Half of all small companies do not have a website, according to one statistic.  With that in mind, we believe there are many readers who may need some help getting a simple website up and running.  Even if you have a company website, you may know someone who needs one.  Here are 7 do-it-yourself website building services to consider.

There are all sorts of tools and applications out there, but our main selection criteria in this post is whether the tool lets you build a site, for free, in less than an hour and publish it to create at least a basic presence online.  Are these tools all robust enough to create the site of your dreams? No.  Will they allow you to cease procrastinating and put a stake in the online ground? Absolutely.  They also give you the capacity to start using many of the great tools that Lisa Barone shares here on Small Business Trends, such as Facebook, Twitter, Google Places and more.

In many cases, these site builders will not allow you to have your own custom domain name.  Since that is important to many, including me, I have one favorite suggestion I’ll share at the end of the post as #7.  Note:  There are many website hosting companies that offer a free domain name, but that is not the same as a free website and hosting.  This list is about free online website builders that include hosting.

1. Google Sites

I’m a big Google fan, and they don’t disappoint with their free website options.  Google Sites is robust and probably a bit more technical than the busy small business owner wants to engage in.  It does, however, allow really granular changes.  I have tried it out on several projects, and it offers a full WYSIWYG editor.

Like many Google offerings, not everything is super-intuitive or easy to find.  For example, I created this rough page for this review and it took me 5 minutes to figure out how to change the photo to my own.  Still, you cannot beat free, and the Google tool works.  The URLs are ugly, though: http://sites.google.com/site/socialmediaroibytjmccue/.

What I like:  Google Sites templates range from simple sites to classroom-focused to project wikis to intranets.  With a few clicks, you can pick a template and hit publish.  Then you can go deep into the code if you want!

2. DoodleKit

DoodleKit is pretty impressive.  Lots of templates and good editing functionality so you can put items and photos where you want.  The free version is limited, but allows up to five pages, plus a blog.  There is lots of space for photos and image albums, and DoodleKit offers lots of examples to get ideas of how others have used it.  After the free level, plans are still affordable. The forum keeps things simple and offers step-by-step instructions so when you ask a question, you can actually follow the answer.

The advanced editing tool had to be installed in my browser, which was a slight disappointment, but not a big deal.  Once I loaded that simple lite app, it was truly easy to see what I was editing.

What I liked:  Literally, in under 5 minutes, I had a website and blog going.

3. Wix

Wix is a free Flash website builder.  Some will argue that a Flash website is not as SEO-friendly (or Google-friendly, if you prefer), but the search giant and other search engines have made great strides in reading and ranking Flash sites.  The beauty of Flash is it allows true drag and drop functionality. Sign-up is just your e-mail, a password and a username.  You then move to Create, Explore or My Account as the three choices of what to do next.  I hit Explore and was amazed at all the site types and creative options, most of them for free.

If you don’t like the idea of a content-heavy site with mostly words, and are a visual type or your business lends itself to a more visual format (photographers, videographers, architects, designers), Wix is worth a serious look.

What I Liked:  Wix is a fun, energetic site that makes you want to start and finish a website in one sitting.  Almost 5 million people have built a site at Wix.  You can get affordable help with the Wix designers.

4. Moonfruit

Moonfruit is a Flash-based website builder.  Right away, they amazed me with this one super customer-friendly step:   They let me start building the site without even registering or providing any info.  I could click through and pick options; when my site was almost done, they asked me to share my e-mail, a username and password, and hit publish.

What I Liked: By far, Moonfruit is one of the most elegant and professional solutions I’ve seen to get a company website up and running.  The free option was advertising-free.  No tiny little links or text ads, and beyond the free option there are very affordable plans.

5. Weebly

Weebly lets you create a free website and blog.  It is Flash-based, which means another easy drag and drop interface.  You don’t have to be a techie at all.  Weebly offers dozens of professional designs and templates.  You can drag slideshows or photos onto the templates where you want them.  They are one of the only tools I saw that allows and encourages a blog within the site structure.  Also, Weebly has simple SEO options so you can put keywords and descriptions into your code and get recognized by the search engines.

What I Liked:  If you already own your own domain name, Weebly will let you use it for free.  So if you just re-registered a domain name you’ve been parking on, you can turn it on and Weebly won’t charge you to do it.  Cool.

