Freestart web design

[mikecotterill]

Keep getting phone calls of this company offering website design, apparently "hundreds" of tree surgeons have used them, so anyone have any experience? Cheers mike.

[Andy Collins]

No, like any other service, "dont call me, I'll call you" Plenty of choice out there

[mikecotterill]

normally im like that but they seem ok ive got three tree surgery websites theyve done and they seem ok. how much are people paying to either set it up or yearly renewal costs? cheers mike

[Breton monkey]

have a look at www.weebly.com i have built a small site that fills my needs with them, you build it yourself online, just drag and drop and upload your photos/type your text and its done, i built mine in an evening and it gets regular hits, its key word listed to be found on google too.

you get the site totaly free if you have weebly in the address, as i have, but you can buy the address to to have it personalised.

 

my site is www.jardins.weebly.com

 

i've kept my site very simple just to give a basic outline and contact point, in 2 languages, but you can build them alot more complex, i also have a site that i use as a gallery for my hobby and its more complex, lots of pictures and text on multiple pages with gallerys and a contact page. i do find the contact form on my work site very good.

Edited August 2, 2010 by Breton monkey

[cliffo]

Freestart Websites are usually quite cheep giving a good reason to purchase at £99 plus VAT! However once you become a new customer you will be provided with a control panel which will enable you to choose from 1 of 300 or so templates. Because these are templates you cannot change the design or the banner, which is the top portion of the website. Weeks later or even months in some cases you will be contacted by an account manager who will ask what your requirements are to see if he or she can identify yet another sale. A site map is usually the last resort sale as they will say this is required to enable a higher ranking on google at an additional cost between £25 to £50 or even £100 depending on the account managers sales targets at the time.

You will be quickly annoyed as this was not mentioned at the start and belive this is needed to gain decent traffic. Once you have a site map they may try to sell website terms and conditions and a privacy policy they say to protect you at a cost of £50 each sometimes free if you purchase an upgrade lol.

 

Weeks later they will call again to show you an upgraded website which may contain flash design or even a company logo on the site, this will cost you £25 for your own logo to be placed into the template and a flash banner i.e changing images which you supply for another £225.00 plus VAT !! oh they may throw in a bespoke colour change to your requirements free of charge otherwise thats another £150.00.

 

So when you have finally paid to upgrade your current website with all the additional extras and feel its great they will call you weeks or months later to show you a website ten times better than the one you were sold at a cost of anything up to £500 plus!!

 

When they have finished upselling on your website and feel they cant sell anymore to you they will offer you checkrate there own branded seal to say your website is safe to buy from backed by dun & bradstreet and credit safe!

 

I know this because I once worked for the company, what I will say is this. The websites freestart plc offer for the initial outlay are quite cheap compared to most in the market but there are the additional costs to consider when buying a website. Also make sure the website is compatible for what you want it to do ie ask if they do rss feeds and xhtml scripting and can you have access to the php files in order to achieve great seo or search engine optimisation results. My advice is to make sure you know exactly what you want and make sure this is what you ask for and how much the total will be to achieve this. Once you have this information look around for the best possible quote. Understand there are also other sites offering free websites on domains such as weebly.com etc but how effective are they really. Do people remember Website Builder - Build Your Website Anytime, Anywhere with Freestart or Start an online business without paying a cent. - Home and how does this effect the rankings on google or bing or yahoo. The URL or domain name is an important part of search engine friendly sites this you will learn Mr weebly user. Its one thing having lots of traffic to your website but what use is it when the word weebly is in your domain name and visitors to your site are looking for weebly and not a tree surgeon? relevence is more important than FREE. Its free for a reason!! Oh and please check your site as the language is not in english.

 

Lastly remember this, your website is your shop window. If it does not look good people will not come in. Having a good looking website is one thing but having it on page one of the search engines means VISITORS, SALES, MONEY.

 

Want to understand more about who is looking for your business then try the google adwords tool and type in the nature or service of your business and the area you wish to trade and google will tell you how many people searched for your business. Meta tags, meta title, description and keywords including keyword placement in the header and the footer of your page is vital not to mention alt tags on images etc... So please for your own good make sure you choose a company who knows what there doing and can get you listed in directories and search engines. Make sure the website provider can provide seo (Search Engine Optimisation) my last bit of advice for those who wish to build there own site, Its not what the search engines can do for you, its what you can offer the search engines that gets you ranked high.

 

Check out your site on Alexa the Web Information Company and see if your even on there!!

 

For further help goto http://www.seo4webs.co.uk:biggrin:

[ctiff]

I have been harrassed by this company also. I requested that they do not phone me again and I was promised on numerous occasions that they would block my number however they still called. I phoned the General Manager Alan Laithwaite to complain. He doesnt mind me advertising his number if you have any problems. 01942 406100 x291. He admitted there was a problem so feel free to contact him if you are receiving unwanted calls.

[NFG]

Hi

 

I work in IT, unfortunately its a trait of the industry that you get plagued with nuisance sales calls such as this.

 

Just politely ask them to remove you from their call list or you'll post on - select social network of choice - that they are annoying buggers

 

That usually does the trick

[AlvinD]

im pretty handy with websites ill set one up for you free of charge if you are stuck no problems like

[ash_smith123]

Try using http://www.wix.com its really easy to use!

[morten]

To quote someone else...

 

If You’re Not Paying for It; You’re the Product being sold

 

Or

 

There is no such thing as a free lunch