Wreckers

Hey guys

My sister is wanting to set up a website for her small business (she makes candles) and was trying to reduce costs by finding something free/affordable that she could do herself... Or that she could palm off on me to do lol

She's basically just wanting a site she can display her stock on, with her contact details/some pics etc and a checkout where people can use paypal/ccards.

Was wondering if anyone here has experience in that sort of thing, or knows of a decent site or two I could check out to get the ball rolling for her.

Any help that anyone can provide would be appreciated

Hi Mica,

A few thoughts:

1. Wordpress (blog) has a lot of options, including things that look like a pretty regular website.

2. a CMS (content management system) is the other way to go. Joomla is very popular (I use it myself - I'm doing one for my wife at the moment www.missbobbysocks.com ) and has templates, many for free or low cost (and Joomla itself is free).

Both of these require a webhost and some knowledge of how to edit and put stuff up and administer it etc.

So...

3. Faecbook. Facebook lets you setup a shop. It handles pretty much everything, which is nice. https://www.facebook.com/pages/Open-a-s ... 1425045820 The downside is that people have to go to Facebook.

4. Then you have services like http://www.wix.com/ which let you build websites - the more functionality etc, the more you pay, but it's not too bad at all.

5. If you or she don't want to be doing a lot of work or admin, then it may also pay to get a professional to do it or go and really learn your way around Joomla or Wordpress or the like.

This is really just an overview for you. It's not easy because once you start you'll want more functionality and you do need something that looks OK to get customers.

If you have specific questions I can try to answer. Bear in mind I'm not a pro web designer

Facebook does a store? Nice to know. I'll look at that to start and have a poke around at the others you suggested.
Most of her customers come through her facebook page already so that little extra convenience might be all she's looking for and I know she doesn't have more than 2 mins to herself every week lol 2 at home business and 3 kids..

Cheers.

My Wife Runs her Business online - http://www.theindigoshaman.com/

Uses Yola as Host/Domain etc (cos she didn't want it running on my server
Uses Facebook, G+, Twatter to get word out etc
Uses Wordpress for Blogging
Uses Chimpmonkey or something like that for news letters
Uses Etsy for her Shop

For my Work website, they use Joomla (as suggested by Creac). Its functional etc, but to actually use the 'software', you do need to read the instructions, and incorporating any custom code becomes painful. And as also mentioned, you do need your own host for Joomla, whereas Yola provides this.

Yola Free Accounts, you get a free domain (xxxx.yola.com), Or you can purchase one through them. They host your site for free, but your limited to bandwidth etc, and the 'templates' you can use for the site.