|
CityMax Website Builder - Review Rating: 4 
CityMax is a versatile Website builder. It can be used to build any type of Website, from simple to the most sophisticated. It encompasses three editors and a big image library that provides you with a lot of flexibility in writing Web pages. CityMax takes care of your promotional needs with free site submission to search engines and credits for Google AdWords. With this remarkable tool you can open a store, list your products, and collect payments through credit cards or PayPal accounts and do much more. It also is loaded with innovative features that allow you to build customer relationship by sending periodic newsletters and reminders. This Website builder surely gives you more than what you pay.
Thumbs up
· Choice of 1500 Website design templates
· Ability to add 25 types of Web pages
· Choice of three editors
· Free promotional tools and free credits
· No advertisements
· Free trial offer
Thumbs down
· Pages must be saved before viewing
· Images need to be uploaded to the server first
· No support for logo
· No telephonic support
User Friendliness
Rating: 3.5
Both novice and experienced computer users can easily create a Website using CityMax. Account creation is a simple three-step process. First choose a design, then choose pages, and finally name your site. That’s all. After the three-step process is complete, an easily understandable toolbar appears on the top. You just need to click the Edit icon and start building your Website.
Toolbar with both graphics and text
There are two groups of icons on the toolbar. The first group on the left is for managing individual pages while the second group on the right is for managing the complete site. CityMax comes with WYSIWYG editors; therefore, you need not know HTML. However, the biggest negative is that all changes are lost if you forgot to save your changes before editing. It is a hindrance to those who want to experiment a lot and try out different things before saving.
The best part about this builder is that it presents you with different strategies of making money out from your Website. You can create your own store and add products although the process is a little complicated. The Edit Billing Information is present both in Tools and Account section. Therefore, you will find the placement of Account icon on the toolbar a bit odd. It should be removed from the toolbar.
On every section, there is a useful help topic. Therefore, you will never feel lost.
Designing tools
Rating: 3
CityMax comes equipped with more than 1500 presentation templates. By applying a template, you can change the look and feel of your entire Website in one go. Searching for a template as per your requirement is easier because the templates are grouped into categories.
Featured templates
The negative point about CityMax templates is that in all of them, you will find heavy usage of pictures. A corporate Website designer would not be interested in having these pictures. Rather, he or she would be interested in a logo which is not supported in the template. Another drawback is that you cannot move the template pictures sideways.
After selecting the template, you can edit layout, border, header, index, and body. The design feature that you will definitely love is the ability to assign different background images to index and body. You can change the font of the index and take it anywhere. However, the thing that is missing is the ability to change the font of text in one go. You can assign different colors for your links when editing body.
In all likelihood, you will like the color wheel which pops up every time you intend to change a color. You can first pick up a color from the wheel and then can select from many shades of the same color.
Color Wheel With Different Shades of Red
Editing tools
Rating: 3
The default Advanced editor, though in beta stage, has all the features that you will probably need to design your Web pages. You can bold, italicize, and underline the text. You can also add superscripts and subscripts. Having tables is a very nice feature considering that most of the Websites are built using tables. In case you want to add a special character, you can do so using the Advanced Editor. The support for numbered and bulleted items will help you in categorizing your information. You can add and remove hyperlinks. You can even add bookmarks. You can add image wherever you want. You just need to place your cursor there. However, the big disadvantage is that your image should be on CityMax server. A preview appears before you add your image to your page. You can adjust height and width and set the alignment options.
Just a click allows you to change editors. You can change to a Word-Style Editor and Basic Editor.
Change Editor With One Click
Pay particular attention to the Powered By section. If you do not want “Powered by CityMax.com” to appear on every Web page, you can turn it off.
The Word-Style Editor works only with Microsoft Internet Explorer. It is surely going to disappoint you because many features of Microsoft Word are missing. In addition, you are never sure of where your images will appear.
If you are an experienced HTML programmer, you will find the Basic editor handy. However, the thing that will disappoint you is that you cannot wrap text. Therefore, you will have to do a lot of scrolling. In addition, the code does not appear in different colors. There is no facility to view code and design at the same time.
Promotional tools
Rating: 4.5
A Website that is not searchable is of no use. CityMax has everything that you might require to promote your Website. The Make Money page starts with useful articles on Website promotional strategies for service industry, professional industry, retail products, wholesale distributor, manufacturer, and money making opportunity. All the articles are very informative. They provide you methods which you can deploy to make money out of your Website. Getting indexed is a breeze. You can add your business Website to Google, MSN Search, Overture, Yahoo Directory, Excite, and AOL.
