My wife has come up with a good idea for a useful ‘review’ type website (non-cycling related).

I’ve never done anything remotely involving web design, although I’ve spent plenty of time surfing over the years and have a good idea which features work and which are annoying! We don’t really know what to do with the idea, and don’t want our ‘Dragon’s Den’ idea of a lifetime to slip by. (Who knows, I could be married to the next Levi Roots!)

I’m assuming that the first move is to buy the domain name (both .co.uk and .com)

After that I assume it’s designing the website. Do you have to find a web host before you start designing or can you tinker on a computer before you release it onto the web? I don’t really know how easy it is to create a good looking website. Is it possible to learn adequate web design from a book/website (any suggested reading would be useful) or is it best to get a site professionally built? How much can that cost?

We’ve come up with a few good marketing ideas and potential advertising link-ups

Any advice from anyone who is in the business or has built their own website would be great. Apologies for the ‘cloak and dagger’ over the website idea but Mrs M has sworn me to secrecy! (she’s also also come up with an idea for an iPhone app- she’s full of ideas at the moment- I think watching the apprentice last week must have inspired her!)

Buy the domains NOW (drop me a mail if you need a hand). You can build the website on your PC and pick hosting based on requirements when you’re ready to let people (friends, family even) see it.

You can create HTML with Word, and ‘publish’ it on your pc to see how it looks. But that’s a long way from something you’d want others to look at.
Depends how long you want to spend learning how to do it properly, instead of getting someone to do it for you.

1. Raise funds
2. Don’t underestimate how much it will cost you

I do interactive design for a living and although a great idea will work even with a poorly executed web offering if you are serious about it get it done professionally. It’s easy to learn various programs but not easy to accrue years of experience!

Personally I’d say that if you want a good looking website with good features etc… that works well then you’d be better off paying for it if you’re a novice at it. If you need any form of security etc… as well on the site then it may certainly be easier to pay as experience helps quite a lot around in that area.

Depends what you want it to do.

Pages that don’t change are fairly easy, get a book on HTML.

Stuff like a shop, forums, things where you can add comments etc are more difficult because they involve writing actual programs to handle it all. Or bodging someone else’s.

It’s easy to learn various programs but not easy to accrue years of experience!

+1

Or you could find someone who can help you in their spare time.. for a piece of the action.. just sayin’ like… 🙂

You can always use software such as Joomala any good hosting company will provide that as cpanel programme. That will allow you to set up a site to get you started and then you can concentrate on learning to do them yourself.

Thanks for the advice guys. We’ve bought domain names before for email addresses. I’ve bought from namesco before and they’ve prove good to deal with. Is there an advantage to buying your domain name from the company likely to host the site?

Damo, you mentioned not underestimating the cost. Are there notable running cost once the site is designed (other than hosting). For web design would you be talking more likely a 4-figure or 5-figure sum? That could make a difference as to whether it’s worth a punt.

Depends massively on what you want the site to do. Four or five figures is entirely reasonable though from a pro outfit. At least you are not expecting it for £50 and a packet of Jaffa cakes 🙂

Can you give us an idea of what kind of tasks it would do? Would it be required to take input from users like this site does? Or perform some kind of calculation or task that a user wants, like Google does searching or Email..?

Yup you would want to work out a functional specification in order to be able to price it up accurately. Remember you will want to budget for marketing your idea too, if no one knows about your idea and worse can’t work out how to use the site if they get there then you will struggle. Good luck with it. Happy to answer any questions you have, just drop me an email.

The idea is really a review site for a particular product and their suitability for a certain demographic. The idea would be similar to the mtbr site (although not cycling) with an outline of product features, followed by reviews from people who have used the product, giving an average rating. People would be able to search for products, selecting key criteria from a list to narrow down products best suited to their needs and how they’ve been rated.

I’m guessing there will be plenty of legal aspects to consider when the general public are reviewing products (although the idea behind the site will be geared much more towards highlighting good products. Criticising poor products won’t really benefit users in the planned circumstance.

Buy your domain from $COMPANY1, point the DNS using $COMPANY2, host the website at $COMPANY3 and your mail at $COMPANY4. Believe me when I say that if you put all your eggs in one basket and the basket goes titsup.com, you are completely and utterly farked, so spread the risk.

How do you plan on monetising your idea? Adverts? Referrals?

Drop me a PM if you want to chat, I’ve launched a few companies over the years, some have even made money.