6. Webstarts

Once you pick a template with Webstarts, they take you to a page that lists the pages within your site and icons to edit, preview or delete.  Plus, right on that admin dashboard, you can adjust the order of the pages and decide which pages should be on the navigation menu. Webstarts is very intuitive and fast loading.

What I Liked:  As you start into editing mode, a little window drops down with a tutorial video.  You can close it out, but it is nice to have a help item available.  I actually enjoyed working in the Webstarts editing tool.

7. WordPress

Yes, it is a blog platform and not officially a “website builder.”  However, many companies use WordPress as a website platform, and it ranks very highly for small business.  (SmallBizTrends.com is built on WordPress.) My SalesRescueTeam.com site is built on WordPress with the robust Thesis theme (not free).  Here’s the sweet part: If you’re on a tight budget and want to keep it super-simple, you can build a site for free.

What I Liked:  For only $15 per year, you can get a custom domain name you own and have WordPress point to it.  That’s as close to free as any of the free website builders with your own domain.  Most services that are free have a subdomain structure, as does the free WordPress option, with URLs that look like www.yoursite.wordpress.com. Over time, that’s limiting for most businesses. Because the premium features on WordPress are not always easy to find, here they are.

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If you are in the alleged 50 percent of small companies that do not have a website, or know someone who is starting a business and really needs an inexpensive option to building their first site, these seven services will help you do it.  Each is worth a look.  As always, feel free to share the ones you like and link to them in the comments.

From Small Business Trends

7 Powerful and Free Website Builders for Small Businesses

Video is hot.  It is talked about by most small business marketing gurus and it seems like such a popular, practical method to get the word out about your business.  But where do you start?  Techsmith’s Camtasia Studio 7 is one easy way to create a simple video about your company, even without a video camera.

Camtasia Studio 7 is a screen recorder. It allows you to click record and start navigating in a browser or any program on your computer and narrate as you go in what is called a screencast.  The recorder follows your actions on screen and records them as you move from place to place.  Your voice narration is captured along the way (presuming you’re talking; you could just insert music, instead or both).  All you need is a decent microphone and a written script to help you keep the recording clear and focused.  You don’t even need the script if you’re good at impromptu explanations. But I recommend you script out what you want to say.

What I (really) liked:

• Free, fully functional 30-day trial.  Download and go.

• Clear, easy-to-follow screencast tutorials to teach you how to use the various options of the program, right out of the box.

• Create a slide presentation (Powerpoint, etc) and navigate through and narrate the important points. Save it as a video, upload to YouTube. They even have a button on the start screen that says, “Record Powerpoint.”

• The application lets me choose to open the entire program, or just the recorder, or just the player, or menumaker. I love that idea.

Video uses by small business that I’ve seen on the web: The Customer Use section on the Camtasia website where you can see all sorts of practical uses for the software. Plus, they have a blog that serves as a forum, of sorts, called The Visual Lounge where the staff post things, but also customers submit their productions.  You can find example screencast videos in both of these sections.

What I would like to see:

The timeline button/concept, although intuitive for movie makers, takes a little while to wrap your head around if you’re not a movie editor type. But once you understand that whatever you insert in the screencast:  images, audio, video will all land on that timeline, it’s a dream.  Think of it as a video assembly line.  Of course, this is just one user’s experience.  Maybe some more prominent explanations of this section.  They have so many screencast tutorials that I might have missed that specific tutorial.

Who is it best for?

Small business owners that want to get started in video, but want to keep it simple. It is also for companies that have a product that lends itself to an educational tour, of sorts, where you walk a person through your site or application. You can think of many different uses for the program, but the beauty of it is it gets you into marketing via video without the challenges of a video camera and all that it entails. You can add picture-in-picture video where you have a video of you talking, within the screencast, to give it a unique touch.

I tested Camtasia on a 4-year old Sony VAIO laptop and on the new Lenovo M90z all-in-one desktop (with neat touchscreen that makes it like a giant iPad!) that I’m testing.  The M90z is quite a bit faster than my old laptop. Camtasia Studio 7 worked fine on both.

Learn more about Camtasia Studio 7.

