I LOVE MY WEBSITE
I am besotted with my new website.

I am not a web designer or builder, but can cobble together an adequate website on a number of different platforms. I know my way around the templates and plugins of Wordpress and have completed some courses, although I have very limited html knowledge.

My business website was created for me by a business mentor in 2014 on Google sites and was as basic as it could be – but even then I had challenges making it look anything but ordinary.

It’s been on my list for a while to upgrade it and take it elsewhere and I had my thoughts on Wordpress. The site had been sadly neglected and did not really reflect my business direction or offerings, but I couldn’t get motivated to do anything about it. So, wordsolutions.com.au languished.

My original website had a lot of flaws. It didn't really represent who I am now in business and had some security issues. I've had it on my list to update and move it to Wordpress or similar, but it was always put on the back burner because I thought it would take too much time and be too hard.

I explored paying someone to do it, but I don't have a big budget and sometimes you don't know what you'll get and whether you can manage it after it has been set up.

With the holiday break I was able to take some time to review my website. I'd talked to a few people, looked at some designs I liked and knew, basically, what I wanted. This is not an ad for Google's new sites - it's more an explanation that if you take the time and do some research anything is possible.

Google's new sites are pretty basic. You can't do fancy stuff but it's also easy to manage. When I outgrow the platform I'll definitely look at other options but for the time being it's working for me for the next 12 to 18 months (fingers crossed!). But it was easy for me to update my old tired and boring website to the new Google sites format, just by the click of a button, and then all I had to do was to tidy up and create new papers and make it look more interesting - I hope I managed that, but even if no one else thinks so, I like it - a lot....

Updating my website has also motivated me to start up a newsletter and to start blogging again. I've even figured out how to embed my blogs into the new website - go me!

I am a solopreneur - it's difficult when you work on your own to bounce ideas off others. When I jumped up and down with glee after I got some simple stuff happening on my newly designed website and told my husband how thrilled I was he just nodded politely. He's not technically inclined, preferring machinery to computers and didn't understand one word of what I was talking about!

For business owners setting up on their own, websites still provide a great window to your enterprise. There are many other ways to get you noticed and get your offerings out there, but a website is still an essential part of this visibility.

There are some affordable options out there and these are well worth exploring. A simple Wordpress site can do the trick or you can play around with Google's new sites - but whatever you do, do something. Even if you're not sure about whether or not you will create a website just yet, think about purchasing your business's domain name (the www.yourbusinessname.com or .com.au etc) just in case someone else thinks about taking the name.

One of the services I'm happy to provide, because I write, is website content creation, blog writing and workshops on how to do all this yourself.

For hints and tips about small business stuff join my on FACEBOOK and sign up for my NEWSLETTER. Oh, and don't forget to check out my new WEBSITE!

(c) Nan Berrett - Word Solutions
28 December, 2018


Location: South Australia, Australia

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