if it's a very simple process then it will take less of my very precious free time away.

4) Websites that look like junk usually don't reflect well on the business or do much to interest people in the products and services offered on it.

5) He's having a somewhat tough time getting capital to get things off the ground. He will not want to spend several hundred dollars on this. I think the wild card *might* be in the SEO. Can someone give me enough advice to be able to get this going somewhat on my own or is a SEO pro really necessary to get any kind of real traffic to your site?


Thanks in advance.

 

[GCS]

It sounds like your asking for a Ship when you can only afford a Kayak.

I would say your best bet is to use wordpress and purchase a nice business theme.... Otherwise it will take a lot of time and a lot of work.

Heck even with paid themes there is still a lot of work that needs to be done to get the site up and running properly.

 

[CTech]

Artisteer. I love Artisteer. Full version makes some pretty neat looking templates

 

[brandonkick]

It sounds like your asking for a Ship when you can only afford a Kayak.

I would say your best bet is to use wordpress and purchase a nice business theme.... Otherwise it will take a lot of time and a lot of work.

Heck even with paid themes there is still a lot of work that needs to be done to get the site up and running properly.

Kinda, yeah... but please know that I am a realistic person. I sort of do want to get as close to a ship as I can with "kayak" money/effort. I want to make a worth while site, that doesn't look like garbage and is able to have some SEO done to it.

I'm not talking enterprise level stuff here, but I also want to do it a bit better than the neighbor kids HTML experimenting too.

I wouldn't mind paying for a nice theme, within reason. I feel that the aesthetics can be just as important as the functionality.

Artisteer. I love Artisteer. Full version makes some pretty neat looking templates

I'll have to look into that, thanks!

 

[CTech]

Kinda, yeah... but please know that I am a realistic person. I sort of do want to get as close to a ship as I can with "kayak" money/effort. I want to make a worth while site, that doesn't look like garbage and is able to have some SEO done to it.

I'm not talking enterprise level stuff here, but I also want to do it a bit better than the neighbor kids HTML experimenting too.

I wouldn't mind paying for a nice theme, within reason. I feel that the aesthetics can be just as important as the functionality.




I'll have to look into that, thanks!

They have a huge range of 'Samples' for free too that give you a good general base as a jumping off point.

If you need help drop me a PM

 

[colonydata]

it sounds like your describing squarespace.

 

[DataMedics]

Given what your describing, I'd say Weebly is the way for you to go. It's not perfect when it comes to SEO, Wordpress would be better for that. But it's decent and very easy to make a nice looking site with it.

You can try it out directly on weebly's website, but you might want to host with another company such as Just Host that has integrated the Weebly builder into their hosting and offers more features for future upgrades.

 

[pcx_jordan]

Squarespace..../thread. I will expound on this later, if needed. I'm currently posting from my iPhone and don't feel like typing a book Seriously though....check it out. You won't be let down!

 

[seedubya]

What's your budget?

 

[brandonkick]

First of all I'd like to thank everyone for the input!

They have a huge range of 'Samples' for free too that give you a good general base as a jumping off point.

If you need help drop me a PM

I just might take you up on that! Thanks

it sounds like your describing squarespace.

It seems like it, it was suggested twice in the responses.

Given what your describing, I'd say Weebly is the way for you to go. It's not perfect when it comes to SEO, Wordpress would be better for that. But it's decent and very easy to make a nice looking site with it.

You can try it out directly on weebly's website, but you might want to host with another company such as Just Host that has integrated the Weebly builder into their hosting and offers more features for future upgrades.

Thank you, I will play around with it.

Squarespace..../thread. I will expound on this later, if needed. I'm currently posting from my iPhone and don't feel like typing a book Seriously though....check it out. You won't be let down!

Sounds like it may be the way I want to go. I await your in depth response when you don't have to do it through a touchscreen. Thank you!

What's your budget?

This is the pickle. I don't have an exact figure but I'm going to bet he is wanting to get the whole thing off the ground for anywhere from $100 to $300. I don't even know if he will be willing to go as high as $300. The whole thing goes back to results, hits, some type of return on the investment of the website. If he get business because of it, I'm sure he will be willing to realize the investment and put in more. But if he gets very little to none, then even a hundred dollars would feel like wasted money. I guess I should also clarify that I'm not really interested in making money on the website for myself. I'm doing this for him mostly, to help get his business going. I'll be making a small commission off of cleaning one of his computers, and that is enough for me. I don't envision charging much if anything to help him with this website.

 

[BrentfromZulu]

My website (signature) was built using Squarespace. The price is roughly $100, but this is a needed expense to get started. That and email (hosted exchange for $50 a year). 1-2 repairs should cover it for the year, and it is nice to say email me at firstname.lastname@computercompany.com than giving your personal email cuteandcuddlykitty@yahoo.com ... I wouldn't let you near my computers, much less myself....