From Small Business Trends

Screen Recording for Small Business: Camtasia Studio Review

Keeping accurate accounting records can seem a little daunting to many small business owners. It is one of those things that you know you should do but many don’t. So you either leave it up to your accountant or try to use a more sophisticated accounting software package that takes a while to learn.

Cashflow Manager is designed for those of you who have limited accounting knowledge and want to get control of your bookkeeping records. I have been using the trial version of the software and I found it very easy to use. The setup process takes just a few minutes, and the design of Cashflow Manager makes it very simple to see what information you need to put in and how to do it.

The software is an Australian product and helps small businesses get control of their accounting records using what is called the single entry method.  Using the software helps you keep accurate records, which is vital for a healthy business as well as ensuring compliance with the tax office.  This is important as the Australian Tax Office no longer offers e-Record.

You can just do the simple things like keeping track of your payments and receipts, reconcile with your bank statements and when you need to, you can export the data straight to your accountant.  The software is ideally designed for small businesses who use the cash based Goods and Services Tax method and do not have any inventory to control.

What I liked about Cashflow Manager

• It automatically calculates your GST and even produces a report that you use to lodge your Business Activity Statement online. This is a huge time saver.
• When you set up your business you can align it to the software that your accountant uses. This means they can do their reports easily saving you money and your accountant’s time.
• It has videos that you can access from the software to help guide you through any of the different sections as well as a comprehensive user guide.
• The software is particularly suited to small service based businesses
• You can tailor the columns to suit your individual business. This means that you can just have the accounts that are needed for your business.

What could be better?

These are minor suggestions as the software is well designed for most small businesses.

• Although in the guide it has an explanation of the terms, it would be good to have these as pop outs on the columns in the software. For example if you scrolled over a column a definition and examples would be quicker for someone new to the software.
• You can add columns for different accounts. However they are only at the top level. It would be helpful to have the ability to add sub accounts that could then be totalled to the higher level.

Cashflow Manager is particularly suited to small businesses with simple needs regarding accounting record keeping. The product has a free trial and more information can be found on the Cashflow Manager website.

Editor’s note: This review was done of the Australian version of Cashflow Manager. For the U.S. version, visit the Cashflow Manager USA page.

From Small Business Trends

Looking for a Simple Bookkeeping Solution? Try Cashflow Manager

Ecommerce in today’s social media world is easier and more complicated at the same time.  With just a few clicks and a bit of content, you can reach thousands of prospective customers.  But that doesn’t mean they will buy from you.  Your online storefront needs to be visually appealing, socially connected, and offer a logical path to purchase.  BigCommerce is an ecommerce provider that makes it possible to create a compelling online store with all the bells and whistles you need today.

BigCommerce offers a free 15-day trial and small business packages start at $24.95/month.  I always like it when a vendor offers a no credit card signup because I believe it completely lowers the barrier to purchase and allows you to see the inner workings without risk.  Disclosure: We selected BigCommerce for a review two months ago, but I was so impressed with the ease of setting up an online storefront that I recently became a reseller via my Sales Rescue Team site.

One of the most difficult parts of selling online is attracting quality traffic, as we have explored many times in Small Business Trends posts. Every small business faces this online challenge. BigCommerce’s latest release integrates traffic-driving tools such as selling on eBay, Shopzilla, Shopping.com, PriceGrabber and Facebook so that merchants can literally click a few buttons and get their products in front of millions of potential customers.

What I Liked:

• You can sell your products on eBay with just a few clicks (only a few of the large enterprise ecommerce platforms provide this now, so for a small business to get access to this level of integration is cool).

• The ability to mobile-optimize a site for mobile shopping.  There are many studies and statistics floating around about how few sites are ready for mobile commerce. Only 12% of the Internet Retailer 500 have a mobile-enabled site. With the growth of smart phones and the iPad, you can’t help but see how your customers are searching from a mobile device.

• Social Commerce:  Every account level at BigCommerce can add a Facebook “Like” button and other social features to a site with zero tech expertise required.  I didn’t find the Twitter integration component, but it must be there and I missed it.

• Drag and Drop Design. No coding experience needed. I loved this because it is so hard to design if you’re not a designer. Plus, they offer many templates you can just click and select.

