Enterprise Nation

The best thing about a Google Sites website, is how simple it is to build, and update with new content. It is actually quite possible to sit down in the morning and have a fairly respectable website built by break time (I've helped my clients do this quite often).

The websites may be simple to use but they offer some very advanced features. You can change the fonts, text size, colour and headings. You can also add images as well as video from YouTube. And no matter how many times you edit or change a page you can always revert to a previous version if things go completely wrong.

Need a map for your contact page? No problem. It's just a few clicks away easily configured with your postcode and Google Maps. Adding an enquiry form on the page is just as easy. Even more sophisticated solutions can be plugged in such as feeds from Twitter or Facebook using Google Gadgets.

All very clever you might think, but how will one of these websites do as the main site for your home business? In my experience perfectly well. I've helped dozens of small business owners create and build these sites, both in my training workshops and as a consultant. With a bit of effort a Google Site can do just as well as any other, both in the search engines and functionality needed to support the user.

A good example of how versatile a Google website can be is www.stonehengecampsite.co.uk. William Grant the owner asked me to build him a low cost temporary website for his new campsite business just over a year ago. The main thing he wanted was to be able to edit and create his own content pages as needed.

The site now offers extensive details on his campsite, foreign language pages, an online booking form to linked to PayPal and an photo gallery. This year the campsite was fully booked by June with almost all the bookings coming from the website. The site is also number 1 in Google for "stonehenge campsite".

So what's the catch? Why should Google give away these seemingly great websites when traditionally we've had to pay so much? I think the answer is simple. Google needs more small businesses online with effective websites. More websites means more spend on AdWords and money going through their Google Checkout system.

So maybe in some ways they're not quite so free. But even so they could be the low cost website you've been waiting for.

David Howlett has been helping small business owners with their websites for over ten years. He is now passing on his knowledge through his online marketing blog www.reallysimpleseo.com which offer free Guides, Tips and Online Training Courses.

Photo credit: Kinologik