Website Design Options

Create a Post
Shayla

Shayla

WOW Framer
Forum Donor
Joined
Apr 5, 2008
Posts
35,836
Loc
Washington State
I've tried searching the archive, but wasn't able to bring up much.
The question is, do you manage your own web design or hire it out?
If you hire it out, do you use someone local or a larger provider, such
as the Yellow Pages option. So far, my boss has been using something
called HiBu, through the Yellow Pages, but I'm thinking about options.
 
It's not difficult (or expensive) to make a basic site. ;)

If you want bells'n'whistles then get a pro to code it. In particular if you want to take online payments.

As for design, best keep it simple and direct. Navigation should be easy and intuitive. We've all been to sites that are like a puzzle.


You can build the entire thing on your PC and then upload it.
 
Shayla, I have built two on my own. There's a learning curve, but once you get the hang of it, it's gratifying. A web site is a great way to bring in new business. Some suggestions are Wordpress.com, weebly, wix and I bet others have suggestions. Susan
ps:check out Bevelsmith and Ken Bauer's product. They cost a bit more than the ones that I mentioned, but will take away the learning curve frustration and get you going a bit faster.
 
Shayla,

Regardless if you use a full blown custom IT Designer or a Template website or a D-I-Y website.... (Each has benefits and weaknesses and various costs), however you want Content Management (Administrative control over changes and updates).

The idea is too keep your content fresh, updated and changing - People visiting your website like this and Search Engines like it too. :thumbsup:

First...determine your budget to see which route you can afford.

John
 
We designed and maintain our site with a now discontinued program, Adobe GoLive. “The” premier web site program these days is now Dreamweaver, a rather expensive program with a steep learning curve.

If you don’t have the time or interest to create your own web site, I would suggest going locally – even using a talented high school kid.

A large, well advertised web designer will certainly do a good job, but will be reasonably expensive. The major problem in dealing with a remote company is access to your designer. Trying to express your thoughts either on the phone or through e-mails can be very difficult. “No, I would like the menu to go ‘over there’, and that isn’t the font I had in mind to overlay that image on the left”, are just some of the difficulty in communicating your wishes.

In addition, a large company may have so many customers that responding to changes to your site may take days or even weeks to get done.

I have a friend who farmed out her commercial web site to a group in another state. She was unable to communicate her needs effectively so that her site was always a mess. One time when she had a date sensitive 15% off sale, the web site wasn’t updated until the sale date had expired.

IMO, you need to be able to sit next to the guy who is punching the keyboard and moving the mouse. That way you can tell him/her exactly where to place objects and text, and see the results immediately. IMO, a high school kid is exactly the person you need. And, they work cheap! (If you throw in a bag of Cheetos and some Coke, they will be your friend forever. :p)
 
Depending on what you need Google Sites may be an option.

My site is on the Google platform. ..on is a bit messy at present and needs some tidy up....

Nevertheless it is working very well for me attracting quote a few enquires ever week...

Once you figure out how it works it takes only minutes to add a page or change content...


http://www.google.com/sites/overview.html
 
BTW I agree with others these days a website is a big asset or can be to a business. ..most of the control needs to be in house. ..

Sort of like controlling you pricing in house...
 
Shayla,

I had a website a friend had designed back in 2000 for a web design class. She moved away with all of the stuff, and I was never smart enough to be able to go in and make any changes or updates. It was ok for 2000, but really needed to be updated and upgraded.

I started looking around for a template type website that would allow me to upload photos (once I learned how to do that), blog, link to social media (once I figured out how to do that), was simple enough for someone who is pretty computer dumb (me) to be able to work with it, had some sort of support people who could talk to pretty dumb computer type people like me, was affordable, didn't lock you into a contract, etc.

I recently started with Bevelsmith, which is a template type service designed with picture framing themes. This way you don't have to struggle with trying to figure out how to take a regular box template for - say - a florist shop - and make it into a site for a picture frame shop. I tried, and I was too dumb to figure out how to do that. Bevelsmith is flexible, easy to use, and even pretty computer dumb type people like me seem to be able to navigate it. I am still making changes - a little every weekend during dinner, but I am happy with where I am going and have had good support from Bevelsmith when I needed help in figuring out how to do things.

Ken Baur has some fine web services, too. His company can design a special site just for you and manage all of the set up, connections, etc. that you need to have done. Reasonably priced, too. Ken has had great success in internet marketing, so he knows what bells and whistles are needed. He is in our industry, is knowledgeable about what other companies are doing, and does great research to help keep his internet marketing spot on.
 
ha ha...I sat there pondering, now which forum should I put this on so they
won't feel it needs moving? Guess I picked wrong again. Thanks, all, for your
input, and I welcome more responses.
 
If you google Website Design by KB Consulting and go through a few pages, you will get quite a few exampes of the KB sites out there. If you go to the KB website it has the front page, but I believe not the whole site.

Bevelsmith is a PPFA member and will give you the first two months free if you are a PPFA member. That's sweet! The owner is very helpful and has been responsive to questions on forums.
 
We had ours designed through Ken Baur and are very happy with it. Any deficiencies are down to me not keeping it really, really current but it was set up for me to able to update and the Wordpress platform works well for that. Highly recommend it!
 
Reply with quote function not working tonight.

Bill said:

IMO, you need to be able to sit next to the guy who is punching the keyboard and moving the mouse. That way you can tell him/her exactly where to place objects and text, and see the results immediately.

Yes, this is vital. You must have control over your own site. I also had a bad experience years ago with an outside web designer who disappeared with my access codes. We use Dreamweaver, and also started with AdobeGoLive, which we miss, BTW. My web designer is in-house and has been working on our web site since about the year 2000. He has worked for us for 36 years, so you can't have him :-)
He works three days a week on graphics, newsletters, ads, restoration, and printing. This is money well spent. I used to know how to do a lot of updating with GoLive, but Dreamweaver is a cumbersome piece of software that is not well designed, IMHO, but does the job when you learn to use it properly.

