Build marketing web sites quickly - too good to be true?
 by: Chris Cooper

I have been building and publishing websites for small businesses for the last eight years and over that time I have pretty much defined the way that I like to build sites and the tools that I like to use. During this time the business has changed and theWebBothy does less site building and has taken on more of a consultancy slant.

I started out using Front Page which had a lot of advantages for a raw beginner with its ability to be able to publish from the application itself using Front Page extensions. It did have its complications though and would add code that was peculiar to Front Page. I then moved on to Dreamweaver in all its guises and am not surprised that this product has come to dominate the professional design market. Dreamweaver is an excellent product and is extremely versatile, but it is also a vast application and can take some time to master all of its many virtues. Most businesses do not require an all singing and dancing site and marketing their product or service is more important than fancy flash graphics.

Just recently, after watching a few of their tutorial videos, I thought I would have a look at a product called XSitePro.

I had seen this product promoted by quite a few internet marketers and always discounted it as another easy affiliate sale for someone and probably a disappointing product as often can be the case. Well, I was wrong!

This piece of software is extremely good value. For $197 (that’s about £110 at today’s exchange rates) you get a complete system for getting a quality web site online. All you need is a domain name and some hosting and you have a fully functional business web site. It may not be very flash, in both senses of the word, but the nice thing about XSitePro is that it helps with search engine optimisation so your site stands a good chance of getting listed by the major engines.

There are many features to XSitePro, too many for me to list here but I will try to give you a summary of the most useful and important tools contained within the software over and above the WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) editor that produces the pages for the site.

• Add a site map to your site at a click of the mouse – search engines love them

• Create easy navigation menus and choose where to place them

• Add a breadcrumb trail with an easy to use tool

• Add unblockable marketing pop-ups – choose from three types

• Add Google Adsense ads into your web pages which means you can add an extra income stream without any extra effort

• Check the SEO status of your site with an easy to interpret report complete with any necessary actions

• Articles are a great way to drive traffic to your site, add them easily with XSitePro’s article template

• Use templates to create sales letters, product pages etc and even download extra templates from third parties

• Superb training videos and manual to take a beginner through to finishing a great site (these are genuinely some of the best I have seen)

These are just a few of some of the really nice features of this superb piece of software. XSitePro produce a “Seven Reasons Why You Need XSitePro” video and normally I would regard this type of promotion as a bit tacky but this is genuinely worth watching – click here to take a look.

You don’t have to take my word for it either. A few weeks ago, internet guru Anik Singal launched the excellent Affiliate Manager 1st Edition.

If you have this course you've probably seen the part of the presentation where Anik raves about XSitePro (if not don't worry as I've put a link to it below).

I e-mailed Anik and asked him if it would be okay to use this part of the video to promote XSitePro as it's such a wonderful third party endorsement.

You'll be thrilled to know that Anik said YES! Here's a link to a special page containing an extract from that video - http://www.xsitepro.com/anik2.html

I hope that you find XSitePro as exciting as I did. I am that taken with the versatility of this application that I will be producing some “how to” videos to demonstrate the power of XSitePro in the near future – keep checking back at my site for more details.

About The Author

Chris Cooper, owner and author of The Small Business Internet Manual has been responsible for getting numerous small businesses successfully online. To view more articles written by Chris and receive your FREE internet marketing gift worth 428, please visit www.thewebbothy.co.uk.