Florist News

Hi All

I hope you are all well? I need your help. Does anyone know of a good free website design package/template. I have looked at someone designing my website, but money I feel can be spent on other things.

I would also grateful if anyone could advise me with regard to web hoasting.

Many thanks
Ian

Hi Ian

For making your own website take a look at www.joomla.org, this is what we used to make www.floristnews.co.uk.

For web hosting we use www.one.com, they have all the features, 24/7 live support and cheap

Hi Admin

Thanks for your advice. I have have looked a different packages to create the website. I have done my own due to the price. Please have a look and let me know what you think.

Regards
Ian

www.ijfloraldesigns.co.uk

Looks great Ian!

Maybe on the contact page and on the bottom of all pages you should add your address and phone number.

and also think about online ordering in the future.

Nice work

You're off to a good start Ian and 100% up on everyone else who is thinking about doing it 'one day'. The site is neat and tidy (unlike my own!) and gives a good impression. I must agree with admin, you should have a contact phone number and invite prospective customers to call for a free informal chat. You need the initial contact with someone so that you can then sell yourself.

Other thing I noticed;
It loads fine in Firefox.
Internet explorer seems to drop the body text below the level of the menu but only on the 'baloons' page. I need to scroll down to see the text and at first thought i was still waiting for the page to load.
AOL's browser does the same thing on 'wedding gallery, funerals, baloons'

there must be something in the layout or in the browser compatibility settings to cause this. Maybe someone else is a bit more clued up than i am.

Good luck with the site

Hi Fly2hi

Thank you so much for your feedback. I was really encouraging. I recently did a wedding fayre at a local hotel and met other companies, their websites are so modern and out of this world.

Thank you once again.

Take Care
Ian

Hi Ian,


We looked at website design a good few months ago and I was discouraged by the price that professional designers were costing.

I seeked advice and I bought a package called Actinic. You can download a free trial from www.actinic.co.uk. This way you can play around before you buy. This was by far the easiest one to set-up, manage and mantain that I trialed.

You can see it on www.myflorist.ie . This set up (although basic) works very welll and generates good orders.

The message I would give you is simplicity is the key - the more easier to use and quick uploading a website is, the mor likely your customer is to use it! If itas too fancy with too many pictures, slidijg images, sound effect and all that tripe the more likely your customer will be slowed down and log off. (Research has shown that you have 6 seconds for your site to load before your punter gets bored and goes elsewhere).

I am set up with Wiser web hosting who host my site for me and I do all the uploading, changing , etc myself, saving many Euros.

Hope this helps
Gareth

Hi Ian
You could also have a look at;
www.1and1.co.uk

If you sign up for a hosting package..which you're going to need anyway, you get free software to design your site. I started with Netobjects Fusion (i think version 7, but have since upgraded to 8, the current version is 9 but heard a whisper that 10 was on the way. I hadn't done any web design before and basically didn't have a clue where to start. It took a while to get the hang of it, but the easiest way is to set yourself a task and find out how to achieve it (much like floristry). I can't say it's the best package as i haven't used any other, but it works for me and has all the features.

Hope this helps