Starting up a website....HELP!

Erin Price wrote the perfect article for you, Tonya: Designing a Website: What to do Beforehand.

I have some people you can talk to. We can wait until the 5th at your hosted event or feel free to call me.

David

If you want to learn the basics of putting together a website, along with the tools that make it easy and inexpensive, come to the workshop I'm giving this Friday, 2/29 at Seattle SCORE. It's called, Build Your Website. No Muss, No Fuss. It's only $25, and it will help you avoid a lot of expensive mistakes. Visit http://www.blockbeta.com/events for more details.

Tonya, I'd love to sit down with you and chat about what your looking for. Let me know if you'd be interested in a free consultation.

Best, Erin

P.S. Dan, thank you for the reference to my article.

Sorry you can't make it. I'm teaching the same class on June 11th at the NW Women's Business Center in Everett, but it may be too far out for you time wise. I'm teaching something similar on April 4th, called "Tackle Your Website." It's also at the NWWBC, but this time in Marysville. I add new classes all the time and let people know about them through my monthly newsletter. Sign up for it if you like at my site.

Tonya,

you likely only need something basic that you can edit yourself. check out my bizibeefloral.com website and tell me what you think.. click the pics..see how they get big? that's wordpress gallery 2 in action..wordpress has a lot of plugins..and it will save you lots of headaches and potentially lots of money in admin costs.

this is because a wordpress based site can be administered by you! you don't have to know any code. the software itself is free..

your first step is to obtain a url from Godaddy or Namecheap.com (my favorite)..once you purchase that, you need hosting..Dan can host you on the Biznik server if you'd like to support the cause. However, i can't say enough nice things about fellow biznik Jeevan. With him hosting is only 49.95 a year, and i can get you a code to get 3 months free.

when your hosting account is open, just send the nice folks at Wave an email, and they'll install Wordpress for you. while you are waiting for that, google "free wordpress templates"..if you see one you like, download it..and then get in touch with me. i'll be happy to show you what to do from there. basically, my guess is you are exactly 12-24 hours away from having your own site while only having spent 10$ for a url for a year...and $50 for hosting which you don't even pay for 3 mos..how's that sound?

do be aware there may be costs after that, but you'll be able to focus your dollars on what really matters if you want to stand out on the web: quality content.

good luck Tonya and feel free to hit me up for more info! be glad to buy you some coffee some time.

good luck, Justin

Tonya - Greetings from the Cap Hill Coldwell Banker location!

Not sure how JLS operates, but at Bain, we have discounted services thru Advanced Access, Superlative and a few other web possibilities that are specific to our industry.

Could you use Wordpress? Yes, but few agents have the time, knowledge or patience to diddle-around with creating and worse yet, maintaining a live site. You are constantly looking for updated content, loading photos of "featured homes" and the like. Do you really have the time when you're supposed to be out showing and preparing docs, to maintain this important piece of marketing? Do you have an assistant? Does s/he speak like you do so that the information appears seamless in a blog or on the site? Something to consider.

In our specific office, my boss has hired me to do the marketing for 65 agents. This means flyers, postcards, photos, fix computer related issues and oh ya, WEBSITES too! Perhaps your office has someone like me to do this for you and you won't have to deal with it at all.

I can only personally encourage you to choose something that is specific to our industry as it will have already built-in sections specific to the trade and the templates are going to be easier to use than those without the trade specialty or language built-in.

Very best of luck to you... Rita

Hi- I wrote a program called Creating Heart-Centered Websites, and Kathy Mallary of SpiritSpring interviewed me. You may want to listen to it. It was about an hour, but I think it helps to give you some real clarity about how to create a website that really connects.

Kathy Mallary intervew with me on Creating Heart-Centered Websites.

Let me know if you have any other questions. Oh, I also wrote this article: What in the heck does go on your business' home page?

Hi Tonya

I built websites and wrote web-based software for the real estate industry for 3 years.

The thing that many business people (even high-level ones) forget when designing a website is that their website is not a book or a brochure, it's a shop. The best design is one that shows people exactly what they are looking for when they come into your shop. How many sites have we all visited where the prices are either hard to find, buried in a submenu, or not given until checkout time? A shop would never function this way. Prices should always be clearly displayed, as should any other information that the customer (not 'user') will be looking for.

As a real estate agent, most people will be visiting your site to find out what properties you have for sale. So these should be on your front page. Ideally this information will be displayed dynamically, i.e. coming from a database that you maintain on a daily basis. However this is the more expensive option in terms of implementation. The alternative is to build the page in static HTML, however this is more time-consuming to maintain and you may have to get your PA trained in HTML.

If you have too many properties for one page, you could have a search form on your front page (in which case you will definitely need a database), or you could have some icons or image links for categories of properties, e.g. 'Residential', 'Commercial', 'Industrial', 'Rentals', etc. that click through to lists of those properties.

The goal is to make it easy for people to find what they are looking for. Some of your customers will be looking for your listing services, so put an obvious 'List your property with me' link on your front page as well, and it would also be wise to have your listing contracts available on the website for people to read. Look for points of difference from other agencies such as simplicity and openness.

Good luck, and by all means let me know if you require any further assistance.