Jargon free guides for those new to the web

Mark Freidin

27th May 2010

Jargon-free guides take pain and cost out of building a new, high-value website

Recent research shows that more than 54% of small businesses do not have a website. Based on that information, the Small Business Learning Centre (SBLC) – www.sblc.com.au – surveyed a number of business owners who had attended web and business workshops and found that the five things that put businesses off buying a website were:

1. Lack of knowledge of the web and the tools used would mean they could get ripped off
2. Too technical to manage and edit
3. Too costly to set up
4. Stories of businesses being left in the lurch by developers
5. Unsure of how to go about getting a domain name or web hosting organisedThe whole business of having a website is a conundrum made even more complex with a combination of what appears to be smoke, mirrors and a bunch of technical jargon.

“If you’re just starting off in business and attend a networking function, web site developers appear as if out of nowhere,” says Gordon Kramer of SBLC. “They a ll say the same thing. ‘You really have to have a website with a database backend and a smart looking front end if you want to be in the market’ or ‘We can put a 5 page interactive website together for you for under $400 and then we can build more pages as you need them!’ or worse still, ‘You need to allow at least $4000 for a web 2 website if you want it to work, let me show you this CMS driven site…'”

If this sounds familiar then join the growing number of business owners who are becoming more and more disillusioned with the whole idea of having a website built for their business.

Without doubt, a website can boost your business significantly; you only have to ask the owners of Bed and Breakfast businesses who regularly receive 85% and more of their bookings through their site to confirm that.

But having said that, if you allow yourself to be locked in to a particular developer or set of development tools, then your new website can end up costing you an absolute fortune and not just for the first build, the ongoing costs can come back and bite hard with every litle edit and change costing major dollars plus the waiting time whilst the developer gets round to doing your editing work.

According to Mr Cramer, “It was plain to see from our survey that the bottom line was that cost and lack of knowledge were the real problems. If we could find a non technical way to make it easier for business owners to learn how to put a good and effective site together and then be able to manage and edit it themselves and to do that with free tools,then the problem would solved.

“We took on the challenge and invested in further research and have developed a very smart but plain English and simple to follow web building course. We use widely used and free web tools to create the websites that include ecommerce enabled shops, videos, forms, blogs and you can even sell membership to your site.”

It certainly seems like the business owners prayers have been answered and that they can have a sound working website, manage and edit themselves and do it all at an extremely low cost.

About The Small Business Learning Centre
With extensive experience in business and eLearning development, the Queensland based Small Business Learning Centre creates and delivers low cost interactive courseware for the Home Based, Micro and Small Business market segments.

The courses are CD or Flash Drive based and can also be delivered Online or in the classroom.

SBLC has developed its own technology, RTG, to ‘package’ its courses that enables a far more user friendly interface and access to content.

Currently SBLC offers 3 major titles:

1. Starting your Own Business for those considering opening their own business for the first time
2. Survive & Thrive Business Planning, a very different approach to creating a focused business plan
3. Build Your Own Website, a highly cost effective and easy to follow CD or Flash Drive based course that shows the user through the entire process of building their first website

SBLC has 5 more titles in the pipeline and apart from their CD offerings, they offer a number of free tutorials and other business information via their web site.
http://www.sblc.com.au