Author Topic: Need a business website yesterday.  (Read 2287 times)

tyrannostache

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Need a business website yesterday.
« on: July 23, 2018, 02:08:34 PM »
Mustachian entrepreneurs, I need some quick advice. DH has a fledgling consulting business. Fledgling as in he doesn't even have a website yet. He has landed a ton of projects through word-of-mouth. Creating a solid, well-designed website was slated to happen at the end of next month.

One of his projects (a web-based data product) has come to the attention of an industry leader who wants to share it with a huge industry group in the next couple of days. If all goes well, he's about to be flooded with attention. Currently, he has a domain name, a logo, and web hosting (as his main products are data visualizations that live online). However, he doesn't have any other type of web page.

I'm thinking he needs to throw up a quick, basic homepage that, if nothing else, shares his contact info. Does that make sense? Is it better to have no presence at all or to have a very basic "coming soon/contact us ..." website?
What would you all recommend?

bluewater

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Re: Need a business website yesterday.
« Reply #1 on: July 24, 2018, 12:11:02 PM »
You can throw up a pretty slick, simple website in no time at all with squarespace.com (especially with a logo and custom domain already in place).  Unless you're really pressed for time my vote would be to get something up before that industry event.  Perhaps even simpler is to set up a landing page with unbounce.com or leadpages.com.  It's been a while since I've set one up myself but I imagine you could do some type of email capture to help build out a pipeline of leads. 

Chippewa

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Re: Need a business website yesterday.
« Reply #2 on: July 24, 2018, 01:01:18 PM »
Need a quick landing page - about.me is good.

That would buy some time to put up a good  site later. FYI, The Under Construction plugin on Wordpess is good when needed.

SeattleCPA

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Re: Need a business website yesterday.
« Reply #3 on: July 24, 2018, 10:51:05 PM »
You can make a really good looking site (IMHO) using wordpress as long as you buy a decent theme and spend some time throwing up a few pages.

BTW, I doubt you're going to get swamped with leads (in case that bit of pessimism ironically helps). But what you may get ( which will deliver really long term value) are links to your site.

I guess this is another way of saying a website marketing approach is really a marathon and not a quick sprint.

asosharp

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Re: Need a business website yesterday.
« Reply #4 on: July 25, 2018, 07:51:23 AM »
He/you can create a simple one pager.

Are you or your DH tech savvy in the web design realm? Just asking as I know a lot of techies but when it comes to website design they are an eyesore. There are a lot of WYSIWIG (what you see is what you get) WordPress themes which helps if either of you are graphic designers or at least somewhat design savvy.

You'd want to have web forms to generate potential leads at the industry event.

I hate to say this as well but Wix is an option for something super fast. I actually really hate Wix because not only is it a bit slow, it's also notoriously bad for SEO (techniques you use to get your website higher onto search engines like Google). However the plus of Wix is that it is super easy and simple to use as it is a WYSIWIG.

Then you can move on to a real web design.

Like SeattleCPA says, it's not a sprint. Website marketing is a marathon. I know cos it's my domain but I can understand why you would want to get something up quickly at least temporarily.

tyrannostache

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Re: Need a business website yesterday.
« Reply #5 on: August 03, 2018, 11:19:24 AM »
Thanks, y'all.

I have a very basic background in design, he has none (classic back-end techie). I'm putting up a super simple WordPress page. He's not doing any marketing yet--it's looking like word-of-mouth has him booked up through next summer.

Because he's in a relatively close-knit and specialized industry, I don't think web marketing is going to be a huge driver for him. I mainly want to make sure that anyone who sees the product at the industry event will be able to contact him easily.

Goodidea

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Re: Need a business website yesterday.
« Reply #6 on: August 22, 2018, 08:06:24 PM »
Wix is also a quick and easy option. I remember using their platform 10 years ago and it was awful and clunky. They've refined their product and it's now truly drag and drop simple. I'm impressed with the tech. That being said, it's not a professional development tool, but it's great for tech newbies. You can easily add a blog, contact forms, shop, etc. Easy to update, too.

CubicleWarrior

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Re: Need a business website yesterday.
« Reply #7 on: September 07, 2018, 08:28:14 AM »
@tyrannostache - how did it go? I've built a ton of wordpress sites. Happy to advise here if needed.