Web site advice

[fabhead]

I know this has been asked a million times but can anyone give me the salient points for setting up a website that looks good and can sell things from. I am technically minded as work in IT but not very knowledgable on web stuff. I have a domain registered so:

where for hosting?

what package/sw to create website? - or do you still do it in html?

How to integrate into paypal or other payment system?

Any tips?

many thanks!

Think it depends on what you want the site for really, is it for information or direct selling / orders.

One.com is probably the cheapest option if you are any good at html, I'm not so paid an awful lot of money for a company to set one up (biggest mistake to date) you can integrate paypal on one.com as well but you have to build it from scratch I think but its only £10 a year, think they host domain as well.

BT apparently have templates that you can enter your products / info onto but they are a monthly subscription around £30 I think for the basic package, but that limits you on appearance of site if you are working from a template, what is it you are selling? do you want it to look like a boutique style or is it kinda industrial stuff think this has a lot to do with what you choose.

Just to add, I sold more on ebay fees around £50 a month (with a shop, rather than a private seller) than I did with my very expensive web site which cost around £190 a month.

You can have an ebay shop designed or you can personalise the templates to a certain extent, and the traffic, keywords are already in place. Might be worth a look if you don't do ebay already.

good tips, thanks. I do ebay already but only as a personal account, also amazon marketplace. Maybe I should look at expanding that first.

Any other packages I could use to set up a website - my html is very rusty but I could probably manage some.

These people have never let me down. That package includes WYSIWYG design software to prop up your rusty hand-coded HTML, and also gives you the resources to run a web shop and/or content management system if you want to go down that route.

that looks ideal as I could start and pay small and build and embelish as I go - just what I was looking for, thanks.