I’d recommend you look for a company that makes custom websites for a decent price. A lot of build it yourself website creators (especially webs.com) have simple, boring templates that don’t look too professional. To some people, the website makes a first impression so making it look professional could be important (depending on your customers).

also try reaching out to potential customers on craig’s list and direct them to your website

If you want to do something free…With The blogger platform and templates you can make what is in effect a very workable website. You don’t have to use it like a blog and you can make it look very professional.

Otherwise you would need to buy a domain name and acquire hosting which can be very cheap. If you go the blog route you can be up and running in no time.

What do you want the true function of the site to be? Will it be info on you and your business or are selling a item? Wordpress blog or blogger will work fine. Selling an item try freewebstore.com. I would not want it to look o fancy customers could assume you are too expensive. A basic template reworked with added images you have created will look just fine. the real thing with websites is how and where you want it to be seen. you will need keyword rich text witih thet sa me keyywords in the tags. Im no expert but have run many sites. Make a site and follow up youtube video with description rich in keywords post the youtube link on your facebook and twitter and you will be indexed quickly and this is how you work on getting in the search engines. fivver is great for getting images made if you dont have photoshop and other website related things needed. feel free to pm me if you have any ?s you might have for me. you will need to buy a domain name. google godaddy coupons, i’ll only pay $7.49 to .99 for a dotcom dont pay anymore than that. building the site is the easy thing getting it seen is where the magic is.

Your Old website Is still Up Aura , I had it bookmarked from back in the Awesome days of  the Galaxy Lounge , Why Can’t You just use it?

I can understand why you would want to change the name, but that is easy , right? other than that it is a kick ass site.

I am in the industry, and build E Commerce websites for a living, but from the sounds of it you just need a site that represents what you do without actually taking transactions.  That being said you most def can just build something yourself but there are a few things to consider

1. Mobile technology is taking over, in the last 3 years I have seen mobile traffic on my clients sites jump from 10% to over 50%, so you will want to cater to these people with a "Responsive Design" That is a design that responds to the device size that is attempting to view it, this will cost extra unless you know HTML and CSS.

2. Search Engines – It is imperative  that a website be found on them, otherwise no matter how nice the site is its useless if no one sees it, this too will cost money as this is something that MUST be done right, if done wrong you risk blacklisting the domain on the major Search Engines. SEO Factors include but are not limited to a proper keyword density, user experience, proper HTML tags and code (H1, Title Descriptions etc), Page load speed and a proper 301 redirect campaign if moving pages or restructuring the site.

3. Usability – Search Engines are taking User experience into consideration when ranking sites with their algorithms, so both the above points are essential to success, let alone if a potential client gets to your site and has a hard time finding what they are looking for or the page takes a long time to load, they probably will leave and find your competition.

4. Ever Fresh Content- The best way to accomplish this is with a blog, one or two content / keyword rich blog posts a month is plenty good enough to cover this.

as far as hosting, there are a number of affordable hosts out there, I recommend siteground, as you can get started for only a few dollars and they have pretty fast servers, my company uses them for our larger E Commerce Shopping carts that we do not want to host in house.

Wordpress is an excellent platform to use for a content management system, very SEO friendly and easy to work with even offering responsive themes for the right price. But as sated in a post above be careful doing it your self, First impression are everything.

In short you would be better off paying someone to design a professional looking website for you with all the above elements, Depending on how many pages it shouldn’t be too much, I mean this is your business, and when it comes to your business you shouldn’t pinch pennies.

Roughly speaking a 4-5 page responsive website will will run you around 900-1400 bucks (one time) from my experience, hosting will run another 2-300 a year.

If you have any questions about a quote or something you receive from any companies let me know Ill be glad to offer my opinion 🙂

I gave up on making a friendly web site as in my business most of the people that contact me are as stupid as can be, I have been sent 20,000 judgments and 2,461 of them
follow my instructions. If you have a simple product the advice above is perfect. I have a complex free service and tell the truth so most of my competitors lie. I have been damaged
by Prozac. Recovering to the point where I can write again, my method is to write great articles, post them on blogger, my web site, and each article does almost nothing but attract
people who can read and learn, only those who can read and learn qualify for my business…..  My business is unique and that’s why the advice above won’t’ help me – writing 1,000 more
articles is my plan, when I recover from prozack. I can write 420’d, blended, even wrote an article tripping on cactus, or a a beer. On prozac I could not spell my own name.
Fuck most doctors and dentists is what I learned.

Thanks for all the info. My business is all local thus business cards, truck signs, door flyers, word of mouth is 90% of my business. I may get a few customers doing a google search but thats not where I will find my loyal ones.
I’m just wanting a very simple website that I can list my email, phone number and services on. Many one or two pages with a few links. I’m not wanting to spend anywhere near a grand on this website.
I might just go simple and get the $99 yearly webs.com deal. This being a lawn care site is as basic as it gets. :smokebanana :weed-sign:

no worries Aura, not to beat a dead horse but, maybe you don’t get much business from the web because they cant find you, local business’s do the best on Search engines, due to the localization factor (  Buffalo NY  Breaks DJ  as opposed to breaks DJ – I am number one in google 🙂 I have the Search engines down to a science after doing this since about 1999 )  you see just breaks dj might have over 50 million results, but by putting my location in I have narrowed the competition down to say 120,000.  Not only have I narrowed the competition in the results, but I have increased me keyword density as well for my search terms I am targeting, but JB is right some businesses don’t warrant the need for SEO, and other just dont want to be bothered with it.

In any event best of luck bro, and the offer still stands if you want any advice from someone that makes a living in the industry, just ask, Ill be more than happy to offer advice or suggestions free of charge ;0)

Very cool of you bro. So regardless of what hosting or website I choose, they search engine results are a seperate entity correct? Your right regarding my online business, as if I could get myself positioned to be one of the top on google it could change everything. I may be shocked how many people looking for lawn care companies search online rather than phone book etc..

be sure to put your location on your web site, seo stuff, blog posts, online advertising, articles, and of course the awesome post by DJ-D-Phunk is spot on.
The smartest and nicest people I’ve met are on this forum and chat.

Very cool of you bro. So regardless of what hosting or website I choose, they search engine results are a seperate entity correct? Your right regarding my online business, as if I could get myself positioned to be one of the top on google it could change everything. I may be shocked how many people looking for lawn care companies search online rather than phone book etc..

basically yes, but not necessarily, there are some black hat hosting companies out there that after dirt cheap hosting and put your website on blacklisted IP address, so you never get a decent shot, this isnt a common practice, however I have ran across this a few times in the biz, usually by people that are looking for rock bottom cheap hosting, as with anything you get what you pay for . If you end up hosting on a blacklisted IP your screwed from the start

Siteground is legit, and affordable as a hosting company, I personally use hostgator for my freelance work, and I work for a hosting company lol (hostgators prices are better for me to resell)

Your Old website Is still Up Aura , I had it bookmarked from back in the Awesome days of  the Galaxy Lounge , Why Can’t You just use it?

I can understand why you would want to change the name, but that is easy , right? other than that it is a kick ass site.

thanks for your comment dawg! :weedspin