Marketing on the Web in 2022, Just Google It!
Updated: May 2, 2022
Being in business comes with its share of aggravation. Every day a business owner wakes up is a new day, full of ups and downs. As an owner you are responsible to your customers and your staff, how you deal with them sets the standard for your success or failure. Owning a business is more than just providing goods and services. In order to do this, you have to at some point deal with other businesses. The following is a little advice from someone that has had several businesses over the past 30 years. That's me, BTW.
A big part of running a business, and not entirely the fun part are sales and marketing. No sales, no business. Within the sales and marketing realm you have things like business cards, product lists and other materials. In this the era of technology, we also have social media, websites and other integrations. I myself manage a number of websites, like these for example; www.dtpcs.biz and www.cheftoolscanada.com
Websites are a essential to any business selling services or products. You can have someone do it for you, or you can do it yourself using products like WIX, wordpress and so on. It really depends how much you want to spend, and how much control you want over the site. I generally tell people to do it yourself, as the tools available in 2022 are pretty good...not all good though. In addition to the website itself are integrations like SEO tools, shopping carts and payment portals. This is where sometimes it's best to get a little help, the learning curve can be steep!
Now on to the purpose of this blog, choosing a good hosting platform. I will recommend a few platforms, and also some integrations to make the proccess fluid and workable. AdditionallyI will advise you on companies to avoid, stemming from my own personal experiences.
WEB HOSTING & INTEGRATION SUGGESTIONS
WIX WEBSITE HOSTING; www.wix.com This is a great company with a very sound and easy to use formula. You can have a domain and website fully operational in a matter of hours. This site is built on WIX. It's a little more expensive than say a standard hosting company, but the ease of use, is what makes it golden.
HOST GATOR & HOSTPAPA; I use both these platforms for the the following sites; www.professionalchefsfoodnetwork.org and www.scratchtours.org . Basic wordpress platforms which include a custom domain, website builder and some free integrations.
YOAST; www.yoast.com . This one is very important, because it helps with SEO, search engine optimization. It's how people find you in search engines like google. Where you stand on search engines is very important, it's how people find your site, and eventually buy products and services.
WHO TO AVOID "SCAM ALERT"
ELEMENTOR; This is a cloud based website design company that also sells a website builder utility, avaiable via most hosting companies. I don't advise using this company for a number of reasons. The first is poor customer service and lax response times. The learning curve is high, despite the fact they sell it as easy to use. It's cheap to sign up, $90 US to start, with an 30 day money back gaurantee.
GO DADDY; In my humble opinion, I think they are better of selling domain names and should have absolutely no business with hosting.
Their support is non-existent, server time-out rate is usually alarming, their marketing tactics are extremely annoying, to mention but a few.
I have tried out their normal hosting services without a good story, got hoodwinked into their managed WordPress hosting with another bad story, and now trying them out again on a low traffic website to see if the reply sent in by a user turns out to be true about my bad experience with their managed wp hosting.
SQUARE POS; With so many options avaiable today for website payment portals, do not use this company! I now use a Canadian based payment system; MONERIS. my grievance with SQUARE is ongoing, and I have pretty much given up. Hard pill to swallow, but lesson learned the hard way...I'm out $300. I'll never see this money, and like ELEMENTOR the customer service is terrible and impossible to navigate. Niether company has a contact phone number. How convenient!
I think that's enough for today folks, got my opinion out there! If any of you folks have any questions or are considering a website for your business, don't hesitate contacting me, advise is free...lol. Cheers, and have a great weekend!