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How to start a low-risk web business

Posted on 14 Apr 2009 at 11:01

If you can't afford or don't want a dedicated web designer, it's possible to go it alone. At the very basic end of the scale, services such as Microsoft's Office Live (www.officelive.com) and Google Sites (http://sites.google.com) allow you to build rudimentary, template-driven sites that require no technical expertise. But they're the business equivalent of MySpace pages: they all look similar, offer little flexibility, and you can forget about e-commerce features. They're a quick way for bricks-and-mortar businesses to get a web presence, but certainly not an option for anyone looking to make a living online.

Moving a rung up the complexity ladder, site-builder services from hosting companies such as 1&1 (www.1and1.co.uk) offer more advanced features, such as the option to include online stores, blogs, promotional tools and full visitor statistics. These, too, are usually template-driven, but a little more elaborate than the Microsoft and Google freebies. Be aware that although prices start from less than £10 a month, extras such as dedicated SSL certificates for e-commerce and search engine optimisation cost extra. They also lock you in to that particular hosting company - transferring your website and store front to another provider won't be easy, if not impossible.

Another possibility is building a site using a ready-made platform, such as blogging software WordPress. Although it's best suited to sites that are producing content they hope to sell advertising around, there are WordPress plug-ins that allow you to put store fronts on your blog. "You can structure quite large websites round WordPress - for example, www.electricpig.co.uk is based round WordPress, but they have put a lot of effort into making it work," said Simon Brock, PC Pro's contributing editor and CEO of web hosting company Wide Area Networks. "Very few companies can structure their site round a blog, however."

A dedicated Content Management System (CMS) offers the maximum flexibility and scope to design a bespoke, fully featured website. It needn't cost the earth either: open-source CMSes such as Drupal (http://drupal.org) and Joomla (www.joomla.org) are free and power many commercial websites, including our sister site www.mobilecomputermag.co.uk. The CMS stores all the website's text, photos and videos in its database, and provides forms for entering new articles on to the website, making it easier for employees who aren't fully versed in HTML to update the site.

However, Brock warns that setting up a CMS requires technical nous. "I think the real issue here is total cost of ownership," he explained. "Expecting a small business to go out and install their own CMS if they're not technical people isn't a good idea. There are ISPs out there that provide managed solutions for some of the well-known CMSes, but again there's quite a learning experience to go through."

Sites looking for software that can not only be used to design a decent shop front, but can also offer advanced stock management and order-processing facilities might be better off with a commercial package such as Actinic Business (web ID: 212469). The software costs £799 exc VAT, with payment gateways costing another £100 per year.