Yeah, I agree. Most sites (but not all) that have been put together by one's self just can't cut it compared to competition's professionally designed ones. And, for me and my business, the important thing about using a professional web designer is that you can get the site properly search optimized. The 1st thing most people would do is go on to google and type something like 'martial arts + town' and if your website isn't there it is losing so much of its effectiveness. No matter how pretty a girl is, if you don't know which bar she's drinking in it's not much good....

i was too cheap to get a real web guy, but when i finally spend the money, it was worth it. i think when it shows you have a little class, they are more interested. my old website (www.angelfire.com/wizard/typhoon) is still there, and still gets people. but the new one has a way people send me there phone number and email. fancy fancy!

boy i sure talk a lot huh?

For someone with little web experience, I recommend using the various tools offered by google, either blogger or google apps. I'm in the process of setting up a website for my instructor. It cost 10 bucks to get the domain setup and running, and its simple enough to use that my instructor will be able to post new content by himself. Plus the templates that are provided help to keep the site consistent and professional looking. But, if you want to pay someone $150 bucks an hour, go right ahead.

Laura

You probably will not get many new students just because of the web site. But it can help you communicate not only with potential students, but existing students as well.

The web site will have information about your school, schedule and directions. It will answer a lot of questions that people will normally call to ask.

Also, it can be used for student information - handbooks,announcements, etc.

I think $1,000 is a lot of money to pay for a web site for a martial arts school. You can get a nice looking basic web site with photos and even some video for a few hundred dollars - and that will include a year of hosting.

You can spend a lot of money on great looking flash animation and all sorts of things but that will not get you students. What will bring students is providing the information thay are looking for.

Invest in some video and make a commercial or a short infomercial about the school - showing demonstrations and have the teacher say a few words. You can do this yourself.

Then just go for a simple web site. You can always add to it later on as you see it paying off.

We offer hosting for $99 for 2 years. You can get a basic web site, the year of hosting and monthly updates for $300.

Jim Mc Coy
jimm@jimmccoy.com

I might be a bit biased in that I build corporate web applications for a living, but I was pretty impressed with what google is offering these days, and based on their performance, I can only expect more to be offered in the future. When I set up the account, I indicated that it was a business, and I was given tools for registering the school on google, and I literally spent $10 to get the domain name, and 4 hours building the initial site. We are still working on content right now, so there are several "coming soon" pages for details.

For $10, I can post images, documents, videos, have discussion groups, I have tools to show how often the site is being hit, and what is being viewed. Users can comment on the site, with moderation, and I can add as much html/java script as I want, should I want to add things later. Not only that, but I get free email as well.

If you want you can check it out, but please be aware that it is in no way complete right now as we are still working on the content.

http://www.LaplantsTKD.com

I agree that there are a lot of people out there that don't have a clue how to make a site usable and shouldn't be allowed near a computer. I wouldn't expect my instructor to be able to put this together, at least not without training, but I fully expect him to be able to log in and contribute to the site. However for anyone with at least some competency with computers, doing what I did should be quite doable.

Laura

For the LaPlantTKD site is that $10/month?

$10 a year for the cost of the domain. Which by the way, I didn't have to configure, just pick what I wanted, and paid for it. Google did the rest.