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iWeb for a business web-site? Yes!

Over recent months as this web-site has grown more popular I have noticed more and more people are searching for reasons to see if iWeb is a good web design tool  for building a web-site for their business.

Although I have read on a few other Mac and iWeb related web-sites many reasons not to use iWeb to create, build and maintain a business web-site I thought it was time to put forward an argument ‘for’ using iWeb to design your company’s web-site.

Which type of business iWeb site?

To begin with there are 2 categories of business web-site to consider:

  1. the site that physically sells something using an integrated on-line store; or
  2. a site that represents an on-line presence for a business but just provides details of the company.

It stands to reason that iWeb is as good as any other web design tool if you want to build the latter choice of company web-site.

If your web-site is not directly selling anything you can build a clean, efficient and good looking iWeb-site, and have it published to either MobileMe or your own web space within a matter of hours, with the domain name of your choice and without too much effort.

Many of the pages you need to include in a  business related web-site are already provided for you within iWeb; the photo page for displaying products, the blog for informing clients of your latest news and of course the home page and about us page for company details.

The only page that is missing  seems to be the obligatory contact page but one can be designed easily. A blank page with address, telephone and fax numbers, e-mail addresses and even a Google map can be ‘knocked up’ in a few minutes; if you want to go one step further and add a contact form I published a tutorial on how to do it back in February.

If you do actually want to sell products from your iWeb site, the functionality can be added in a variety of ways. There are a few ‘off-the-shelf’ packages that can help you create your on-line store however these are often expensive and more often than not, Windows based.

A suitable free option would be to use and add PayPal to your iWeb site.

Other than a shopping cart the pages between the 2 types of sites would remain the same.

The final thing (and to some the most important) to consider when building a business web-site is SEO. After all, what is the point of launching a company web-site if no-one can find it?

There are many that say iWeb is notoriously unfriendly when it comes to SEO, but as with any other web design application, a little effort on your part can reap rewards. By carefully planning your iWeb site’s content so the text is full of ‘keywords’ and with the help of Rage’s iWeb SEO tool, anything is possible.

In summary, iWeb can help you create a very effective and attractive web-site for your company. If you are struggling for ideas at which web design application to use it is well worth considering.

Do you use iWeb for your business web-site? What do you think of it?

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20 Comments

  1. iWeb and MobileMe are so clearly aimed at personal use and I think Apple is really missing the boat by neglecting the small businesses. You’re doing a fantastic service with all the tips on your site – but really, Apple should improve iWeb to provide business and professional themes & SEO tools, plus they should add a small business & shopping cart hosting option to MobileMe.

    Plenty of Mac owners like me are freelancers or entrepreneurs. We like the user-friendly Mac environment but Apple is just driving us away to other software or web-hosting services.

  2. i love my iweb site. i use etsy and paypal to actually sell my homemade goods. my website includes a blog and pictures of my latest projects.

  3. I built a site as a business site, although I do not use Mobile Me, I built the site myself from scratch, and after using all the rage software to optimize the site, I got a page rank of 1 in the first week and the keywords and google search results are starting to filter in. I have over 100 incoming links.

    If a website it built correctly, and the correct SEO tools are used, and if your publishing the site to your a hosting service, iWeb is just as good as using any other web building application.

    The site is located at http://innerpure.net

  4. […] Read more here: iWeb for business web-sites | All About iWeb […]

  5. Yes, it can be used to create business site (not like AMAZON or APPLE) but still.
    I implemented Paypal in my site (I’m maintaining for my parents in law) and it works well.

    Of course Iweb has it’s limitation and I wish it was more powerful.

    Thierry
    http://www.wesdotphotography.com/Home.html

  6. I use iWeb for business sites, I think it is great, after launching a site I have a page rank of 1 within a couple of weeks.

    The trick is not to use mobile me.

    The Rage software is excellent.

    I create my site from scratch using the white template.

  7. I use iWeb for my website jrdecks.com , it’s very easy to get something nice looking up. The tricky part comes with the extra things, (SEO, Comments for your blog entries, Facebook/any social network integration, RSS Feeds, even publishing the site on something other than mobile me, etc.) which has forced me to understand some extra technical things I wouldn’t have known other wise.

  8. I used iWeb to build my business website for TuneTransfers.com, LLC. It has been difficult at times but I have figured out some really great ways of making it like any other website and the look of it is great.

