We live in an age of websites and smart phones and yet there are still hundreds of thousands of Australian businesses out there without a web presence. Many businesses simply don’t realise the importance of having their own website as a promotional and marketing tool. Luckily for Aussie businesses, Google and MYOB have teamed up to provide a FREE (initially) website building tool to get all Australian businesses online.
The website is very simply called www.gettingbusinessonline.com.au and it allows Australian businesses to sign up and very quickly create their own website for free.You basically get your own .com.au domain name for free for the first 2 years. After that time it will cost you $30 for every additional 2 years which is fair enough. You also get a year’s free access to the MYOB Atlas website building tool, which allows you to create and customise your own website via a simple interface. They even throw in $75 Adwords credit to help you get some traffic to your new website.
Like with most do it yourself website builders, the templates aren’t great as you can see below. They’re quite plain and unpolished with little room for customisation. They’re not bad for a free website but there is definitely room to improve on the templates. So it looks like us web designers won’t be out of a job just yet.
Google and MYOB are targeting small business’s like tradies, hairdressers and accountants as these are the businesses that currently don’t have a strong web presence. I think the biggest challenge will be educating this largely offline audience on the importance of having a website. Then they need to teach them how to actually create the site. Easier said than done (I can already see my dad having some trouble putting his site together).
It looks like do it yourself websites are the way of the future with more and more of them popping up each day. Does this mean the end of web designers?
Adham Dannaway
Web Designer and Front End Developer with a passion for web design, coding, blogging, WordPress and chewing gum. Check out my web design portfolio and follow me on Twitter and Facebook!
Although the idea is appealing for businesses, it doesn’t seem very professional to me. The templates are extremely plain but the appeal of free hosting for 2 years will win people over for sure.
I agree Jana, the templates are very plain and they definitely lack variety. I guess the target audience probably wouldn’t mind in most cases. So it could be a cheap and easy website solution for most businesses.
I agree when you say “yourself websites are the way of future” because, well, more and more businesses will take that opportunity. Having done that, they’ll need people to cutomize their website (such as webdesigners) and other people (such as myself) to feed their website. I think that feedind websites that already exist, is a big opportunity ahead. Not being able to be a webdesigner (lack of talent), that’s what I’m doing now most of the time. Keeps me pretty busy 🙂
Getting business online…. yeah right!!! MYOB… I smell a RAT!
they only want you in their control so they can milk you down the track.
can you put a checkout on the website
@Des – The Australian SMB market is quite significant and there are a few companies trying to get into this space. Google/MYOB will charge a $5 monthly fee after the first year free trial. They will also charge $30/year for domain name renewal.
@Mario – At this stage there is no e-commerce facility, but I’m sure they’ll roll it out in the futire if the business goes well.
Had a look at this a while back and I think for some small time web devs/designers it’s a perfect opportunity to offer to set this up for clients that don’t have the funds for a full blown site and don’t have the time or know how to set this up themselves.
—
@nitza