Website help! One on one?

[Emily Case]

My website is with weebly, I don't think it looks cheap at all and the majority of my clients choose me above others in the area because of it. Most of my new clients find me on Google so it can't be that bad...

www.tiptoenails.weebly.com

 

[lwasdall]

Is weebly free? Or how does it work?

 

[fewleh]

My website is with weebly, I don't think it looks cheap at all and the majority of my clients choose me above others in the area because of it. Most of my new clients find me on Google so it can't be that bad...

TipToe Nails - TipToe Nails

Yours is actually not too bad. You can see you have spent some time on it. The SEO is not great, but it's not terrible. With a bit of work you could sort that out. (Better page titles, add your place name into the titles etc, meta info).

Any time I see a 'free website created by xxxx' type logo on the bottom of the page, it gives me the impression it's just a one man band working as a mobile therapist .. just doesn't give a professional feel.. but maybe it's because I'm in the know, and look at these sorts of things. To most, it probably doesn't matter. It's good as a basic text & pictures site, but there's not much else you can do. No 'sign up for our newsletter' that builds you a marketing list for you to email.. no slideshows.. videos.. no 'leave us feedback' type modules that would let people leave feedback on the site for you to then 'approve' or 'disapprove' .. which you can connect to facebook, and therefore auto populate your facebook with live feedback left on your site.. there are a multitude of tools you can integrate into your site using a CMS, but not from one of these 'fixed' web builders. But still.. it's not bad, and get's something out there at least.

 

[Emily Case]

Well, I am a one man band and I was a mobile therapist until last month so I guess I'm doing just fine

There are slideshows in my gallery, and 2 videos on the website about Shellac and Enhancements.

There are links that people can click to see my Facebook and that's worked well

I'm happy with it, considering I'm not a web designer! Thanks for the advice.

xx

 

[fewleh]

Well, I am a one man band and I was a mobile therapist until last month so I guess I'm doing just fine

There are slideshows in my gallery, and 2 videos on the website about Shellac and Enhancements.

There are links that people can click to see my Facebook and that's worked well

I'm happy with it, considering I'm not a web designer! Thanks for the advice.

xx

As I suspected

No, you have done a good job there to be fair.. but a lot of people don't have the time, or the inclination to work out how to do that. They just copy and paste some text into it from Microsoft Word, and think it's job done! Add your location into your title tags, and you will get a noticeable bump in the search results.. and create a Google places listing if you haven't already. Those are some good steps. Might be a good idea to buy your domain name now.. even if you don't use it for a year.. as Google doesn't like brand new domains (you won't rank well for a while). Let it age a bit, like a good wine. i.e. tiptoenails.co.uk at the moment you're running off a weebly subdomain

 

[Jen889]

No you started with a blog and turned it into website.

I am not disputing this is what people do with WP, web designers too, if it fits the bill then use it, but for someone with no CMS knowledge and if your server does not supply a one click install then it can be quite difficult to even install for someone with no knowledge, and if you want to create your own bespoke design then this is not the way to go (unless you have time and are ready for a massive learning curve)

CMS's are fine if you have someone design, install for you and all you are interested in is updating text through the WYSIWYG editor.

As for the SEO of sites, Free, Cms or whatever then you have to play the googlebot game. Like fewleh mentioned google places is a must. but there is plenty more to go off than just that to reach page1 slot 1 in the organic search, all quite easy and straight forward too. But I am not going into a JK Rowling mode and hijacking the thread.

What I had quoted from you wasn't a direct quote if you know what I mean. I was simply trying to let those know that Wordpress is pretty easy and they have some nice templates. I don't use any templates for mine as I said my boyfriend did my website from scratch. Wordpress was simply easy for me to use and he saved me money as I was spending a fortune a month on my old one (this is almost two years ago). Obviously your going to be a little biased on anything free, templates etc as most web designer/techs are but I think it's just easier to let people be, give advice and not shoot them down. Most don't have ££ to get a custom site right away. 😄😄

 

[Jack Shaw]

What I had quoted from you wasn't a direct quote if you know what I mean. I was simply trying to let those know that Wordpress is pretty easy and they have some nice templates. I don't use any templates for mine as I said my boyfriend did my website from scratch. Wordpress was simply easy for me to use and he saved me money as I was spending a fortune a month on my old one (this is almost two years ago).