They explain the any tech lingo clearly.  I appreciate that they visually explained the term “Multi-channel integration” because while I can figure it out with a few moments of thought, I don’t want to spend time deconstructing industry terms.  In a nutshell, it means they connect to many useful vendors and providers like Mailchimp and Shipworks (making your shipping easier).

What I’d Like to See:

They have a very helpful link box entitled: How Can We Help You? that sits below the fold.  Instead of the media box expressing who has reviewed them, I’d rather see this helpful box higher up because it answers important questions I want answered right away. The main two are:  “I’m new to ecommerce…” and “I want to switch platforms…” so that I can quickly figure out the options for my situation.

BigCommerce is lifting the tide for the entire ecommerce community with their software-as-a-service online storefront solution. By making it easy to add mobile and social commerce options, as well as easy drag and drop design options, they are worth a serious look by small business owners.

Learn more about BigCommerce.

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From Small Business Trends

BigCommerce Review: Building a Small Business Online Storefront

Can you hear me now? That phrase is one we all utter, most frequently from mobile phones, but sometimes from landlines and VOIP phones. We have to keep up with voicemail and text messaging.  I want phone services to keep up with me, not the other way around.

In this post, we highlight 22 phone services that small business owners will want to check out. Some of them save time, effort, money or a combination of those. Some say you can’t have all three, but you can.

Here are just a few of the many features these services provide for growing companies: Voice-over-internet-protocol (VOIP), Voicemail, Call Forwarding, 3-Way Calling, Conference Calling, Web Conferencing, Call Following (no, not stalking), Voicemail to Text or Email, Voice Transcription, and toll-free numbers.

Grasshopper is best known as the professional, but very hip virtual phone services company. They produce videos that are heartwarming in some cases and LOL funny in others. No free trial, but a 30-day money back guarantee. Plans start at $9.95/month for the Pay as you Grow plan, then $24/month. $25 Activation fee.
Feature I Like: Faxes emailed as PDFs.

Ringcentral is a VOIP service aimed at small business. They offer unlimited phone and fax from your existing phone or a RingCentral one. No free trial, but 30-day money back guarantee. Plans start at $49.99/month with 1,000 free toll-free minutes. Feature I Like: Flexible answering rules so you can specify hours and days that work for my company and employees.

Yahoo! Voice is similar to Skype or Google Voice. It is pretty simple if you’re a Yahoo! User (or even if you’re not). Computer to computer calls are free; all others are low per minute rates.  You can get a number so that those not on Yahoo! Voice can call you. Feature I Like: Super fast site and rate checker so I don’t have to scroll through miles of country rates.

3Jam is an up and coming VOIP provider.  Two-way SMS/text messages from web to mobile, or even email. Unlimited incoming text messages. 30 voicemail transcriptions a month. All the usual calling features. No free trial, but you don’t need it with plans starting at $4.99/month, then per minute charges. Features I Like: All the texting (SMS) options. No one else has these. Oh, and you can manage groups of phone numbers.

Onebox is a virtual phone system with lots of great features, but the one thing that stands out is their LIVE receptionist option.  Many small companies want to have an affordable option for someone to answer their calls with a personal touch; Onebox offers it. They have a 14-day free trial, then plans start at $49.95/month for the phone portion. Live receptionist option starts at $169.95/month.

Phone.com is one of the market leaders and keeps their site and offering well organized. No free trial, but plans start at $9.88/month.  Feature I Like: Click to Call option with buttons for the web or email signature.

Freedom 800 is a virtual phone system that gets the “cloud computing” future. They have a user-friendly website with instant number activation, a 15-day free trial, then plans start at $9.95/month.  Feature I Like: Availability Scheduling. I can specify the times when I want calls forwarded, or not.

Toktumi is shaking up the VOIP world. They have a feature-rich package. 30-day free trial, then only $14.95/month. Feature I Like: Up to 20 callers can join a conference call and you can even record the call, all part of the monthly fee.

Vonage is probably as well known as Skype. They were one of the first VOIP providers that made it truly easy to get a virtual phone system going. First month free with a one-year agreement, then $25.99/month.  But the contract is because they send you a telephone adapter that allows any touchtone phone to be used on their VOIP system.  Feature I Like: SimulRing which will simultaneously ring 5 other phones to reach me.

