Ask HN: How would you teach somebody building a website for a local business?

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3 points by patrickworks 2702 days ago

He has a small local bicycle store. He just needs a small website with opening hours, contact form, images and other static information. Maybe some news to publish here and then.

How would you approach this? I have mixed feelings about wix.com/Wordpress/Squarespace.

Isn't there a super fast way to build this website with him in a workshop? I noticed there is huge demand in this area.

He wants my help with this.

I'm a UX Designer / Frontend Dev

4 comments

mtmail 2702 days ago

Huge demand, little pay, especially if it's a friend. The platforms with plugins (e.g. Wordpress) are a good bet. Paid plugins, e.g. "I need a map of my store locations" or "I want to re-publish my facebook/twitter feed" are gold compared to writing anything yourself. My first session would be "which of these themeforest themes would you like". (If he encounters a nice one, let's say $29 USD, and indicates it's too expensive: run)

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petra 2702 days ago

The best option(for those functions) is probably filling a "Google My business" page. Has he got one?

Where's you're friend's store(roughly) ? depending on the area, maybe there's value to some local SEO - so he would appear higher in Google and get some more customers . I'm willing to have a look.

If you prefer, you can also PM me, my email is in my profile.

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Ibethewalrus 2702 days ago

Depends, what does your friend want to learn? Marketing, Web design, Front end design, SEO?

Throwing a couple more options:

1.- free: GitHub + Hugo template + Netlify Easy to setup, plus it has an admin so he can update and blog as needed. Cons: Hugo and Terminal are hard.

2.- Pick a nice paid Wordpress template, export it as a static website, plus Formspree for the Contact form. Pro: Looks good, quick! Cons: Maintain database somewhere Alternative: paid HTML template

3.- Wordpress.com has a nice paid plan Pro: you and your friend can forget about maintaining everything. Cons: paid, depends on budget.

4.- Kirby is another nice alternative. Just released a new version a couple days ago. No database.

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mirap 2697 days ago

I would recommend https://www.squarespace.com/ as he needs to focus on selling bikes, not Github / WP updates / responsivity / etc.

I'm a Digital Product Designer

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