My eventual goal for Ground Score Enterprises will be to transition to a website. I've never had a website before, and am still learning my way around a computer. When is a business strong enough for its own website? Can a website help to make it stronger? What do I need to know about running a commercial website? How do I draw people to may page? Are there books/webpages where I can learn more?
I think that design layout of your website is KEY to success. If your website has baffling navagation, nobody is going to want to see what you're selling. If you need help with HTML or CSS or basic Flash, feel free to PM me.
The online sales are actually to support open-market vending, and to keep the new, developing business alive over the winter, when there aren't any flea or farm markets or festivals to vend at here in the frozen North. I don't plan on it ever being the real heart of my business, although hopefully it can be a long-term support. The Hip Shop here is to familiarize me with online vending, research the market, and let people know my business exists (in addition to supporting the Hip Forums, which is also very important to me) with the goal of gradually transitioning to a website. There's so much to learn I feel overwhelmed and don't know where to start.
Hello Kitty, I'm the owner of a Internet Service Provider, named CoreISP. I can help you out with everything you need for a website and to make a website if you need it Peace, Liroy
LoL @ Be carefull We offer various way's to do marketing. such as Search engine submission and optimizations (so that you get nearer to place #1). We also have contracts with company's that are able to make flyers, folders and various other products to promote your business, for a low cost. Seeing you MIGHT be interested in what I have to say, I think this is enough said for now It's not just designing a site by the way, it's also the hosting, and a domain etc. Our servers are highly optimized, and run very secure software with ALOT of functions for both admin and customer. (If you want to see a working demo of the control panel, be my guest and send me a PM ) Websites depend on a reliable service, which we offer with a 99,9% uptime guarantee.
Kitty, look up a few rennaisance festivals and click through to the vendors' sites. They have a season, as you do. (most try to take off completely for winter, or go on buying trips, do production and a few Xmas fests, too.
Hello, You are right, I could be a fraud. you indeed didnt accuse me of anything, I just took it to heavy, if you can follow. I know about SEO, there are some ways around the bots to get higher rankings quickly. My website is under construction. We opened a new company for the hosting section, and the site was supposed to be done in february, but seeing we programmed a hell of a user interface and are completely changing the site (the current design is not dynamic enough and cant be used in a good way) so it will take a little while before it's finished. However, you can view it here: http://www.coreisp.nl I would be happy to host your site, I will send you a PM to give you some info. Peace, Liroy
http://www.allbusiness.com/business_advice/EBusiness/index-2804.html http://www.entrepreneur.com/ebusiness/0,6292,,00.html http://onlinebusiness.about.com/ i'm in the processes of starting an online business. these are some website i found with pretty useful. hope they help.
I am a part-time tie-dye artist. I have been in business for 8 years. I put up my first website 4 years ago, using Microsoft Frontpage which is a user-friendly tool to design and build your website. I have progressed to the point where I have a hand built shopping cart, using paypal buttons to allow for internet purchases. Feel free to browse, and if you have any specific questions, I will be happy to try and answer for you. One thing I will say is that most craft businesses claim to only do about 10-20% of their sales via the internet. But it is a great way to display your merchandise, publish contact information, and has potential to increase your business. As you say, there are times of the year when it's hard to do festivals, concerts, etc. If you want to try building your own site, browse your local bookstore shelves for 'how to' books for general info, look into courses at your local Comm. college (they even have non-credit courses available that take less time). Lots of webhosts have bare-bones templates that you can use to get started. Most websites are an on-going work in progress. I just revamped mine to change the structure and update my merchandise pages last month. I'm sure as time goes on, I will do more. Considering I got a quote from someone for $3K to rebuild my site, I figure it's worth my time to learn how to do it myself! I really don't see myself ever spending megabucks to have someone add bells and whistles. I think it's probably better to start out slow and grow when you can afford it, ya know? Judy
i know you want a good domain name, not too long, and not too sleazy sounding or cheap sounding either.
Squarespace. A but pricier than the others, but it does what I need it to do. Have never had a problem.
Dude, its 2018 You dont make your own website, you either stick it on ebay or your countries main competitor to ebay, or if you have a lot of units to sell, stick it on amazon (although apparently not in a country where they have to collect VAT cos thats too hard and amazon will throw a hissy fit)
These days a website is a must for any business in my opinion business does not look professional without a website, if I am being contacted by a business that doesn't have a professional email address but has something @gmail.com or any other free email service I don't even bother looking at the subject I just delete the email and move on. So as a business a professional email is a must the one that would have. Now depending on type of business if it is some kind of service you provide like say roofing, flooring and such you could quite easily get away with something dead simple like Wix, if you want to sell online then the best option will probably be Shopify, if that is too expensive there are plenty of ready-made shopping carts available for free, one example would be PrestaShop, there hundreds of them but for the beginners, PrestaShop would probably be the easiest, and depending on how many products you will be selling, in the beginning, you can probably get away with the cheapest hosting package, as you will not need much space etc, if you buy hosting and a domain from a smaller company they would usually set it all up for you where bigger companies tend to focus on either hosting or domains alone and you'd need some know-how to set things up. Also, a lot of hosting packages do come with softaculous which allows you to install ecom sites in a couple of clicks without you needing to know pretty much anything technical, you can also get free themes for most come systems or pay a little money to have one customized to your liking. Once all of that is setup your easiest way to get some customers onto your website is to sign up to an affiliate network as an advertiser, affiliate networks will drive traffic to your site and you will need to pay them a percentage off the sale they're very likely to have a monthly fee as well. Depending on what you're selling you will be able to sell your products on eBay or/and amazon in parallel, a lot of ecom software allow installation of plugins usually quite easy without the need for any tech know-how, so you would be able to use amazon payments on your site which would be directly hooked into your amazon account some systems will allow you to sync products between your site and amazon/eBay... I wish I could sell my stuff on those... I do web development for a living and run a few websites on a side, so feel free to PM me for any advice if needed Good luck
