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Clarity

Eric S

London

I provide Change Management, in which I can help your business grow by understanding and implementing technology, as well as on social media and the web.
I combine many skills to help you reach your goals, whether that's implementing solutions to make more time for you with your family (or for golf!), or helping the organisation as a whole move and grow.
Started original web design company in 2008.
Relaunched in 2017 as a new web design company providing full hosting and domain name registration.
Most websites based on WordPress also created custom CMS with bespoke dashboards etc.
Launched AppSpark in 2020 as a mobile app, web design and web hosting company, providing WordPress websites, as well as apps for internal company use with custom management dashboards from internal forms and stock management to staff and client management.

$2.00/min

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Entrepreneurship User Interface Design Web Design Search Engine Optimization (SEO) MVP Change Management Research Website Management IT Solutions New Technology Implementation

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I have various skills such as making apps, dealing with APIs, app management portals, SaaS services, website building, IOT, data automation, custom CMS, web hosting & servers, general I.T., studio photography, videography, graphic design and more. I have the skills to take an idea and create a logo, branding, and a website for that idea in a matter of hours, as well as then follow up with video demo, accompanying app, or graphics for online ads and marketing and other (useful) things.

Potentially I'm an 'MVP machine' as I can do a lot in a short time and by myself, I want to use that to help you create an MVP or even just a series of mockups or a one page website, there are hundreds of options and I will discuss your idea or design etc.

Costs start from $750/ £500 and there may be ongoing costs for cloud services, hosting or if continuous iterations are needed.

I can sign an NDA if required.

I Can Help With Advice on Website Design or WordPress Suitability

If you want to build a new website for your company but want to know if it's better to:
1) have a custom site
2) have a WordPress site
3) build your own WordPress site
4) use a SAAS/ online builder
I can help advise based on your particular situation and whether or not you need a shop.
I will take into account your company size and potential budget.

A website is not something to dismiss. A website is a serious project for your company to showcase itself to the world. It is as important, or possibly more important, than advertising and marketing. So I won't ever advise a low quality solution. That doesn't mean it will necessarily cost $30,000 or even $10,000. It depends entirely on your requirements.
I also usually advise a separate SEO company to help you, as that is also very important. I do not provide this service.

I Can Advise You on Using Costly Cloud Software (SaaS) or Alternatives (PaaS)

There are many benefits to cloud, but one of the frequent downsides is cost. There is also data privacy. I can work with you to find alternative FOSS products that you can run on your own Self-Hosted servers (which I can also help you setup), that are usually good value or even free as they are open source. I won't always advocate for self-hosted (VPS), it depends on your needs and the amount of data you need to process, how secure that data needs to be, and many other factors.

Self Hosted does not mean on-premise servers, it referrs to the use of cloud computing or Virtual Private Servers and PaaS (Platform as a Service) to easily setup (usually one-click) and run your own sofware (or web services e.g. NextCloud, CMS, CRM) without having to pay per user or other fees that are often unreasonable for small businesses when using SaaS such as Trello, Asana, and other cloud SaaS.

I can also put together web or app demos for you to compare alternatives so you can move forward, with no requirement to use anything I create as a demo, though I can help you with that as well, by creating a website, webapp, or mobile app that works with a content management system so you can manage your app or website easily all in one place. I can also help you create a niche WaaS or SaaS such as a niche blog etc.

I can also help with domains, DNS, email and other web services to bring your self-hosted web apps altogether (you always need a domain name to run your own web services).

There is so much potential out there with Cloud and Self-hosting that you will almost always find a self-hosted (usually free) alternative to a cloud product like Trello, Asana or AirTable.

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Answers

Eric S answered

Profile sites like AirBnB (or any that users create their own profiles/websites)?

Hi,

Yes WP Multisite if you want separate sites per person (i.e. per profile), but if you basically want a Membership/ listing site, like AirBnB with profiles, there are a few good ways to do this. The main one is to use custom fields on a dashboard so the users can easily change their profile, colours etc. without much effort.

I was going to do something similar called ArtBnB with which artists can go and stay places (with other artists), I think it was a concept by a Finnish artist. I didn't do it in the end, but to try and help you get your head around this;
Wether you want to create a niche microsite that your users pay for each month i.e. a nihce blog, a full online service, or a listing site for whatever concept you have, that sends you a percentage of the payment when rented (via Stripe), there is absolutley a way to do it, and without paying ridiculous monthly fees.

Please do contact me if you would like to have a further discussion or potentially I can work with you, to help make your project work. I have experience in this, and an unlimited license for a particular WaaS software that I think would help if you want to do what I am imagining.

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Website Development

Eric S answered

Can someone point me to a white-label website builder which allows custom payment gateway integration?

Hi,

You can start with WordPress or another CMS if you want to build the 3rd party payment integration in PHP. You can use a WaaS to create the white label website builder and add your own PG via WooCommerce.

https://www.ecwid.com/partners/white-label has a white label service and has a lot of integrations, or perhaps this: https://simvoly.com/whitelabel-website-builder

Though to be fair the first option has hundreds of payment plugins though Woo, so unless it's your own crypto, you might find there is one already available for your payment gateway.
https://woocommerce.com/product-category/woocommerce-extensions/payment-gateways/

If you want any further information or help on your project, please get in contact and I'd be happy to try and find a solution with you.

