Easiest website to set up?

[Lucan Unlordly]

I've a customer/friend who's been offered the opportunity to sell a simple garden product in the area he lives. The aim is to target customers through personal contacts, leaflet drops etc., supported by a basic website. A few nice images, some product specs, area covered, phone numbers and email.

It's not a project worthy of much investment so I may be asked to assist with the web stuff and whilst I'm ok with Corel Draw and graphics, editorial copy and a bit of sales spiel I want to avoid having to learn any level of web design and be driven to consider shopping carts and fanciful additions. WIX, I'm told, will do a job, but will bombard you with how to make your site better in ways that are not needed here.

Any suggestions welcomed?

 

[ctrlbrk]

The reason why WordPress is used by 43% of all websites on the internet is its user friendliness.

 

[fisicx]

Wix will do the job if as you say you can ignore the endless marketing.

But get some cheap hosting and install Wordpress. It will give you a lot more flexibility.

Or even create a free site on Wordpress.com. About a simple as it gets.

 

[antropy]

WordPress is great ... if you don't mind it being slow and getting hacked ?

Paul.

 

[fisicx]

WordPress is great ... if you don't mind it being slow and getting hacked ?

Only if you do stupid things.

 

[antropy]

Only if you do stupid things.

The type of things a noob would do ...

To add to the Wix comment, Squarespace might be good for such a simple site.

Paul.

 

[fisicx]

The type of things a noob would do ...

An out the box install with one of the free themes is secure and speedy. You have to put in some effort to make it insecure (like using a weak password).

However this is irrelevant to the question. @Lucan Unlordly is not a noob and I’m sure would ask for help if needed.

 

[antropy]

An out the box install with one of the free themes is secure and speedy. You have to put in some effort to make it insecure (like using a weak password).

Not true, we started using WP for our Intranet and it was awfully slow without a few caching extensions, and even then it was pretty awful.

@Lucan Unlordly is not a noob

"I want to avoid having to learn any level of web design"

Paul.

 

[wayzgoose]

If they want to sell a few bits from it, try Freewebstore.

 

[ctrlbrk]

WordPress is great ... if you don't mind it being slow and getting hacked ?

Paul.

What's a more secure option then?

 

[Lucan Unlordly]

However this is irrelevant to the question. @Lucan Unlordly is not a noob and I’m sure would ask for help if needed.

The person requesting assistance with the website will struggle but could probably call on a grandson or someone with a very basic technical understanding. I want to stay at arms length

 

[fisicx]

The person requesting assistance with the website will struggle but could probably call on a grandson or someone with a very basic technical understanding. I want to stay at arms length

Once Wordpress is installed with a simple theme pretty much everything else is no more complicated than writing a letter or email. You just type as you would in anything else. If you want an image you just drag it from your computer and Wordpress sorts everything out. Click to publish ands job done.

 

[Dillon Lawrence Ltd]

Shopify with a basic theme will probably do the job as well

 

[fisicx]

Shopify with a basic theme will probably do the job as well

Yes but it’s not free and there is only one product.

 

[Russ Michaels]

WordPress is great ... if you don't mind it being slow and getting hacked ?

Paul.

It is only slow and gets hacked if you are completely clueless and have no idea what you are are doing. Such people use crappy/cheap hosts and do not maintain your site.
The same is true of any CMS system.
But the more popular ones will get targeted the most.
HAckers are not going to target some ACME CMS made by some guy called Paul that is only used by 50 people.

 

[Russ Michaels]

I've a customer/friend who's been offered the opportunity to sell a simple garden product in the area he lives. The aim is to target customers through personal contacts, leaflet drops etc., supported by a basic website. A few nice images, some product specs, area covered, phone numbers and email.

It's not a project worthy of much investment so I may be asked to assist with the web stuff and whilst I'm ok with Corel Draw and graphics, editorial copy and a bit of sales spiel I want to avoid having to learn any level of web design and be driven to consider shopping carts and fanciful additions. WIX, I'm told, will do a job, but will bombard you with how to make your site better in ways that are not needed here.

Any suggestions welcomed?

If you want something really simple to use that requires no IT skills, then try kopage.uk,
For a really simple shopping cart only solution, I highly recommend ECWID, which you can integrate into any website (including kopage) or use standalone.

I would have to say stay away from WIX. While you can produce good sites with it, It requires more skill to produce something decent, and customer support is the worst. Everything is outsourced to India, and you usually have to chase them for days or weeks for a response, which will usually be completely useless, so it will usually take weeks to months to get any useful answer or get an issue resolved.

WordPRess is great, but you need a lot more skill to build a decent WordPRess site and maintain it yourself. Its quite a learning curve. Better to get someone to do it for you if you go this route. Its also complete overkill if all you want is a simple store to sell a product.

 

[Dillon Lawrence Ltd]

Yes but it’s not free and there is only one product.

Neither is hosting WordPress unless you’re going to use free hosting which means your site could disappear at any time and I doubt any free hosts could pass any sort of PCI audit. Shopify works well for one product.

 

[fisicx]

Neither is hosting WordPress unless you’re going to use free hosting which means your site could disappear at any time and I doubt any free hosts could pass any sort of PCI audit. Shopify works well for one product.

Wordpress.com is free and unlikely to go anywhere soon.

 

[UKSBD]

Wordpress.com is free and unlikely to go anywhere soon.

Can you still get the free version?

 

[UKSBD]

Wow!

I see you still can get the free version, but boy do they try to make people pay now

You really have to look hard and jump through hoops to get to the free version.

 

[fisicx]

“Marketing”

 

[UKSBD]

If you want something really simple to use that requires no IT skills, then try kopage.uk,
For a really simple shopping cart only solution, I highly recommend ECWID, which you can integrate into any website (including kopage) or use standalone.

Although I've only used it for testing and on demo site, I think ECWID is absolutely brilliant if you only have very few products.

I've only ever used the free version, and if I was using it myself I would embed the content on my own domain, no real reason to though if you don't need it optimised