WeB Sites and their use for builders and trades people

Today's marketing rules demand a presence on the web: Why?

Because 76% of people these days turn first to the Internet when they are trying to find a product or service.

The same is now true with phone numbers and the on-line directories are busier than ever. But, that does not mean any website will do. A poor website can have a negative impact on your company, rather than the positive one it is designed to create.

What makes a good website?

There are no set rules but broadly speaking, your website should be updated regularly. Add the jobs you are working on and highlight your expertise and services. Use your website as communication tool for both potential and existing customers; post company or industry news and invite feedback from your audience.

This page explores the use of web sites for builders, plumbers, plasterers, electricians, bricklayers and every other trade within the Building Industry. Since the introduction of the Internet there are new rules to how companies need to market themselves and this applies to every single trading company, no matter how small. The Internet is here to stay. It is changing, has changed, our lives. If we are not using it to market our businesses we will get left behind. If we are using it, but not properly, we will get left out!

At DIY Doctor we suggest that you get your website built professionally and then leasing it from the web company. Websites, servers, computers can all crash. If you lease your website you have now worries. It is hosted for you and if there is a breakdown it will not cost you an arm and a leg to put right. There is no reason why you should not get a great package these days for as little as £1000.00 per year. That is £20.00 per week for advertising to millions of people! Do not look at web packages that offer a limited amount of pages or specify download allowances etc. These people want you to exceed your (very low) limits. Then it gets expensive.

More reasons for having a website:

Competition: Your competitors will have one. If you are not in the marketplace, you will not get customers. DIY Doctor ran a building company for 35 years. We know, and every single builder and tradesmen knows (if they are honest) that in the Building Industry one moment you can have more work than you can possibly do, but the next moment the telephone stops ringing and it gets a little worrying. Word of mouth is great for us, but it can only be maintained if we can get in front of enough mouths! A website allows you to do just that.

Position: 76% of people look for products and services on the Internet rather than turning to the local paper or telephone books. This is why the advertising you pay so much for in your local press does not yield you many customers anymore.

Advertising: Advertising on the web is as cheap as chips when you consider the number of potential customers you can be in front of! Using a web site which includes a Content Management System (CMS) system such as the Springboard system described below, you have an unlimited number of pages on which to promote your company and advertise every single service you offer. In a Newspaper a full page advert, being seen by 20,000 locals, costs approximately £400.00 per month. A website with 50 pages full of your advertising; being seen by a potential 76% of the entire population; costs you £1.98 per page per month. It really is a no-brainer!

Branding: When your website has been built and you have been taught how to get it to the top of the search engines, it can be seen by thousands of people. Not all of these people will need your services, but with the right branding (A great logo and a strong message) they will remember you. When they bump into afreind who needs a builder, plumber, bricklayer or carpenter etc, you will be in their mind. Such is the power of branding....Just look at B & Q !

Keep things fresh: When you advertise in the local paper there is usually an artwork charge. The paper may give you free artwork the first time you advertise, but lets say you want to change the layout of your advertising every week (As you should do to keep your image fresh)....The artwork charges alone would cost you a fortune. Using a website for your advertising, where you can build and alter your own images and logos allows you to keep your message fresh by changing it as often as you like.

Profile: If your friends, or "someone you know, who works in IT" builds you a website they will have no idea of how to optimise it for the search engines. This means buiding the website for the specific purpose of marketing your company and making sure everyone on the Internet can find it easily by entering the type of products and services you offer. This is a specialist job. The best website in the world is useless if no-one knows it is there. There is no magic involved. Your site will not rise to the top of the search engines on its own; it needs help; it needs optimisation and the only way to do this effectively is to either spend 12 months researching search engine optimisation, find an optimisation specialist or have . Most specialists charge about £65.00 per hour (£520.00 per day) but some platforms will already include optimisation in the package. There is more about this below.

Quiet Times: If you are a Central Heating Engineer you will have noticed it gets a little quieter during the summer. If you lay patios, the same applies in the winter. When work dries up it gets a little scary. How about if we were to show you a way of making money from your website which had nothing to do with the telephone ringing? You do not have to sell health products as a "Second Income" or dip into your savings. You simply let your website work for you 24 hours a day seven days a week. With DIY Doctor and a Springboard system, we show you how to turn the simplest and smallest of websites into your own Branch Office making money while you sleep. It takes a while to get going and establish a customer base, but the potential rewards are huge. Click here for more.

Build a reputation: A website creates an image and a reputation for you. By posting your latest jobs on your website and creating an area where you can put testimonials from satisfied customers; you have answered many potential customer questions before they have been asked! Don't get your website built by 'your mate's son who's good with computers'. If your website looks like it's been built by a cowboy, what does that say about you!?

Photographs: By creating a photo gallery on your website you have answered the rest of the questions. Customers like to see what they are getting for their money. With no portfolio you are only selling an idea and this is the hardest sale of all. If you can show them their dream extension, and provide testimonials from the last person you built it for, their dream is now a reality. Sale agreed. *

Easy contact: A website gives contact facilities to your customers. Email addresses and telephone numbers, together with your trading address are all available, making your customers feel secure in who they are working with. Using E-mails to communicate with customers, even to attach quotations to, will save you many pounds over time. Photographs on your website allow you to present an image of your company, yourself (and your employees) to your customer before you have even met.

Company news: You can use your website to host News pages, giving details of everything your company is trying to achieve and has achieved. More content on the website makes it easier for the search engines to find you.

Location: A map on your website will tell customers clearly where your boundaries are. You can outline delivery or travel charges and print your terms and conditions clearly to avoid any misunderstandings later on.

Full Control: Many more applications can be "Bolted On" to a website to make the running of your business so much easier. Documents can be stored in "The Cloud" which means they are placed on secure computers, away from your own, and are retrievable at any time. This frees up your computer as well as keeping documents safe from accidental deletion and prying eyes. Using a Springboard approach DIY Doctor can show you how to implement this strategy on your site.

Marketing tool: Through using a statistics tool you can work out how many people are visiting every page of your site. When you can see your most popular pages, you can put your most important news or products on them. As a marketing tool, a stats package is vital and used in conjunction with a Content Management System such as Springboard this tool alone can help you make a lot of money from your website.

Full order book: Your website is your passport to a full order book when used properly. It is important to remember that a fresh, updated website offers your customers a fresh image of you. A stale, stagnant website, which sits there month after month gets boring and users will stop coming. With the right platform your website can be worth a great deal of money to you.

What is a Sprinboard Content Management System? Springboard is a Content Management System which allows you to Manage the content on your website. Choosing a system where you can manage your own pages after having your website professionally built, including E-mail and website marketing support with no big bills, can cost as little as £99.00 per month (This includes the website build,and you should only be paying for 10 months every year). This type of system allows you to keep your advertising and marketing entirely in-house and make changes to your site as often as you like. Keeping a website fresh and updated is vital. Showing "your public" that you are proud of your appearance and achievements gives them confidence in you. A website full of information, which is added to regularly, increases your chances of a high search engine profile dramatically. Click here to get more information about this type of "Springboard" system)

* If you think that these extra pages, testimonials and photos etc, are going to be expensive and time consuming - Think again. The systems we have spoken about allow you to create these kind of pages, and as many as you like, in minutes. DIY Doctor uses what is called a Content Management System to create over 10 pages every day on our website. We simply add what we want to say, to a pre-written "Springboard" data-base, click a button and it is published. This is also available to you at no extra cost. Click here for more info.

Check out our other pages for helping Builders and Tradespeople with marketing: