The course of a young fighter for the humanities, a beginner online entrepreneur

Question

CMS

I have a friend, she has an idea to promote and sell something unique over the Internet. Humanist, this is important to note, i.e. not only about jQuery, but I have not heard of HTML either. I gave a lot of money to some studio, they made her a website, now they demand money for every change. With search engine optimization, of course, they promised mountains of gold, in fact, garbage. She seriously believes that there are few visitors due to the fact that the design of the site is not good enough.
I want to help her, but without getting into this business myself. She needs to learn to understand what's what, but learn quickly. Who knows any books or blogs (in Russian or English - she is in England, there are no problems with the language), where they quickly and without commercial rubbing talk about how to make sites on one of the CMS, how to promote it using the right methods, how to trade online, how not to fall for studio wiring and a bunch of other things but without the need to understand the technological basics?
Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

The first thing to understand is that if you have an idea, but you don’t know how to implement it, your idea is worthless.
Everything you write about has already been covered more than once on Habré - just use the search. Seriously, well, there are a lot of articles on this topic here. Asked a question - drove it into the search - read the article.
Do you understand that there are no books "Do your own startup in 21 days and become a millionaire for dummies"? Rather, there are such books, but after reading them, you will not come one step closer to fulfilling your idea.
Raising your store on CMS is not a big problem. There are templates for joomla, and for drupal, and for a bunch of other CMS. If you don't need a store, you can always fake the content to match what you want.
A good design can be ordered from freelancers, having previously discussed it.
In general, you either need to methodically study everything yourself, or recruit a team, or ask freelancers.
And it turns out, as in the joke

Answer 2

Well, on the topic:
Let someone screw it with something like:
habrahabr.ru/post/144291/#habracut
Or
twitter.github.com/bootstrap/
This guarantees a nice, acceptable design.
The rest, whatever she promotes there, is most likely already a question in the product itself, the client, etc.
Let him look at the business model canvas and everything related to this topic.
Well, if you really want to study, then go ahead on lynda.com
where any topic is described in such detail that even such a stupid person like me understands what is there and what needs to be twisted and pressed.

Answer 3

Miracles do not happen, alas.
The fastest way is to find a partner who understands all this. And everyone will do their own thing.

Answer 4

Forgive me for climbing on the table in boots, but...
> She seriously believes that there are few visitors due to the fact that the design of the site is not good enough.
As a rule (as a rule) the design of the site and everything else does not bring miracles. It only increases sales.
If customers are not ready to pay for goods on the site, even if the sites are drawn in Word, then something is wrong with the business model.
Fable about rare books:
Once, I had a chance to deal with a small organization that sold books. Only 10 positions. But the books were popular. There was no shopping cart on the site, nothing. Simply, the one who wanted to, sent money, wrote a letter. The responsible person sent the book.
The business model worked.
Moral: if someone needs your product, they will pay for it even if you only draw a diagram on a napkin with a pen.

Answer 5

Let him take in the share of developers-friends. Let them lead them. And everything will be fine :-)