Making a Website - I Need Advise

United States
December 17, 2006 9:55am CST
My brother and sister-in-law are in the business of making shortbread cookies. They would like a website to promote and sell their product. I don't know the first thing about making a website. Your help would be appreciated. Please advise.
7 people like this
62 responses
@nancygibson (3736)
• France
17 Dec 06
Keep it very simple if it is your first website. I'm assuming they have all the legal part f running a food business sorted and its just he website you need help with. Decide to start with whether you will be selling online or just promoting the product online. The second option is much easier than the first. If it is your very first site and a small business, why not start with something like a free Geocities site for starters, plan to use this just to work out how the site will look and to get used to handling a website, it will only take you about an hour to set up a basic one or two page site there and it walks you through every step. In a few months, when you have learnt to make all the modifications you want and know how you want it to develop, you can buy a somain name and move the pages to a 'proper' site, but start with someting easy, you will find it much less scary that way
• United States
17 Dec 06
They would like to use the website to sell their product. I will check out geocities. Glad they will walk me through it. For now the basics will do, but will need to grow as their business grows.
1 person likes this
@santu9 (21)
• India
18 Dec 06
you can make ur own website by many ways u can do it for free using blogger.com an many more others like that if u want to have professional website on ur own u have to register a domain name first.domain name can be of ur own interest.it depends on the size of ur page and ths somain provider has provided to u.
1 person likes this
@Asylum (47893)
• Manchester, England
17 Dec 06
Creating a basic website with only a few pages is very simple, there are even sites that will provide a template to help you. The biggest problem is not the site, it is promoting the site to increase traffic. The same principle applies online as offline, if you have enough people passing the shop and seeing the products then you will make sales, whereas if nobody sees the product on sale then you do not have a business. The whole thing is a simple matter of traffic.
2 people like this
@Asylum (47893)
• Manchester, England
17 Dec 06
I have had numerous sites over the years, although I have not owned a site now for quite some time. If you do end up with a site, then post the URL and I will happily give my opinion on it.
2 people like this
• United States
17 Dec 06
well hopefully we can make a website that will get him what he is hoping for.
1 person likes this
@kids91911 (4363)
• United States
17 Dec 06
I wish I had some advice for you but I don't the first thing about it either.
• United States
17 Dec 06
Hey, thanks for dropping by. : )
1 person likes this
@magikrose (5429)
• United States
17 Dec 06
I go through www.freewebs.com/ They will give you templates if you dont know how to make your own. They have loads of templates to choose from and some you can customise the color to match your theme. It is FREE and fun. Here is my website so you can have an I dea of what you can do with it. www.familiesfromhome.com/
1 person likes this
• China
18 Dec 06
i have seen your website,it is nice .i praise it,good
@annieja (589)
• United States
18 Dec 06
love the music on your website. i have the live Garth Brooke's cd.
@GardenGerty (157027)
• United States
17 Dec 06
My husband used a place called freewebsite.com, I do not know if that will help you or not. I look forward to seeing some other responses.
@BittyBiddy (2903)
• Ireland
17 Dec 06
I have made several websites: www.ratemyweddingsupplier.com - was made using Yahoo's template pages. The drawback is that now I want to transfer them to a professional site and have to build the thing from scratch as Yahoo is not compatible with anything else. It's all coded in Yahoo's own special code. Becaue of this I think the best way to go is to have your own site hosted by a professional hoster who will offer you a free shopping cart package. For example www.letshost.ie is an Irish website who do this. They offer so many packages that anyone with no experience can upload great interactive content to their site. I did another website - www.itsinmyway.com, using this. I am sure there is probably a hosting company near you that will offer lots of packages too. And most of them have their own template package too, although I would realy advise using something like Dreamweaver if you can at all. At least you can change things with no hassle, even if you wish to switch hosting companies.
@Aali311 (6112)
• United States
18 Dec 06
They offer free web sites, you can do a search for them or you can use www.freewebs.com. They also have layouts that you can choose from according to your business or if you know html, you can use your own codes.