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E-commerce

API development

Web Design

Eric S answered

Tech tool recommendation please: what LOW monthly COST app options have your tried (and hopefully loved) on the PR front?

Hi,

There wasn't much specifics beyond PR, is this about providing better customer relations?

If you're looking for a chat kind-of platform this one is free and you can host it yourself:
https://chaskiq.io/
It's marketed as "Conversational pipelines for Sales, Support and Marketing"

There is also https://www.chatwoot.com/ which is also free but not as feature-rich but I did try it as well

There's also https://www.mautic.org/ which is marketing automation.

I hope that helps, if you want to get any of those setup and running on your own server or cloud servers, and under your own domain. If you need further help or advice, or help setting this up, please contact me as it's something I have experience with.

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Marketing

Entrepreneurship

Small Business

Eric S answered

How can i take my Jewelry e-Com store to the next level?

My first thought would be look at Facebook Marketing and really target those adverts to people who are maybe part of certain groups or in certain areas if you need them to be local. FB marketing can start from as little as £1 a day so it's a good place to try and see what happens even if you only use it for a few months.

The other thing you can do is sell any pre-made items, or make some bulk items and sell them on Etsy or Facebook to boost your reach and as people share them you should generate more interest.

You can also search twitter by topic and location to see if they need custom items made, like those who tweet about needing a silver wedding gift or something.
To do this you can use https://twitter.com/search-advanced

If you need any further info or advice, are looking for a custom mobile app, or need software or services setup or data automated (e.g. get a notification when you get a specific type of order, custom emails etc. etc.) I'd be happy to help.

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E-commerce

Sales

Business Development

Eric S answered

Should I create a WordPress site or build a custom website?

TLDR; WordPress.

If you use a VPS or cloud hosting, with OpenLiteSpeed and Oxygen Builder, you can create a custom website that loads very very quickly, has great SEO (though you can use RankMath).

A lot of people think wordpress is slow or bad becuase they often see it on shared hosting bogged down with bloated plugins. This doesn't have to be the case. I have made and seen sites load very fast, with photos etc.
You can also use Custom Fields and Custom Post Types to fully customise your pages, categories and apperance as well as improve backend management.

I use a Lindode VPS, and they have a one-click WP install (though I don't use that), I use CyberPanel (free cPanel) and OLS as mentioned. There is also Closte which run OLS on google cloud, and many other excellent providers. What you choose ultimitley depends on how many users you expect.

Some of the biggest and busiest websites run on WordPress, for exmaple:
TechCrunch.
The New Yorker.
BBC America.
Bloomberg Professional.

They all rely on CDNs, that will be your best weapon if you have hundreds of thousands of visitors or more.

WordPress can both be set-up quickly and managed and improved in the long run.

The only people not using it are nay-sayer hipsters or big companies who both have the time (and knowledge) to make something custom. If you're a small-medium buinesses, then just use WordPress, at least to start with.

But I will say, Oxygen Builder will make your life much easier and it isn't bloated and won't slow down your page(s), it can achieve "349 millisecond load times" and that's without the OLS cache.

Don't forget to compress images and serve them from a CDN as well, makes a huge difference.

Good luck!

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Web Design

Website Development

Eric S answered

Open-source codebase for users to create their own sites/landing pages?

Hi,

You could use something like a Website as a Service (WaaS) that allows you to create a platform that users can sign up to and pay you monthly for a service. You just need a domain name (example.com) and then users would get a subdomain (user.example.com) or they can register their own domain which you can also make profit on.

I would imagine a simple sign up process and a dashboard that allows your users to either use basic drag and drop tools or simply a form if you're going to do that for them. It basically sounds like a mini-website or a one-page site which is perfectly doable with WaaS using WordPress on a VPS or Cloud Computing, which can help with expansion when needed. There are other alternatives as well but this one is open source and allows you to easily accept payments for their service.

You can eventually add features to the service like private content and even allow your customers to add external content like Instagram/ Twitter. There are thousands of possibilities.

Do let me know if you need further help or advice, or help setting this up, as it's something I have experience with.

I know these aren't open source, but don't forget that Startups.com has https://www.launchrock.com/ which is basically what you are offering and you could create a form then create it for them, that way you are providing a design service that you can choose what to charge, rather than providing the entire platform. https://simvoly.com/whitelabel-website-builder is a white label drag and drop builder that you can launch as a service to your customers.

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Open Source Software

PHP Frameworks

SaaS

Eric S answered

How to hire an Ecommerce Virtual Assistant in USA?

Try https://tawk.to they have real chat agents that work on multiple sites at once, so you can have them manage your chat from about $2/hr (per website, not per person) - or if you want something automated try https://www.tensorflow.org/ (free)

There's also https://www.fiverr.com/categories/business/virtual-assistant-services/administration

Hope that's of use to you :)

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Member since December 2020