Yes but you are giving bad advice and ermm contradicting yourself a little, you say you find WP easy to use but your web designer boyfriend made the website from scratch for you, if you read back through my post I have already stated that if you have no knowledge about WP or any other CMS without a one click install then it will need time & knowledge to install or update, CMS is not something you can download, install and have a working website for your business, the directory structure of any CMS alone can be a nightmare, then what happens if you delete a ",):']}; by mistake from one of the endless php files CMS use's, your site may not work, will anyone with no knowledge know how to correct this.

Obviously your going to be a little biased on anything free, templates etc as most web designer/techs are but I think it's just easier to let people be, give advice and not shoot them down. Most don't have ££ to get a custom site right away. 😄😄

Yes maybe I am biased, my point being you do not get a sparky to fix a leaking tap, web design is cheap enough and will free up time for a "Beauty Therapist" to concentrate on what they are good at, not sat behind a computer trying to build something they have no knowledge of doing.

In one of my previous posts I mentioned if I started a new thread stating I am going to start in Beauty with no qualifications or professional development I can put my last £1 that I would be screwed a new ahole, so why is it any different for me to give advice on something I know to someone who doesnt.

Not at one point have I shot anyone down personally, I have plenty to say about Free web builders and for you to understand why, then have a quick read of this pdf

Back End code of Free Web Builders

Basically in the pdf I have shown that a free web builder site used 7 pages of code where, I got the same results in 2pages, of that 2 pages the twitter feed code took up 40% of the code, so it could be reduced even further.

 

[Jen889]

Yes but you are giving bad advice and ermm contradicting yourself a little, you say you find WP easy to use but your web designer boyfriend made the website from scratch for you, if you read back through my post I have already stated that if you have no knowledge about WP or any other CMS without a one click install then it will need time & knowledge to install or update, CMS is not something you can download, install and have a working website for your business, the directory structure of any CMS alone can be a nightmare, then what happens if you delete a ",):']}; by mistake from one of the endless php files CMS use's, your site may not work, will anyone with no knowledge know how to correct this.




Yes maybe I am biased, my point being you do not get a sparky to fix a leaking tap, web design is cheap enough and will free up time for a "Beauty Therapist" to concentrate on what they are good at, not sat behind a computer trying to build something they have no knowledge of doing.

In one of my previous posts I mentioned if I started a new thread stating I am going to start in Beauty with no qualifications or professional development I can put my last £1 that I would be screwed a new ahole, so why is it any different for me to give advice on something I know to someone who doesnt.

Not at one point have I shot anyone down personally, I have plenty to say about Free web builders and for you to understand why, then have a quick read of this pdf

Back End code of Free Web Builders

Basically in the pdf I have shown that a free web builder site used 7 pages of code where, I got the same results in 2pages, of that 2 pages the twitter feed code took up 40% of the code, so it could be reduced even further.

I wasn't really giving advice, i was simply stating it's easy to use. I fully understand what your saying about WP and CMS. i'm going to say let's agree to disagree :hug:

 

[Jack Shaw]

I wasn't really giving advice i was simply stating it's easy to use. I fully understand what your saying about WP and CMS. i'm going to say let's agree to disagree :hug:

Ok but I dont know what I am supposed to be agreeing to disagree on

 

[sophiegees]

I use to build my own websites. Then I found weebly and use them. In my opinion they are great. You can do so much including accessing the HTML if you want to change things at this level. If you don't mind a 'made by weebly' which is tiny on the bottom of the page then it is free. You can buy a domain name separately and link it into weebly too. I use easily for this and it is £10 for 2 years. Or you can pay about £3 a month and have up to 10 websites with no 'weekly' bit at the bottom.

No problem with SEO and renders well on mobiles and iPhones/iPads. Had no problems getting my sites to the top of google.

 

[topaz1]

I follow lots of these type of posts. I would really like a proper website, but cannot afford it at the moment. The website I have is ok, and by taking as much from the advice posted on here as I can with my limited abilities I have improved it no end. My page rankings are improving on google. Sometimes unfortunately we have to make the most of what we have, when it comes to websites.
At the end of the day we need to concentrate on doing our day jobs as that is what brings in the money, and gets us free recommendations from satisfied clients. xx