• We’re currently investigating an issue related to the forum theme and styling that is impacting page layout and visual formatting. The problem has been identified, and we are actively working on a resolution. There is no impact to user data or functionality, this is strictly a front-end display issue. We’ll post an update once the fix has been deployed. Thanks for your patience while we get this sorted.

what web service for a small business?

herm0016

herm0016

Diamond Member
a friend is looking to build a site for his remodeling business. post some reviews from thumbtack and yelp, book an appointment for a quote, pictures of his work.

what hosting is recommended? any recommendations on something for simple appointment booking?
 
MrSquished said:
Squarespace is great.
Click to expand...
That's what I'd recommend.

I don't have experience with hosting, beyond hosting for my own personal websites (which I strongly recommend NOT doing), but from what I've seen of Squarespace I think that looks like quite a good thing.
 
I've been using WIX for my gym business and it's been pretty good. Good web form and contact integration and quite simple and intuitive to use. It is a bit "Web 2.0" so if you don't like that format there may be something better.

I think we pay around $250 a year for it which felt pretty reasonable. We don't have a lot of high volume traffic or bandwidth needs so I can't comment on that.
 
Hi vivi, yes i have used you for a couple of other failed projects. haha.

its a remodeling contractor. pretty basic stuff. He is a friend and asked me for some suggestions / help. He is not very technologically skilled, but a skilled Carpenter. He wants something with a good CMS that is easy to handle for him to post pictures of his work, reviews and things. i am going to start helping him market a bit with an Instagram account and we may try some yelp ads. We need somewhere for those things to go, to convince people that they should hire him. willing to pay someone for upkeep and back end, or i can help out with that a bit. he has had some issues with fake reviews and people shitting on his Facebook page, so he removed it. he is a great guy and runs his own business with an employee and wants to keep expanding. used thumbtack before, but the last year or so has all been word of mouth and one big job from the sign in our front yard. we need to get a good domain as well. the only extra bit is an appointment booking system, where he can specify times that are open, and then it sends him an email to confirm or request a different time to get a quote for a project.

do you have someone on your team that can help with the back-end to make it easy enough a carpenter could do it?

other option is wix, looks like that would be around 25 to 30 a month and easy as pie. would rather support a small business though. I have small businesses, he runs one, etc.
 
Yes, I can't imagine not having a web presence for a company anymore. I actually think wordpress has a few decent, free appointment booking system plugins. If you want some help setting something up again, let me know!

And yeah, pick a good domain, there are so many TLD's to pick from now, go to town.
 
If it's simple, SquareSpace or WIX. If they want more control, Namecheap (domain name registrar) with their great (and cheap!) EasyWP service:

EasyWP

Namecheap has PremiumDNS for cheap:

Premium DNS Hosting | Namecheap.com

Namecheap's PremiumDNS hosting service offers security and resilience on one of the most robust DNS server platforms - for less than $5/year. Buy DNS now!
www.namecheap.com www.namecheap.com

Wordpress template kits are available online to suit the client's layout needs:

elements.envato.com

Template Kits - Envato Elements

Design without limits. Inspiring and ready-to-use graphic & web templates, fonts & assets. Unlimited downloads for a single monthly fee.
elements.envato.com

Free certs here:

Let's Encrypt - Free SSL/TLS Certificates

Let's Encrypt is a free, automated, and open certificate authority brought to you by the nonprofit Internet Security Research Group (ISRG).
letsencrypt.org

So the process is:

1. Get the domain & setup Wordpress
2. PIck a theme & fill out the website
3. Pay the monthly & annual fees until the end of time & tweak the website as needed!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

TRENDING THREADS

Back
Top