 

[Tech in SC]

I suggest looking at this http://www.elegantthemes.com/gallery/divi/

 

[16k_zx81]

He will not want to spend several hundred dollars on this.

THIS^

WTF???

A business website and he will not want to spend "several hundred dollars??"

My advice:

Run.

Run and keep running. And dont look back.

--

My experience is that, if you want to do it properly, need to be thinking more like 1-2K for your time, licenses, outsourcing, etc.

Even if you offshore the whole thing, $500 minimum to get anything worth selling.

Seriously, if you dont know what you are doing, there is at least a couple to three weeks FT work in it. Minimum. If this guy isnt prepared to shell out what the time and skill is worth, Avoid.

Unless this is for charity and you want to 'learn' or start a web design portfolio, that is

 

[MobileTechie]

You might want to do it for the experience, if you're looking to do a bit of web development. If you are then I'd say go for Workdpress and use one of the major frameworks which come with child themes. I would suggest Genesis. http://my.studiopress.com/themes/genesis/ and http://my.studiopress.com/themes/.

Genesis base theme framework has scores of good themes for businesses you can select from. If you just go and buy a theme from Theme Forest you'll find that the next time you do it, you have to relearn a lot of things. With a framework you don't. Once you've learned how to modify one theme, that knowledge is directly applicable to the other themes and indeed designing your own themes from scratch is pretty simple. You're entering the Genesis ecosystem with it's own plugins, a really good forum to ask questions and support.

However you are looking at $99 for the theme including the Framework (only need to buy the framework once). I'd make him pay for that up front personally. If you're interested PM me - I might be able to get you a deal.

For that kind of money you wouldn't really want to offer much more than filling in a theme with very little modification. However if gaining experience is the name of the game here then you might want to mess around deeper into it. Either way Genesis is one of the best ways of creating fast, reliable, SEO optimised sites.

See this one I did for a recruitment firm using it: http://www.optima-connections.com

 

[brandonkick]

Again thanks to everyone who replied.

I'll reiterate that I'm not taking this "job" to earn money. I'm doing it to help this guy get his business going. He is the kind of guy that always does things the right way, but capital is a problem right now.

He doesn't have the resources that he would like to have, and right now spending $1000+ on a web site just isn't in the cards. I feel that full heartedly he would spend that kind of bread if he were in the position to do it, but right now literally every penny counts.

To give you all somewhat of some background, this man is starting a trucking company. He will specialize in running loads for other companies looking to outsource, lease or otherwise find people to take their loads that they can't. That is what his company will do, pick up the slack for other companies.

He is also a very good diesel mechanic and will probably be offering heavy equipment repair, although I can't promise that as much as this company delivering freight for customers.

If it is feasible, he wants to get setup with a very good bang for your buck website. Something that is worth while, but something that he can afford right now. He agrees and understands the ideals that I've explained to him in that any money spent on a bad website will be wasted and at best attract negative attention. But if we can get something halfway decent going without wrapping up piles of c notes then he wants to do that.

And to summarize, I am not doing this to make money.

Mostly to help him, but in part to build my skills in that arena. In my new software engineering job I'm doing a lot of web development as of in web services and dynamic code (ajax, javascript, jQuery, C#, ASP.NET) stuff so it would help I think to round out my skill set. Money was never a thought as far as me getting paid here. Just a friend helping a friend and wanting to learn more.

 

[Tech in SC]

A few options:

1. Offer to do it pro bono and consider it an educational expense/experience.

2. Barter your services for something other than money. Sometimes you can get more than the money would've brought.

3. Setup differed payment once he gets his business rolling.

4. Do it free in exchange for advertising, testimonial, etc.

5. Remember... its your time (or business) so do (or charge) whatever the heck you want.

 

[Coastalbendcomputers]

Sounds like he is going to be a 1 man hot shot driver. A lot of those down here with all the oil companies on the eagle ford shale wanting everything yesterday.

Here is a site that has similar content to what you will need.

http://www.hotshotcarrier.com/index.php

Obviously don't copy it word for word Google will doc you for that but it's a starting point so you can focus on learning the designing and not banging your head on what to put in the copy. The worst part for me is always writing copy when the customer can't tell me what they want.

If none of this was useful sorry I admit I only skimmed this before bed.

 

[brandonkick]

That is somewhat of what he is going to be doing, but he probably will have more drivers just so he can have more loads going. The more you haul, the more you make.

Again thanks for all of the help, I think I'm going to try to do this with WordPress. Doesn't seem terribly difficult and a few people have offered to help!


Now I guess on to the SEO stuff, which I know nothing about? What is a good start at getting into "SEOing" your website?

 

[MobileTechie]

If you use the right theme or framework like Genesis or similar then much of the SEO is done for you. Otherwise the all-in-one seo plugin does a similar job in at least getting page names, tags and so on correct and automated.

 

[Cambridge PC Support]

If you use the right theme or framework like Genesis .....

Is that what you used for your site? If so, which child theme did you use?