Assistance needed to start a website for Catholic bookstore

[crusader4life]

I need help on how to start building a good website. I’m helping out the local Catholic bookstore advertise their presence and I’ve been having a hard time figuring out where to get started. I’d rather not pay for the site unless I absolutely have to. Any help would be appreciated! Thanks.

 

[turboEDvo]

There is a wonderful program called NetObjects Fusion that makes building a website very easy. It’s pretty cheap, and great for DIY’ers. Are you planning on making a section for online sales?

Eamon

 

[Melissa]

Are you building a site or looking to create advertising (banners, for example)?

Either way, I’d avoid the packaged build-a-site stuff, as they bloat the code something ferocious. I’m mostly self-taught w/ html, but if you’ve got pop-up blockers, you can take a look at a sample that I’m working on for my parish here. The links don’t actually work, because I’m writing the code to match the final site, rather than have functionality where I’m working on it. If you like that page and it looks along the lines of what you’re after, PM me.

 

[jeffreedy789]

just a word of wisdom from someone who worked in christian retail for many years:

be sure that your site has the ability to really examine a book - a la amazon - where you can see the back cover, first couple pages, etc. people are not likely to buy what they can’t check out.

 

[crusader4life]

turboEDvo:

There is a wonderful program called NetObjects Fusion that makes building a website very easy. It’s pretty cheap, and great for DIY’ers. Are you planning on making a section for online sales?

Eamon

Yes, a section of the site will be for online sales. (We got a large selection of Catholic books and supplies, and a couple of people that make quality hand-made rosaries.) Like I said before, we’d also like to get our presence known. We’re in rural Montana, and we depend on some-sort of communication for people to be aware of us.

Thank you all for your help so far. I’ll keep away from build-me (or whatever) websites and remember the front-to-back book viewing tip.

 

[Seven_Sorrows]

crusader4life:

I need help on how to start building a good website. I’m helping out the local Catholic bookstore advertise their presence and I’ve been having a hard time figuring out where to get started. I’d rather not pay for the site unless I absolutely have to. Any help would be appreciated! Thanks.

well it just depends what you are looking for. Are you trying to sell alot online? cause you won’t sell too much without a good website…and there are a ton of catholic bookstore websites, or are you just trying to advertise for the business? cause a bad looking website won’t make the business look too professional. Yes you can learn webdesign on your own…but just to build a decent site (if you totally know what you are doing) takes about 40-60 hours. If you don’t, well then you will spend weeks and weeks, just to get a crappy looking site…hahahaha. And if you don’t have any software…then you won’t be doing too good either, so you could either spend money to buy software and a ton of time, or pay someone. Depends what you are looking for. you can check out my site www.sevensorrows.com we used sixthelementdesign.com/ which is a catholic webdesigner that is wayyyy cheaper than other ones. If you check him out, tell him we sent you and he will hook you up.