Website Reviews

1&1 Website Review after my initial research


Unless your business is particularly obscure, most of the work will be done already for you when signing up to this website. You enter your business name and address during sign up and these details appear on the site automatically, along with a Google map of your location. Therefore the first step set up stages are really easy.

The site couldn't be simpler to change and update. Everything is done in a web browser, and you need only click on a page element to edit it, or add a new one. Editing the navigation menu and adding new pages is equally easy, all done with the click of your mouse. You can even change the entire look of your site by selecting a different template from the menu.

You get the choice of over 120 different templates once you have selected which area of business you work in. Once you enter your business type and select the closest match you simply edit the information to match your buisness. Whether you run a restaurant, bakery, photography business or an opticians, you'll find a template to match ranging in colours and layouts.
A main criticism of the original package was the lack of a way to sell products via the site. This has now been rectified, but e-commerce is available only in this Plus package and the Premium version (which costs £36 per month including VAT).
The Plus package also gives you a choice of 30 additional site designs, optimisation of viewing on mobile devices and a newsletter tool for sending out information to customers. You also get Facebook and Twitter integration plus RSS feeds for industry-specific news and a guest book for customer feedback. There's access to an image library with 12,500 free-to-use professional quality photos, plus integration with iStockPhoto's library where images have a one-off fee of £7.

Overall i think 1&1 is a good website for a starting up new business, it has lots of different templates which could suit any business. Saying this I don't think the website is as professional compared to other options I have explored. The primium website seems to be alot more flexiable and professional but very pricey at £36 a month plus VAT. Therefore I think I will pass on 1&1 and keep searching for a better one.



This review is based on my understanding and experiences when singing up to Wix

When typing in website templates and researching different sites to build my website, Wix seemed to pop up everywhere. I soon realised that it was a very popular website and therefore I decided to sign up and give it a test run to see if it was as simple, easy, fast and flexiable as people were claiming it to be on review websites.

The sign up process to Wix was really easy, simply type in an email adress, make up s udername and password and your in within 3 minutes of clicking on the website.

"Wix is the perfect website builder for artists, photographers, models or graphic designers who want one thing for their website: the wow factor. No other builder makes this as easy to achieve. Wix's committed support team was also a plus. They quickly resolved the few queries we couldn't find answers to on the wiki. However, we probably wouldn't recommend Wix if your priority is to attract as many visitors as possible to your website. Search engines are notorious for not liking Flash-based websites."Wix is very simple, and easy. It is very popular because of the word FREE posted everywhere, which is great, except from you only get a very basic website if you stick with this. Constant pop up will try to encoirage you to upgrade to the higher standard website design with the temptation of a free doamin and over £100 worth of advertising vouchers being offered.
The basic wix is a good start, but the URL for your website will not look as professional as it will contain Wix and not just your name and company, for the chance of having your very own domain, again it will be costly each month.

Saying this Wix made it very easy to set up a website, and very easy to delete one also. Although the one i set up and deleted was just a trial, and regardless of the errors which kept occuring on my website page when i wanted to update photographs etc. Wix is the best site i have looked at so far which doesn't have a monthly cost unless you upgrade. Even the upgraded version would be worth a shot.