My website is up and running:
http://www.matanzima.com/
I don't expect to sell much off the site, but in this day and age its pretty much mandatory to have one.
This is the third small business site I've done, and was the easiest by far, so I thought I'd share my experience with some of the tools I used in the hope this info will be useful to others.
Domain registration and hosting is via Godaddy (http://www.godaddy.com/). They have good prices, and I've used them for a while for other sites and they are reliable and are ethical with their billing practices (as opposed to say CI Host, who would do things like tack on services and charge me without authorization, and continue to charge me after I cancelled the account... but thats another story).
So overall I'm happy with Godaddy - cheap and reliable. The only con is their user interface for managing the site settings - it looks like it was designed by a schizophrenic squirrel on speed. The only good thing is once the site is setup, then you don't need to look at that epileptic fit inducing interface again.
For my shop front and e-commerce I use Shopify (http://www.shopify.com/) and Paypal for credit card processing. Shopify is very slick - it took me all of 2 to 3 hours to put together that site - they have a ton of templates, which can be used out of the box, tweaked a little (what I did) or fully customized. I'm using the cheapest plan - $29 per month. There are cheaper options than Shopify, but for me I wanted something that was easy (I don't have time to spend hours and hours tweaking stuff) and looked decent, and I think shopify fits the bill
Everyones heard of Paypal - they're OK, but if I get a decent sales volume I will probably switch to a fully integrated shopping cart.
For email I use the free, small business edition of Google apps (http://www.google.com/apps/). This gets me myname@mydomain.com, using gmail as a client. So I can have 2 tabs open in my browser, one with my personal gmail account, and one with my business email. I have an Android phone, and likewise I can get and reply to both my work and business email accounts from my phone.
I also use Google Voice through google apps. That way I have a business phone number that rings my cell phone that is separate from my personal number. Using Google voice on my phone I can also dial out using the GVoice number for business calls, and the business voice mail has a separate greeting and mail box. So far this all works great, and you can't beat the price
http://www.matanzima.com/
I don't expect to sell much off the site, but in this day and age its pretty much mandatory to have one.
This is the third small business site I've done, and was the easiest by far, so I thought I'd share my experience with some of the tools I used in the hope this info will be useful to others.
Domain registration and hosting is via Godaddy (http://www.godaddy.com/). They have good prices, and I've used them for a while for other sites and they are reliable and are ethical with their billing practices (as opposed to say CI Host, who would do things like tack on services and charge me without authorization, and continue to charge me after I cancelled the account... but thats another story).
So overall I'm happy with Godaddy - cheap and reliable. The only con is their user interface for managing the site settings - it looks like it was designed by a schizophrenic squirrel on speed. The only good thing is once the site is setup, then you don't need to look at that epileptic fit inducing interface again.
For my shop front and e-commerce I use Shopify (http://www.shopify.com/) and Paypal for credit card processing. Shopify is very slick - it took me all of 2 to 3 hours to put together that site - they have a ton of templates, which can be used out of the box, tweaked a little (what I did) or fully customized. I'm using the cheapest plan - $29 per month. There are cheaper options than Shopify, but for me I wanted something that was easy (I don't have time to spend hours and hours tweaking stuff) and looked decent, and I think shopify fits the bill
Everyones heard of Paypal - they're OK, but if I get a decent sales volume I will probably switch to a fully integrated shopping cart.
For email I use the free, small business edition of Google apps (http://www.google.com/apps/). This gets me myname@mydomain.com, using gmail as a client. So I can have 2 tabs open in my browser, one with my personal gmail account, and one with my business email. I have an Android phone, and likewise I can get and reply to both my work and business email accounts from my phone.
I also use Google Voice through google apps. That way I have a business phone number that rings my cell phone that is separate from my personal number. Using Google voice on my phone I can also dial out using the GVoice number for business calls, and the business voice mail has a separate greeting and mail box. So far this all works great, and you can't beat the price
(not sure why hes clapping, I suppose it is appropriate.. I just like smileys hehe)