Free Search Engine Submission
You also get a $50 credit for including your Website in Google’s sponsored search results. If you have a store, you can list your products in Shopping.com and Shopzilla. You can manage all your promotional tasks through Tools->Marketing. You can easily add keywords and a meta description.
E-commerce tools
Rating: 4.5
You can sell your products through your Website by setting up a store. The only thing that you need to do is to add a catalog page and then add your products. You can assign codes to your product and can have three different images for your product. There is plenty of space to write your product description. However, there are many fields on the Add Item page out of which some are really not required. In addition, you will have to add products, one at a time.
Catalog page
CityMax features a shipping rate calculator which is very important considering that most of the products have to be shipped outside. You can also set up tax rates. Whenever a customer purchases a product, you can set up an e-mail notification. You can collect payments only through credit cards and that too in U.S. dollars. Therefore, CityMax is not likely to appeal to businesses from other nationalities. However, there are different ways in which you can collect credit card payments. A good feature is the ability to accept payments through PayPal. You can track all your orders. CityMax is integrated with eBay and you can make all transactions through your site using eBay. You can also offer discounts on your products and add a customized Thank You Page.
Power Tools
Other Features
Rating: 4.5
CityMax comes with 25 types of pre-defined Web pages that you can add by just clicking on the page type. Just fill a few fields and the page will be added to your Website.
Web page types
The Photo Album page allows you to display all your photos at one place. You can create a feedback form to collect information from your Website visitors. This greatly improves the visitor retention rate. With a Mailing List/Newsletters page, you can allow your visitors subscribe to a periodic e-mail newsletter. The Autoresponder page behaves a little differently. With an autoresponder page, you can have a text box where your visitor can enter his or her e-mail. Then you can send them periodic e-mails. Every good business Website should have a guest book. The Guestbook page allows you to add a guestbook where your visitors can enter their contact information and give suggestions and feedback. If you want to make your site interactive, you can add a Message Board page which allows visitors to post questions and get responses offline. Visitors will be interested in reaching your office. The Maps page allows you to create a map to your office or business establishment. The Polling Booth page allows you to conduct an online poll. You will find every type of Web page in CityMax.
Support
Rating: 4
Rarely will you find documentation as extensive as in CityMax. The Help icon is right there in the toolbar. The documentation is extensive and it includes a 7-step quick start tutorial. Completing the tutorial hardly takes 15 minutes.
Extensive Documentation
The documentation contains articles on just every topic. There is also a list of frequently asked questions. If you do not want to go through the documentation from top to bottom, you can type your topic, search for it, and then read about the relevant topic. If your question is not there in documentation, you can raise a support ticket. CityMax support team gives the answers either on the same or next business day. Besides that, your questions also appear on the Help page. You will also be glad to find a big knowledge base apart from documentation. All the help text appears in big font. This is the major advantage. The thing that is missing is that there is no telephonic support. Therefore, if you are in a real hurry, you will not be able to complete your work. Rest everything is okay.
Overall Value
Rating: 4
The thing that will probably attract you to CityMax is its 10-day free trial offer. Ten days should be sufficient to try out all features of CityMax. However, you cannot create a shopping cart during free trial. After ten days, you can buy a $19.98 monthly package. $19.98 is a reasonable price considering that CityMax has such extensive features. In addition, there are discounts if you go for 6-months or 12-months package. You can pay by Visa or MasterCard. If you are not satisfied, you can get back all your money. You not only get a free domain name but also 50 MB of Web storage and five e-mail ids. In addition, you get more than $460 of free credits. You do not need to pay for pictures and videos. CityMax comes with its own library of professional stock photos. Therefore, you get more than what you pay for. If your store does a good business, you will be able to recover the monthly cost within a few days. All transactions on your Web store are secure; therefore, you do not have to worry about frauds. The integration of CityMax with eBay makes the selling of your products easier.
Technical Details
Rating: 4
Your Website can have up to 500 pages. The good thing is that you are not bound to use the citymax.com domain name. You can use your own domain name. There is no limit on the amount of data transfer. You can protect your individual pages with a password. You can post informative articles on your Website. You can make your Website interactive by including a message board. Your site can also host an events page thus allowing visitors to know about upcoming activities. CityMax also allows you to have a FAQ page. CityMax allows you to have up to 500 products in your catalog. That should be sufficient for a small store but insufficient for a big brand name. After adding your products, you can modify your products. You can collect payments securely through credit cards or through PayPal accounts. Your Website will be integrated with Shopping.com, Shopzilla and Froogle. You do not have to worry about promoting your products; your products will automatically get featured in shopping sites. There are more than 2000 stock photos ready to be inserted in your Web pages. Whenever you feel stuck, you can contact customer support through e-mails.
 |
| |
| |