I’d recommend exploring the free platforms that exist, like Google Blogger, WordPress, Tumblr, SocialGo etc. It’s amazing how easy lots of sites and functionality can be built for free. The important thing is to properly think about the purpose of the site; is it to sell things, host conversations (like this forum), or simply act like a shop window? Knowing this will help you determine functionality.
While the above platforms are free (except SocialGo), think about how much time you can invest, and whether you’re a designer or not – the web is already crammed with ugly, badly thought out websites and doesn’t need another. Depending on your skillset I’d definitely recommend a professional developer, designer or both, if only just to bounce ideas off.

Bear in mind that MTBR is shite though. Review sites by the general public almost always are 🙂

Sounds like you need something fairly bespoke. Best bet is to go with a company that can do it for you. As the website will be your lifeblood it needs to look good, work well, be usable and scalable. Fundamentally there are two maybe three sides to it.

1. The design of the site. This is how the site looks and how the user interacts with it, navigation etc.

2. The technical stuff. This is what I normally do and is the cogs and gears behind the pretty front end that makes the site do the clever stuff you want.

3. Hosting. To start with you can probably start with something fairly cheap on a shared server. If it all kicks off and goes well then you can start looking at moving to a dedicated server. If it goes really well then use a good company like Rackspace for hosting (No I don’t work for them but have used them in the past). Moving from one hosting provider to another isn’t necessarily a huge ball ache and will only take between 24-48 hours to complete.

You can get companies that will do all of it for you or use a different company for each part. I’d go for someone who will do 1 & 2. If they throw in something cheap for the third part then great.

I’d also compare how similar to this site your idea is (can’t tell from what you’ve said to be fair!):

http://www.dooyoo.co.uk/

Thanks for all this info guys. I’ve gleaned more useful tips than hours trawling the web.

The site wouldn’t sell products itself. But I’m guessing that if it’s done well and proved popular with the planned demographic, advertising could provide a stream of income from companies who want to tap into the users.

Don’t really know how much income web advertising can generate, and if a website, once created needs professional upkeep (with associated costs) or just general ‘housekeeping’ such as answering email and moderating reviews (not wanting to make the STW mods’ task seem straightforward!

I’m mildly OCD when it comes down to final product. I’ve got a pretty keen eye for detail and so if I couldn’t create what I would see as a professional, slick website I’d get a professional to do it. I wouldn’t want to put my name to a cobbled together site.

I’d recommend exploring the free platforms that exist, like Google Blogger, WordPress, Tumblr, SocialGo etc.

Yes.

Basically, if someone says they’ll write you a bunch of html pages / web pages, then they are probably someone to avoid. Any decent modern site is data driven, and uses some kind of content management system to push stuff to the front. Essentially, that is a system where there is a database, and some web based software that creates pages based on that database, plus a control panel that lets you add pages and manage the site. You pay for someone to develop a theme for your site, which controls what the look of the site is.

For something where everyone and their dog wants to do it like building review sites, there are plugins for major content management systems that turn them into review sites (they certainly exist for joomla and wordpress).

In terms of the idea itself, bear in mind that ideas are basically worthless, there are millions of ideas out there, actually stuff that you’ve done and which works is the only thing of value.

Oh and on review sites in particular, if you look at actually successful review sites with a decent amount of content on them, they are more than just review sites. For example with baby stuff, you’d have mumsnet, with a massive community, bike stuff, like you say, MTBR, and also Bikemagic I guess, both with communities around them, for books you might look on Amazon, which is part of a the worlds biggest book shop. There are a zillion dodgy just review sites out there if you google, that are basically just spam sites asking for reviews, where no one bothers putting in reviews, plus adverts. Any idea for a review site that is purely user generated reviews, without any way of encouraging people to review things or building up a community around the site, is basically going to be a rubbish idea.

As already mentioned, buy the domains now! .com, .co.uk, .net are a great trio but don’t forget the name variations either.

It’s not essential right away but depending upon what specifications your website’s needs will determine what hosting package you go with. But this is the point you now need to stop and have a good talk with a web developer and designer. If this idea has the potential to do well then executed badly it also has the potential to bomb.

By all means, like other guys have already mentioned, fire me an email (in profile) if you would like to chat further.

Chvck, the dooyoo site it more generic and doesn’t cover the product we have in mind. Although the interface appears different to what we have in mind the essential review functionality is similar. Our idea is targeted to a specific product and a particular demographic.

I suppose the difficulty with a review website is getting enough initial reviews to make it a useful tool for new users. We have plenty of people we know who could offer reviews, and if they encourage the people they know and so on, (with a little ‘prize draw’ incentive to encourage reviews.

Don’t really know how much income web advertising can generate, and if a website, once created needs professional upkeep (with associated costs) or just general ‘housekeeping’ such as answering email and moderating reviews (not wanting to make the STW mods’ task seem straightforward!