Kall8 is a powerful toll free number service that starts at $2.00/month, if you can live with an 888 or 877 or 866 number.  They then only charge a per minute rate. With these rates, and no monthly minimums or contracts, you could easily use this service to tie a Google Adwords campaign to a phone number and allow you to track which ad performed best. They must have customers doing this because they talk about online campaign management. Feature I Like: the online tools for tracking.

FreedomVoice is a virtual phone system that acts like an enterprise system, according to their site. They offer a 15-day free trial, then $9.95/month. Features I Like: Great blog. And I like the idea of getting my voicemails as MP3s (other services often make them into .WAV files or something proprietary (Skype).

Google Voice. You simply can’t ignore Google. One number for voice, messages, call routing, voicemail transcription, delivered to your inbox. It used to be invite-only, but now it is open to everyone.  Feature I Liked: They are making the service faster and better on mobile devices like Android and Blackberry.  I also liked that you can set a “Do Not Disturb” option and it will roll straight to voicemail.

Evoice does not want to lose a single prospective customer – they offer a six-month free trial for their virtual phone number service. Six months free for the simple $12.95/month plan only. Beyond that amazing offer, they have tons of features like voicemail to text, toll free numbers, music on hold, and call routing (follow me type stuff). Feature I Like: I can’t get away from that six month trial. What’s not to like?

American Voicemail offers a wide range of voicemail features, but also includes fax receiving and fax-to-email for $19.95 a month. No free trial. Feature I Liked: Automated Order Taking and Surveys: Asks your callers questions, one at a time, and record their answers for an additional $9.95/mo.  It includes 8 questions. Responses are delivered to you by email as a single voice message.

Voicenation is a toll-free voicemail service. No free trial, but starts at $9.95/month that includes 100 minutes.  Features I Liked: Wake up call option. This is sweet – no more alarm clocks. Also, they allow you to use their service as a hotline where you play a greeting message, but don’t accept actual voice messages. Think real estate hotlines, sports team announcements.

Skype is probably the best known voice-over-internet-protocol (VOIP) provider on the planet. I use this service for my small business and love it. I spend about $70 per year for my business line, voicemail, and other features. It is not as feature rich as some of the others, but I make it work.  Feature I Like: Pamela for Skype, which is a free and premium add-on that lets me record calls or conferences. It does more, but you’ll have to read about Pamela for Skype here.  Oh, you can have Skype completely free if you’re calling another Skype user.

Workeasy is focused on being voicemail for growing businesses.  They also offer a toll-free virtual phone number service. No free trial, starts at $19.95/month. Feature I liked: Voice talent service – they’ll provide a professional to record your voice message for you.  Loads of services from fax on demand to an auto-attendant (For Service, press 1, for Support press 2…)

Voiceshot positions itself as your virtual receptionist helping to manage your calls. It offers a free trial and rates start at $25/month with a set amount of minutes.  Features I Liked: Group texting function (as in text messages/SMS) and Outbound Calling that lets you send a voicemail to a number of different people (think Get Out the Vote type campaigns – love ‘em or hate ‘em).

My1Voice:  I like that they lead with a statement about being the virtual phone system for small business.  They are focused. The home page highlights customer quotes from real people with websites you can check out. Offers a free trial, plans start at $10/month. Feature I Liked: Call me button you can put on a website.

These last three seem to be more for the small business that has more than a few lines and employees:

Sipcat offers free and paid software IP telephony systems. You can set up your own Voice over IP system, which they explain is easy to setup and manage. Install it on any computer in just 15 minutes time. You can use it free, buy a license pack, or use their hosted version and buy bundles of minutes. Feature I Like: fully functioning free version.

Neobits is a leading distributor and reseller of phone systems for the small to midsize business. They offer business phone systems from well known brands like Panasonic. They specialize in helping design phone system solutions for specific requirements, especially in the VOIP category. Feature I Liked: When you need actual phone hardware to go with your virtual phone service, this site is a good resource and store.

VirtualPBX offers a hosted PBX service aimed at users who already have VoIP phones or want to use a low-cost VoIP service. They have a free 30-day trial and plans start at $9.95/month. Feature I Like: Their website explains VOIP and PBX details really well, so you know what you’re getting.

Let us know if you have a favorite phone service or system. We’d love to hear about it.

From Small Business Trends

22 Small Business Phone Services