    My only problem is the shopping cart and pricing page for me could be better – I want something flash based I guess in which the shopping cart stays with the user the whole time while they are scrolling up and down the page looking for what to get in regards to media conversion – anyone have any ideas?

    Here is my new website, not up yet, this is the new iteration:
    http://www.tunetransfers.com/TuneTransfers.com,_LLC/Home.html

    You can not get to it from just going to http://www.tunetransfers.com
    We do analog to digital media conversion and video editing – we take old video and convert it to DVD basically.

  9. I’ve used iweb for 3 years. I love it. We get a ton of clients from it weekly. I also rank #2 and #1 on search engines for my niche. I’d highly recommend iweb for business.

  10. I used iWeb (and a bunch of custom coding) to create the website for my company, Astra Archery. (www.AstraArchery.com)

    The template is a total custom template, as I did not use any of apple’s pre-made stuff. The reason I chose to design in iWeb is because it makes graphic design so easy! Copying/inserting some code snippets was easy and near seamless.

    The webstore is a javascript store. I used iTweak to insert code snippets correctly. I can even pull dynamically generated content for a customized thank-you page upon successful sales (you can then use these thank you pages for conversion rates on google/analytics).

    I love iWeb.

  11. Built my 1st Iweb site 9 months ago and today 75% of my camera reviews are ranked #1-#3 in google and I am finding Iweb easy to built creative gorgeous looking sites. I am using mobile me but getting close to the 600GB per month limit so I am looking for a host now. But yea, Iweb has been great for my site and google ad and affiliate programs help me earn from it as well.

  12. I used iWeb for our non-profit organization/sports club website, which is http://fkrs.us/rs/Welcome.html. It is still under construction, but the “welcome” and “about us” page are basically done. I did a lot of post-html editing, but nothing crazy, just researching and learning new ideas.

  13. I used iWeb for our non-profit organization/sports club website, which is http://www.fkrs.us. It is still under construction, but the “welcome” and “about us” page are basically done. I did a lot of post-html editing, but nothing crazy, just researching and learning new ideas.

  14. Hi guys.. need some advise… i’m doing up a webpage (iweb) for small online business selling accessories…. i do have album with product photos for selling… as i would like to add a paypal shopping “buy now” button to the individual product (pictures in the album), apparently after inserting the code… the button appears on the album also …. i tried itweak it doesnt work… any advise?

    iweb3.0

  15. I would like to use iweb to create a website on which I can sell simple downloadable files like a pdf which the customer would then print and use in cardmaking (for example sentiments, verses, maybe simple line drawings.) I would probably create these files in Photoshop Elements and save as pdf’s or something universal. I know there is a way to add a paypal button to the iweb site, but I can’t seem to find any info on how a purchased download would work with paypal. The only thing I have seen is using paypal with tangible items that are physically shipped out to the customer.

    Also, can all this work with mobileme as a host- I hear some unflattering things about mobilme as far as trying to run a small business. I currently do have a mobileme membership, but it does seem to be more focused on sharing of personal info as opposed to a small business. Thanks for anything you can pass along 🙂

  16. hi.
    i am learning to make a website for my dad’s company.
    i would like to use iweb since i have a mac.
    we mainly sell kitchenware and also bed sheets, curtain and etc.

    how do i get started ? what i should know about ? what is the first step , use or not to use the mobile me ?

    i want to take the business online.

  17. I use iWeb for my business too. the basic templates are not really pretty, but after tweaking with the design, it is kind of nice looking. Our problem is with the product page.

    it opens up in an album form – and i can’t add the add to cart button to it. It is hard to integrate e-commerce into it.

    anyone has any tips?

    my site:
    http://www.urbanvouge.com

  18. Hey nancy;

    If you want to sell downloadable products online, check out e-kunkie.com They seem to have the solutions. You can probably just add their product code using the iweb html snippet.

    Good luck!

  19. Thanks for your comments Tim.

    I will follow you with great interest. I created two sites using iWeb: http://BreakthroughThinkingTechniques.com and http://BreakthroughThinking.info. I used the Rage’s SEO tools for both. Please note that if you are not using MobileMe for your blog you need to set up some filters from the “Preferences” file if you want visitors to be able to leave comments.

    Keep up the great work.

    Thanks again,
    Dianna

  20. I’ve never used iWeb before, but I might consider giving it a second look. Thanks for the info!

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