Website/marketing Companies You Recommend.

Ben Price

Well, it looks like I am not going to be able to use Foot Bridge Media due to their restriction on the number of contractors in the same service area. What other website/marketing companies have you guys used or recommend? The three I am considering right now are WebFirstCreations.com, VisionWebServices.com, and BuildingProWebsites.com. Any thoughts?

gideond

One I will NOT recommend is DesignBiz / BuildBiz. We are a Shaw Flooring Alliance Dealer and get a huge discount through Shaw with this company. They do an alright job but some of the things they do don't make sense. Some things don't work right on the page. It seems designed only for IE. Firefox and even Opera have some issues with out site. And getting anything fixed is a long and trying experience. You can view our site at www.morrispaint.com to get an idea of their work. Maybe I'm being harsh on them since I've never had to deal with any similar companies. There just seems to be so many things I could do better myself if I had the time and just a bit more experience with the newer web standards.

Cole

I want to throw out there these guys:
http://www.builderdesigns.com/

They do fantastic work!

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Nathan

Is that who's doing your new site?

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Nathan

"He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose." - Jim Elliot

Cole

No sir, but I know a couple of people who had there sites done by them.

My designer is not taking anymore work, he said he is already has enough work to keep him busy until next year at this time.

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Tulsa's Leader in Outdoor Living Construction | Facebook | Tulsa Pergola Builder | Tulsa Outdoor Kitchens

MattCoops

Ya'll spend too much on these fancy shmancy designers.
I'm pretty ignorant, and I designed both our websites.
And they both do well on google serps.

#1 for "Charlotte Tile Contractor" with nothing more paid than a $25 domain registration.

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Matt with Cupan Custom Tile & Paint of Lowell, Massachusetts
Design and installation of ceramic tile and natural stone for floor, wall, and countertops
(978) 601-8774 | cupantile@gmail.com | view tile pictures and more

dougchips

Ben, shop for results.

Do you want a nice looking site where people will visit several pages? Ask the designer for screen prints of the stats to prove how many pages views per visit.

If you want a site that generates leads look at the stats to see how many people go to the contact/request estimate page----how many actually fill out an estimate? If the site is set up with a "thanks page" this should give you an idea. Remember with stats that a fair % of people call for an estimate instead of filling out a form.

Look at the stats to see where the traffic comes from, if the SEO work is good then a % should come from the search engines. Speaking of search engines, ask for samples to see how well the sites keywords are ranking. A big factor here is the age of the site and how popular the keyword is. Google will tell you how many pages have the keyword. A web company that can get first page results for keywords with 1,000,000 pages is worth more to you than one that can only get them for 10,000 page results.

Check to see if the web company offers services for building links or if they will coach you to do it on your own. If you want your site to generate leads you have to promote it or pay someone to promote it. Do you have the money and or the time?

Hopefully my tips might help you more than a simple vote for the best company. Everyone likes to pimp out whoever designed their site, sort of like everyone thinks their own kids are good looking and the smartest kid in the world.

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SquirrelNmoose

Dougships has some good insight. I design websites and customers expect that now they have a site it will automatically start generating lots of sales.
Think of it like this. When you set up your business phone number how many customers started calling without any marketing to put the number in the the hands of potential customers.

A website won't do much with out a marketing plan behind it. That can mean anything from adding it boldly to existing marketing materials to more specialized marketing to optimize search engine traffic.

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Len,
"There is no charge for Awesomeness"
A view through the eyes of SquirreNmoose

porkchop

I have a local web designer that is just starting and he does a good job. Since he is just starting out, he builds some great sites for about $500. Mine is a little cheaper and I am getting a great deal for everything I want. Mine will be done in less than a week. If you want his info PM me.

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- Chris
My construction company- Chicago Painting Contractor, Chicago Handyman, Chicago Remodeling. Chicago Internet Marketing by LSB.

mthomas9

Check out --deleted--They specialize in doing websites for contractors and they do great work. Also very affordable.

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Martin Thomas
Thomas Interests Inc- Retail Contractor

Double-A

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PressurePros

I have found that to get truly great web presence one probaby needs two different companies. One that specializes in SEO and code and one that specializes in graphics and layout.

The graphics guy many in my industry use is www.kbkgraphics.com. Keith now offers site design and his layouts are very clean. He has designed a layout for my RAD site. He does offer coding by a partner affiliation with a good web guy. Their SEO is slightly lacking though. On the other hand, adding in www.webfirstcreations.com to do SEO is a perfect marriage.

Remember this.. Sites that generate leads with mediocre design lead to mediocre sales/conversions. Sites that look great and can convert well won't sell a thing if no one can find them. Finding that happy medium is nirvanna.

Here is the design Keith made for my new RAD website (its not completely done yet). Webfirst is working on the store and coding. I'm sure there are companies out there that can handle all the above, but you better be willing to shell out some $$$

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Ken Fenner
Pressure Washing PA
Roof Cleaning Services PA

ultimatetouch

great sites for builders. I am just not a big fan of sites that load slow, none of there sites seem to load fast enough for me. Im kind of impatient.

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Ultimatetouch
Illinois Remodeling Company, Kitchen Remodeling Chicago, Room Additions Illinois

BreyerConstruct

and THAT is beautiful!


I like a clean, crisp site- that's not overly simple, as many of the footbridge sites I've looked at seem to be.

Thanks for sharing Ken!
~Matt

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Custom Deck Builder Deck Designer Lancaster Deck Builder Berks Deck Cleaning
Breyer Construction & Landscape, LLC Facebook Page
www.BreyerConstruction.com

CSB

We're going with VisonWeb for our site, and all of our graphic design is done at www.sevensindesign.com

Slyfox

I agree,
i do my own pages and i do well in the seach engines.
Sold my first website job of this year on the third day of the year from a google search.


I placed my company online in 2001 myself and i placed info- by all the GC's and builders i work with fulltime, last year a GC in my area finally decided to put his company online and he hired a website designer and ended paying $1600 which included subbmitting his site to the search engines and after acouple months of playing with the site the web designers told him "we can't seem to get you above this fox roofing guy" and the GC called me and asked that i remove his name and info- from my main page because it was messing up his rankings. I moved all my contractors to my links page after that.

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orson

In my opinion a website should load the entire home page on screen w/ no scrolling, bulleted text, no paragraphs on home page, be visually appealing to hook people to investigate site further.

www.tinroofdesigns.com

no nonsense designer, fair pricing. If I have one complaint it's that the sites load a tad slow.

www.rubycon.us
Ruby Construction LLC
Lancaster Kitchen Remodeling
Lancaster Bathroom Remodeling

Slyfox

I am at best a moderate skill level on the computer but it is my understanding that anything causing your site to load slow is bad,
am i wrong on that?

There are many things that get a site to the top of the rankings and the text information on the main page is one so shouldn't you want a fair amount of info there?

If my main goal is to get the searcher to call / email me i want to catch and keep thier eye right from the open of the main page rather than bothering them with having to search further right?

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gideond

I personally don't like Flash or Java based sites. They take forever to load and can be problematic if your software isn't up to date. Our site has some minor Java on it and no matter what I tell them they haven't taken it off yet. At least they aren't forcing Flash on me. Another bad think is too many frames. Our whole site is embedded in frames and it's not friendly to search engines as a result. We've had to put a lot more work into getting it set up a bit more search friendly as a result.

Slyfox

You can test your website at -
http://www.seocentro.com/tools/searc...-analyzer.html
for free, it shows you any obvious problem areas.

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