1 person likes this
@mjtenorio (237)
• United States
18 Dec 06
Make sure that you investigate before starting with any certain website maker. Some are better than others. I would recommend one where you can create your website before you you purchase it. Many have only certain backgrounds that you can use or so many pages. I created mine through bluevoda. I really like it cause it has tons of stuff to add to your website. As well as daily statistics. Let me know if you need more help. Maria http://www.parents-connection.com
1 person likes this
@dlucia (208)
• United States
17 Dec 06
I've used tripod and also vstore. Honestly I didnt make any sales on either and had both for over a year. But if money is a problem, both are good to start with. I now have a web host (www.houstonmatrix.com) who does my current website (link in profile) and have had 4 sales the first week. Wish I had gone ahead and paid for my site 2 years ago. But when you cant afford it, you do the best you can. Feel free to check them out. Best of luck to you.
1 person likes this
• United States
17 Dec 06
Thank you for your input.
@rakeshdas (427)
• India
18 Dec 06
U can use a software named dreamweaver :) its very useful
1 person likes this
@ryan444 (207)
• United States
18 Dec 06
Online marketing is my expertise. Use lots of different sources. Use some autosurfs, manual surfs, e.t.c. Banners. A good graphics provider would be essential and a lot of communities you can request graphics made for you. Stay simple.
1 person likes this
@SageMother (2277)
• United States
18 Dec 06
Take a look at Homestead.com . You can use their website generator that has elements you can move around fairly easily. They also have ecommerce packages that solve alot of the pay processing issues. Then, take a look at sites that focus on similar subject matter to get an idea of what is out there. Navigation issues, presentation, all of that stuff. Wander around those sites and see what you feel is workable and what is just to clunky or not intuitive enough. Once you are ready, remember thatyou can go back and change things you don't like, so you don't have to worry about things being set in stone. A really good website is never really finished. It just rests until the next idea pops up.
@ambience (67)
• Canada
18 Dec 06
Use a website builder since it is ur first time..there are so many avaialble freely on the net.. u cna alsouse Microsoft FrontPage ...U can use Yahoo geocities to freelyhost ur site on the net
1 person likes this
@Leonzz (195)
• Brazil
24 Dec 06
First of all, you have to design you site. After this you can project more easyly.
1 person likes this
@humaaaa (1386)
• Pakistan
18 Dec 06
making a web site is a pretty nice job, i can make it for your in free. A simple one which would look user friendly and attractive. send me a message if interested.
1 person likes this
• United States
17 Dec 06
Sounds yummy! There are a lot of sellers on Ebay already who sells these types of items. Are they already certified by the health department? If not, they can't sell these items at all.
1 person likes this
@ipanks (890)
• Indonesia
17 Dec 06
try in free website like www.bravenet.com to beginning with most feature.you could try to make any changes you can.you must learn html.
@Kscott (634)
• United States
18 Dec 06
THERE ARE SEVERAL WEB-SITE CREATORS AVAILABLE FREE ONLINE.....WINDOWS LIVE HAS A FREE WEBSITE GENERATOR.....WWW.FREEWEBS.COM....WWW.SITEKREATOR.COM.....AND THEY USUALLY HELP YOU STEP BY STEP...ILL SEND YOU SOME MORE AS SOON AS I FIND MY TUTORIAL SITE....I LOST THE INFO....THERES ONE THAT WILL TELL YOU EXACTLY WHAT TO DO....A LITTLE SIMILIAR TO CREATING YOUR PROFILE ON HERE...IT'S A LOT OF FUN....
@Kscott (634)
• United States
18 Dec 06
WEBSITETIPS.COM....AND WWW.W3SCHOOLS.COM...I GOT THIS LINK FROM ANOTHER GRACIOUS MY LOT MEMBER....IF I FIND ANYMORE I'LL LEAVE EM FOR YOU.....
• United States
18 Dec 06
try googling it
1 person likes this
• Sweden
26 Dec 06
well, creating a business web page is a good idea to promote some products and services. But if you are going to success, be professional. Although you are able to make a free website by hundreds of thousands of tools out there on the net, but it´s too important for you to think about creating a business one which is not free. A free website doesn´t look professional and you won´t get enough real customers. Besides those who have visited your website will not probably come back. So the first thing is to pay for it. Basically, there are 5 main steps to create a successful business website. I will get through them.