You should know how to switch pictures, change text and prices, and so on, at a minimum. Also, if you don't know already, learn to straighten photos to get them ready for presentation on your site. Photo editing software like Photoshop or an entry level similar software is a must.

As others have said, Ken Baur creates excellent Wordpress type sites that you can edit yourself. If we were starting from scratch, I would get a site up and running with his help in a heartbeat.Then I would look into something more sophisticated from there.

Web sites are always evolving, or at least yours should be. We have goals for our site every year, and this year is no exception.
 
Kirstie has a good point that websites are always evolving. I made my new one less than 2 years ago and I'm ready for a fresh new look. Trends change and some things become passé. Folks spend big bucks and then can't afford to change the look. Being able to change up copy, your projects, hours is important. A stale website says a lot to a potential customer.
 
Early on, we were using Dreamweaver (I called it Nightmareweaver) I could not wrap my 1946 brain around it.

We now use bludomain.com . Their sites are designed for photographers, but we took one we liked and fashioned it to our business. It is very user friendly, easy to update and modify, and I CAN DO IT MYSELF! They also host the site.

Only downside....because it has "flash", it now doesn't work on all the new tablet and phone devises. We're looking at some of their new templates with more HTML.
 
susang said:
If you google Website Design by KB Consulting and go through a few pages, you will get quite a few exampes of the KB sites out there. If you go to the KB website it has the front page, but I believe not the whole site.

Bevelsmith is a PPFA member and will give you the first two months free if you are a PPFA member. That's sweet! The owner is very helpful and has been responsive to questions on forums.
Click to expand...

Just wanted to toot our own horn here a bit. We built Bevelsmith as a turn-key website solution specifically for picture frame stores, and have taken the pain out of building and managing your website. If you want to try it out, we offer an unlimited free trial (no credit card required) - sign up for an account at http://bevelsmith.com/sign-up and our system will build a default website for you in under 5 minutes. This way you can see how easy it is to change the website's theme, upload your own content and images etc. If you want to use the website for your business, you can upgrade to Pro and it's then $20/month.

For your reference, here are some of our recent clients:
http://baldwinartgroup.com
http://frameworksofutah.com/
http://ffslb.com

Also, I think some of your fellow framers put it best - Terry from the Mitered Corner said the following (and gave me permission to use this testimonial on our website - I'm working on putting it up now):

I am a very technology challenged person, and also not a fan of social media or marketing. I needed a way to create a website that was

a) easy enough that I could get it up and running in a fairly short period of time,
b) flexible enough that I could make frequent changes to it myself,
c) upload pictures and connect to social media places,
d) was cost effective for my budget, and
e) had people behind it with experience working with inexperienced people.

I found all of this, plus excellent customer service, with Bevelsmith.​

-Terry, The Mitered Corner, Seattle Washington
http://themiteredcorner.com

If you have any questions feel free to email me at kbrinner@bevelsmith.com - hope to hear from you soon!
 
susang said:
It looks like it is $20/month.
http://bevelsmith.com/pricing
I'm not sure if there are other associated costs for the domain name.
If you contact them, I'm sure that they would give you the info.
Click to expand...

Correct - $20/month includes all costs - hosting, website, support etc. You do have to register your domain with someone like GoDaddy, which shouldn't be much more than $10/year, but other than that there are no additional costs to using Bevelsmith.
 
Hi, Bevelsmith. Thank you for commenting.

As a babe in the woods with this stuff, I have a question.
I see that at least one of those sites you linked to has a Google map,
and I'm curious whether your software allows for this to happen,
or whether they had to set that bit up themselves.
 
Well, I can tell you how I embedded a Google map on our site. We have a "Directions" page that looks like this: https://www.collinsartworks.com/main/forms/Directions.php

The relevant lines of HTML to do it look like this:


[TD="class: webkit-line-content"] <center>
<iframe width="640" height="500" frameborder="5" scrolling="no" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" src=" https://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&so...achusetts+01510&t=m&z=14&iwloc=A&output=embed ">[/TD]

[TD="class: webkit-line-content"] </iframe>
</center>[/TD]

[TD="class: webkit-line-number"][/TD]

The part that matters most is the link to maps.google.com, which in this case is placed in a frame; it didn't have to be, but it lets you control the size and proportions of the map as you see fit. The parameters to the link (everything in blue after the "?") tell Google Maps the kind of map and location info that you want. Just change this part:hnear=18+High+St,+Clinton,+Worcester,+Massachusetts+01510 to your location and it should give you the corresponding map.

As a quick test, you can copy the link as-is (the blue text after src=), slap it into a tab in your browser, and you'll get the map. You can then tweak it in the tab until you get what you want, then copy the resulting URL back to the src= tag above to put in your site.

There are all kinds of things you can do with Google Maps (see https://developers.google.com/maps/), but this should get you started.

In our case, we center the map on our page (<center> ... </center>) but you don't have to.
 
Try magento websites, Very good for selling picture frames, mounts, mirrors etc, Easy to maintain and upload
 
shayla said:
Hi, Bevelsmith. Thank you for commenting.

As a babe in the woods with this stuff, I have a question.
I see that at least one of those sites you linked to has a Google map,
and I'm curious whether your software allows for this to happen,
or whether they had to set that bit up themselves.
Click to expand...

All you need to do to get the Google Maps embedded on your Bevelsmith website is to enter your address and we take care of formatting the Google Map based on your address. No technical knowledge required.

-Kristin
 
Create a Post
Back
Top