All this depends a lot on how successful it is.

If a site is successful, then it is likely to need a)the back end to not be rubbish – meaning paying developers to make sure stuff is good / paying database people to do their filthy thing, b)paying for bandwidth, c)lots of moderation.

But also, in addition to the user generated review content, you are likely to need some other content that changes regularly to drive people to your site, create a community around the site, make it interesting and worth visiting. You also need to have content that is not purely user generated reviews in order to get anywhere sensible in google, to avoid looking like yet another review spam site. If you don’t come high up in google for relevant search terms, you don’t get any hits. There are people who will try and sell you services that put you high up in google search results, but they are basically a con, how you get high up in google search results, is by creating a decent quantity of pages that are relevant to the search term, and that people who are reputable are likely to want to link to.

eg. search for ‘Joe Marshall’ on google.co.uk, and you should get my website, despite it being quite a common name, because a)my page is full of useful information, and b)I have done some work with or for various higher profile people than me who link back to my site.

On the flip side, if you get loads of traffic you can make a little out of advertising. Although, if you had to think of any sites that make a decent profit primarily from advertising, as opposed to by providing a paid service or related service (like this forum site primarily sells magazines etc, amazon reviews sell books), other than google, facebook etc. you’d be hard pushed to think of any sites that turn a profit purely through advertising.

I suppose by referring to a ‘product’ it may have been a little misleading. The ‘product’ in mind is also a ‘service’ in some ways.

I agree that community sites offer much wider use and growth potential than a simple review site. I also agree that there a far too many ‘cover-all-products-under-the-sun’ review sites on the internet.

I do, however, think that there is a place for a more focused review site for the product/service we have in mind. We’ve trawled the net and not found anything close to what we have in mind.

I suppose one way of looking at it is that if I’m looking at a particular product, I tend to look at specific review sites (cycling, hifi, hotel etc.) rather than reviewcentre or Which? My experience with Which? is that whenever they test a product I have some knowledge of, I don’t always agree with their views. A kind of Jack of all trades; master of none.

I’m not looking to pack in work and retire the Monaco (although that’d be nice!) but id would be an interesting project with a potential to be big if we got it right. I suppose the other angle to approach the situation is to create a cheaper bare-bones website with functionality but less of the ‘Pizazz’ of a pro site. Test run it with friends to see if the concept is a runner…

I suppose the other angle to approach the situation is to create a cheaper bare-bones website with functionality but less of the ‘Pizazz’ of a pro site

Won’t make much difference. The functionality is the expensive bit I reckon.

Aye that’s a good point – although it’s quite important that the site doesn’t look awful, as long as the mechanics work you should be ok. Sites like ebay, CRC etc don’t look great but they do work.

This is a bit like saying you’ve got a really good idea for a design of a new building, and then going to B&Q to get the bits. It will take you ages, and won’t come out the way you wanted to.

Either look at it as a hobby to learn web development, and accept that it will probably take you a few years to get to the stage you see in your head, or talk to someone you can trust that understands the web – they should be able to tell you roughly how long, and whether you’ll make any money. Good luck!

make it in mr site

I know you’re not looking to sell anything but shopify.com looks really neat as a basic web shop. There are review site plugins for it, which might work out for you, even if only as a proof of concept to take to a proper web developer..

Shopify – Grapevine plugin

yes to all above, however…

if you have zero cash to pay someone and have an inkling of creative sauce go get serif webplus x4 (phone serif and barter for the best deal (generally 40quid should see you right with both manuals thrown in), earlier versions can be bought for almost nothing on ebay), build a site and buy some hosting and get on with it.

there’s a lot too learn, especially when you start digging into seo/sem and in a competitive field like bikes it could be hard to get visibility.

anyway i’m pretty fussy but i’m happy with what i make for myself…

http://www.littlebeachhouse.co.uk
http://www.thesleepingcat.co.uk
http://www.traditionalsurfing.co.uk (this being the latest one that i’ve rushed to get up)

feel free to pm me if you want any advice for the ‘hands on’ DIY route.

Edit – the post that was here ^^ was removed by Chipps as spam.

For easy step-by-step guide on how to create a website you can check this out:

Which you list as your website on your member info when you signed up today and resurrected this thread… 🙄

So Jess Anderson….what bike ya got?

Are these your team colours?

…and… they’re gone. 120 seconds between reported thread and spam-be-gone. On a Friday teatime even…

Now I hope that people aren’t going to complain about over-active moderation. 😉

Nice work Chipps – but now I look like a thread resurrector 😳

Well, there is that – I’m sure people will forgive you. And now, if I stop posting, it’ll drift back down.