Your own website in 2 minutes? (2-minute-website.com)

Member Name: NCG1

Product:	2-minute-website.com
Date:	06/03/02 (565 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Easy to use, Cheap, Quick

Disadvantages: Bit simplistic

Well, perhaps a tad more than two minutes. But very easy, which is a miracle given that my knowledge of html stops at 'aren't there a lot of /////s?'.

2-Minute-Website is basically a web design service without having to bother with a web designer. Now, some of my best friends are web designers (honest!), but in business terms they can be a bit of a pain. First you have to find one, then you have to work out whether they're trustworthy/ good value/ going to bamboozle you with techno-babble, and then you have to keep on paying them every time you want a tiny change to your site. 2-Minute-Website means you can bypass this whole shebang.

USABILITY

If you can use dooyoo (and given that you're reading this, you obviously can) then you can use 2-Minute-Website. Its designed a bit like web-based e-mail - you type into boxes and click, some clever backroom stuff happens, and your words end up where you want them. You can choose whether you want your deathless prose as a heading, a sub-heading or in a normal paragraph.

You can also add pictures by clicking on a button which opens a window showing the contents of your hard drive, and then clicking on wherever you saved it. Obviously, you need to save the picture on your hard drive first (either scan it in, or transfer it from a digital camera, or whatever). And you can move all these different bits of writing and pictures around on the page (the buttons take them one up, or one down).

All this is really easy, but if you do have a problem you can e-mail the company and they will give you a hand. And you can keep making changes all the time (from any computer), which is probably the major advantage over using a web designer, as they would charge for each little change to text/ new picture etc.

COST

The cost initially seems a bit steep - £50 a year. But if you think about what web designers cost, this is a lot less. Anyway, the £50 does
n't just buy you a website, it gives you a free domain name (eg www.yourname.com) though if you want more than one (eg www.yourname.net and .uk) you have to pay £20 for each of the extras. It also gets you listed on all the major search engines, which is worth doing as otherwise your customers/ friends/ random interested people won't be able to find your site without knowing the exact domain name.

If you're not sure about shelling out £50, there is the option of a free one week trial, which gives you a chance to look at the choice of designs, see how easy it is to use etc. But your design does disappear after seven days, if you don't pay.

The payment method is by credit card. I'm usually a bit wary of paying over the internet, but this is done through WorldPay (which is a well-known name) and their security arrangements look good (as far as I can tell, but I'm no expert). You can also pay in Euros or US dollars, although since this is a UK based site the default is pounds.

LOOKS

Everyone says that looks aren't everything... but on websites they're pretty important. There's no point having fancy graphics and moving pictures if your customers/ users get frustrated by the long download time or can't find the information they're looking for. 2-Minute-Website gives you a choice of three designs. They're quite minimalist, but they are simple and clear. But if you wanted a really unusual looking site (rather than one that's pretty business-like) this wouldn't be the service for you.

I think that this would be particularly useful for anyone with a small business, or perhaps who runs a little charity, as its a quick and cheap way of getting onto the internet. It would be less good for anyone with a lot of technical expertise (they could do it themselves for free) or for someone who wanted a really fancy website (I saw one site recently that didn't download for
five whole minutes, and when it did the whole thing was dancing cherubs... ugh!). In conclusion, if you've been thinking about getting a website, its definitely worth having a look.

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