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Website Effectiveness

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lkt1954

New Member
We currently have a website that is hosted by one of our regional telephone books and is very generic (very basic template and very basic information on our part). We do not do any ecommerce on it, nor do we plan to.
Recently I have been looking at getting this site redesigned by someone that designs websites and update it with good solid information along with pictures and graphics of what we do. My question here is how effective a tool is a website that you do not do any online sales on? Also what do you think makes a good professional website?
Any advise would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks
Larry
 
visual800

visual800

Active Member
Ive had mine up for a couple months now. nothing fancy, no commerce. I made it from a template for the purpose of seeing our work. It has produced nothing which is fine with me.

I don't think IMO if your not selling anything on your site your not going to get the traffic. I dont think it matters if you got a $200 website or spend $4000.
 
SignManiac

SignManiac

New Member
I designed mine personally and hired a code guy to get it up and running. It's the only advertising I currently use and the bulk of my work comes from it. But... Just having a website published does not mean you will derive any work from it. It's a lot more involved than that.

Start with Dan Antonelli or Joe Diaz first if you want to see what a good website should look and function like. A homemade template site with no knowledge of SEO is a waste of all your time and effort. About the only thing it will be good for is an online portfolio for people to look at and only if you tell them how to get there. Otherwise very few will likely find it doing any kind of search.
 
Kevin-shopVOX

Kevin-shopVOX

New Member
visual800 said:
I don't think IMO if your not selling anything on your site your not going to get the traffic. I dont think it matters if you got a $200 website or spend $4000.
Click to expand...

You don't have to have an ecommerce site to get traffic. And yes whatever you spend if it isn't maintained and setup proper its pretty much useless other than a brochure.

You just have to A) know what you are doing or B) Hire someone who does.

A website is and will continue to be your first impression for a lot of people whether you ever see them or not.

Remember when setting up a site. Content is king, links are fuel and relevance ties it all together. The more you have of all of this on a consistent basis with your site the better off it is. This is one of the reasons I like a CMS platform. They are extremely easy to add content to on a regular basis, easy to emphasize key words within page titles, post titles and post content and when done right search engines love them.

I can tell you I don't spend a dime on my site, other than hosting and time, (not signVOX...that first impression needs some love) and I'm doing very well in search results targeting my local area.

Pick up a book or two. Its actually quite easier than you think to do a good job with organic search results.

Good luck.
 
allamericantrade

allamericantrade

New Member
I designed and built my own website. I do any changes as i feel I need to. I am continually changing my website and updating it on a regular basis. It's extremely easy and I do not know a thing about codes. I use a free program called yahoo sitebuilder. been using it for years. I can build a simple site in less than 5 minutes knowing nothing on codes. Check out my site as an example, www.allamericantrade.com. I get about 2-40 clicks a week but that has nothing to do with the complexity of the site and I do not do ecommerce. The traffic is about visability. What search engines and sites can you be found on.
 
704signs

704signs

New Member
I built mine using http://order.1and1.com It was real easy to put together and update as needed. If you car to take a look at it its here http://www.704signs.com/ I use it to show clients the type of work I do and the scope of projects I have done as well. This only costs 13.00 a month and the customer service has been real good as well.
 
Speedsterbeast

Speedsterbeast

New Member
Downloaded a Joomla template and had a friend build it for about $500.
I use it more as a portfolio than anything. In fact, I have gained business by people asking where can I see some of your work?
 
Craig Sjoquist

Craig Sjoquist

New Member
Currently using a web builder from host as I have done for years and it has done well, my future current plans are learning code and then create my own website for hosting.
 
James Burke

James Burke

Being a grandpa is more fun than working
Built mine using Microsoft Front Page...it's simple, looks home made but does the job. Since I already have Illustrator and Photoshop, I'm entertaining the idea of getting Adobe Dreamweaver. It appears to be complicated, but I'm in it for the long haul and will work at it over a period of time.

I've spoken with marketing "gurus" who want to take me to the "next level" but I'm not willing to give up control of my registered domain.

In a nutshell, yes...a web page is necessary even if it's only a couple of pages. It compounds the effectiveness of any of your printed marketing materials and serves as another portal of contact for your customers.


JB
 
The Equipment Guy

The Equipment Guy

New Member
Jon Aston, one of our members here did mine and I feel it is probably some of the best money I ever spent. He's a pretty swift one when it comes to getting your name out there.
 
J

john1

Guest
Wordpress works great with all in one seo plugin. It's free and helps people find your pages. I get inquiries weekly now via my site from using all in one seo alone vs not using it.
 
mnapuran

mnapuran

New Member
We get quite a bit of business from our site.... even though many might see our vehicles, or customer referrals: most all of them hit our website to "check us out" before they actually call us.

I get comments all the time in this regard. And honestly, our site is lacking IMO... but since I do it myself, time is sometimes hard to come by :)
 
Stagecraft

Stagecraft

New Member
If you're competent at sign design, doing an effective website isn't much of a stretch.
I've done a few with an extremely easy to use wysiwyg program called CoffeeCup Visual Site Designer.
My personal site www.grandbanks42.com has been up for a few years.
My business site www.stagecraftfilm.com is brand new and because I've linked it to Facebook, it's already getting a fair amount of traffic within our target market.
The nice thing about CoffeeCup is that there's also a really helpful forum, the whole thing is geared towards web design newbies. - Best of luck! - Boyd
 
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lkt1954

New Member
Lots and lots of great replies and information, Thanks to all.

My initial thoughts for our revamp are:a home page with a general description of who we are and what we do; a design page that will display our work by catorgies; a page with more details about our products and services; a links page with links to various catalogs from our suppliers and finally a contact us page.

Again thanks for al the help and advise.

Larry
 
visual800

visual800

Active Member
mine was built with WIX. I know some of you have said WIX sucks but after several months of trying to do my own with dreamweaver and a damn bought flash template WIX ROX! www.visual-images-signs.com/

It aint gonna win any addys but I dont care as I said it was something where people could see our work
 
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