I have done it, I have resisted doing it for months, but finally I have opened a hosting account with the brilliant 1and1.co.uk and transferred from a ".com" Wordpress account to a ".org", wordpress.org. And I am delighted with it. Because now I am in charge of my own destiny, and able to make use of the thousands of plugins for Wordpress, develop true social integration and if need be mess with HTML and embed code, when I fancy.
It's quite incredible to think that only a few years ago, creating a website or blog was the domain of web developers, graphic designers, charging "an arm and a leg" to create a website for you. But now the website is free and the hosting is a just a few pounds per month. This makes it incredibly cost effective for anyone to have their own website and more importantly be in charge of their own updating as well.
Their is a huge amount of training available either through Wordpress and many others who have created hours of video or tutorials to help you develop your own learning of Wordpress. And it's all free! All you need is a bit of courage and a friendly help desk in 1and1.co.uk who give all their telephone support for free to get your hosting up and running.
The other thing I have learnt as part of my Social Media journey, is that blogs are more important then having a standard brochure website. It means you can be more engaging with your audience, it allows them to understand better what the company is about and what they are up to, through reading or subscribing to their blogs. Obviously if you are selling via the web then that is different.
Therefore my suggestion is to ditch the website, create an engaging series of videos (we can help with that), which talk about your business and create a "weblog" instead of a "website".
Most of the information you can include on a weblog is the same, it is just displayed differently, no difficult navigation buttons, just a simple clean layout is what is required and I hope that this is what I have managed to achieve here.
I have noticed that a lot of the latest websites have gone for this very clean, white and open design. And I do like it, because it means my eyes are not distracted from lots of stuff on the site. Hopefully it means that the viewer will stay on the site longer and will be more interested in making an enquiry.
Anyway I hope you like it and please feel free to leave me some feedback and share the site by using the social media toolbar wibiya.com at the bottom of this weblog.
And if you need any assistance in doing the same, you know where I am!
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