Websites

Afternoon all, just a question for any of you that has your own website, do you get many enquiries from it?

Cheers

Worth having as a reference point, but to be honest anyone finding 'your' website is a bit like looking for a needle in a haystack. I doubt you will get work from just having a site.

However, if you decide on it, I would give serious consideration to getting it done professionally, I think a cheap poorly done site will more than likely put people off from using you.

Make sure that you also get permission to use other companies logos, just because you may have delivered to a company does not make you one of their 'partners' it is also illegal to use without consent!

Make sure you get a decent domain name, because using one like AOL or hotmail looks awful and totally unprofessional, especially if it is plastered on the side and back of a van too! Also steer away from 'job specific' templates and logos and stock photos, [as seen advertised on TV] In my mind they look terrible and most unlikely to attract any customers!

Had one made, www.sgsameday.co.uk, had a couple of enquiries off it as its only been live a couple of weeks was just wondering what everyone elses take on it was? Thanks for the reply though rapid

Well we have 2 running so we can moniter which one performs best, one made by me using vistaprint and one out-sourced. Wix is another "make your own" website that has some very good features to make it look professional too... And can cost as little as £3.50 per month.

I think its a useful tool as back-up to any sales and marketing you plan on doing, bit as a stand alone piece of marketing as Alan says, it's unlikely to do much unless you're on the front page of the search engines, and to do that you need a little help.

If you do decide to do a website, then you need it to compliment any other marketing you do, otherwise you'll just confuse any potential customers that may be interested.

If you do out-source your website, then i'd ensure that you can edit as and when you want to.

My advice is play around until you're happy with what you have, look at others for how they're laid out, but be careful not to copy anything. It's very difficult to be unique in our industry, how many ways are there to say sameday courier? But it's very easy to make a website look shoddy and unprofessional... And that can do more damage than having no website at all.

I wasn't getting much joy with my website until recently. I've got it yell. Com and google places, made a hell of a differance. I get a lot of phone calls with enquiries and i've got a few good new customers from it aswell. It's worth thinking about.

My new one should be up and going in about 2 / 3 weeks :-)

Speed Couriers Nationwide said:

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My advice is play around until you're happy with what you have, look at others for how they're laid out, but be careful not to copy anything. It's very difficult to be unique in our industry, how many ways are there to say sameday courier? But it's very easy to make a website look shoddy and unprofessional... And that can do more damage than having no website at all.

I think if you're unique (enough) for your area than that's fine. Most websites I see do look fairly shoddy if I'm honest. Best to keep things simple and focus on quality content (information that users want, and good English). Stay away from silly fonts and heavy graphics.

Its alright having an all singing all dancing website, but you need folk to find it.. question is how is the customer going to find you, I have 3 and my DIY site which is far cheaper and does far better than the other 2 sites done by so called professional outsourced companies and cost the bleeding earth, but they are acting as seo,s and links... my answer is dont just rely on a website and sit and wait for the first bite, try different baits.. it works for me.

True a website on its own is worthless BUT the starting point is having one that at least looks the part. There are too many i've seen that look awful. Once you're happy with how it looks, then the hard stuff begins. Gettin it up the listings, and there's no easy way of doing that... But thats for another day

I aint got a website cos I dont believe they are worth the effort yet despite all the Marketers BS. Mind you what would I know I aint a success story.

BusinessBuddy said:

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I aint got a website cos I dont believe they are worth the effort yet despite all the Marketers BS. Mind you what would I know I aint a success story.

Like anything, I think it depends.

BusinessBuddy said:

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I aint got a website cos I dont believe they are worth the effort yet despite all the Marketers BS. Mind you what would I know I aint a success story.

Phil I have to diagree mate... I built the freebie on a budget (started with nowt and still got nowt.. Lol), and I do mean on budget, its cost all of £6 for 4yrs, and its pulled in quite abit and paid for everything else, all this without the aid of paying for google ads, and have found the best way to gain customer confidence with guaranteed work is by talking to them directly with good sales pitch, its all about selling as speed says if the shop window doesnt appeal the shoppers will walk on past, I have tried different methods by adding different gadgets to attract the customer and none have worked for me.

PS dont listen to marketers.. Listen to the real people ;-)

Websites are a cheap and effective way of getting yourself noticed, you can either do them yourself or use a designer,

vista print and yell do simple websites and you also use 1 and 1's web builder, you don't have to go made they are basically a glorified email that you send to a virtual web window these days!!

A website is not a short cut to hard graft tho, irrespective on how good it looks. As i said, its an "add on", and if it looks bad, it can do more damage than good. Marketeers will tell you all sorts of bollox, all i can say is its brought in work for us, and if anyone wants to know owt about us, its all there to see

If you do have a website built check all the smellings and ,gramnerr' yourself.

There are loads of companies (some well known ) with really poor punctuation etc.

If they can't be bother to look after the little things it doesn't give a good impression in my opinion.

Yes did you like my little mis spelling joke.

Know.. Wot joke m8

Ive always survived off word and mouth and recomendations in the past but ive recently built a facebook page and have had quite a few enquiries from it so ive took the plunge and the new website should be up and running in a week or so. I agree with some of the earlier comments that a cheap shoddy website can make your business look cheap aswell and can sometimes do more harm than good