Mr Site Takeaway Website Pro - TechRadar UK

Many ISPs offer online Web production tools, but Mr Site goes further than most.

Clearly aimed at business-minded individuals with an online project to promote, Mr Site Pro takes you from the idea stage to checking your bank balance for updates using a simple six-step program.

If you want to take your business online but don't want the hassle of learning to use complex software, Mr Site has to be on your shortlist. Yet are the improved shopping experience and addition of search optimisation tools that feature in the Pro edition worth the additional expense?

Simple web design

No experience of Web design or development is needed to use Mr Site. Just fire up your Web browser, go to www.mrsite.com and log in to activate your membership. Then enter a domain name and start at step one: choosing a design from the numerous templates available.

Next you move on to site structure, which means choosing the number of pages your site needs. So far so good, but next up is step three - changing content - and if you've ever tried to do anything more complex than write a letter with Word, you know what to expect.

It's not pretty or particularly flexible, but it gets the job done so long as your requirements aren't too exotic. If they are, there's an option for cutting out the wizard altogether and just uploading your own HTML.

Assuming you've navigated this part of the process without problems, the next stage is just a button-click: publish your site.

Add PayPal to your site

If you've shelled out the extra £50 for Mr Site Pro, you're probably wondering when your new Web site is going to start making money. Setting up a store is just a question of filling out descriptions and uploading images. The brain work comes in determining which level of the PayPal service your shoppers experience.

A standard PayPal shopping cart means leaving your site for the entire transaction. In other words, your shop is hosted by PayPal. As you upgrade your shopper spends more and more time on your site and therefore has a smoother, more branded experience.

Boost your traffic

You have the option of an Express Checkout, which keeps the shopping basket itself on your site and only sends out for final payment processing. You can, for an additional monthly payment, upgrade further to have all the processing done in the background while visitors remain on your site.

If you're wondering whether you need these additional features, there's a simple way to work it out: examine the scale of your sales ledger. PayPal.com has up-to-date figures on where it recommends an upgrade will pay its way.

There's one more aspect of Mr Site Pro which is of interest: the SiteBoost tools. There's a simple site-map generator, Meta tag creator and links to the manual submission pages on the top three engines.

What this boils down to is a set of forms that make your site's profile easier to read and more rapidly available to the major search providers: Google, MSN and Yahoo!.

Create a professional site the easy way

Many of the popular hosting companies provide site creation and e-store hosting/generation too, so it's worth looking at a few demos before committing.

Notables include 1&1 and Actinic, but what Mr Site does well is bring everything you're going to need to produce a professional looking site with a full-on e-shopping experience into one easily managed place. Furthermore, if you have any problems, it also provides tech support.