Website not bringing in sales - Contractor Talk - Professional Construction and Remodeling Forum

heartoftexas · 10-29-2008, 07:36 PM

We pay $125.00 a month with FB. 3 months later and no sales from it. We recieved one lead but did not result in a job. Our town is only 20,000 an no one else even has a website. Does it just take time? I hope it kicks in soon. I think the site is way to informational .

rbsremodeling · 10-29-2008, 07:41 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by heartoftexas

We pay $125.00 a month with FB. 3 months later and no sales from it. We recieved one lead but did not result in a job. Our town is only 20,000 an no one else even has a website. Does it just take time? I hope it kicks in soon. I think the site is way to informational .

A town that small. and probably not much local web activity. A blow horn may have been a better purchase.

I use FB and they do well for me but it is not for your market.

You need an inexpensive website to put on your card for people to go to for info about the company.

Your market is not big enough for a website to generate business for you

tinner666 · 10-29-2008, 07:44 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by rbsremodeling

A town that small. and probably not much local web activity. A blow horn may have been a better purchase.

I use FB and they do well for me but it is not for your market.

You need an inexpensive website to put on your card for people to go to for info about the company.

Your market is not big enough for a website to generate business for you

Ditto. You would do well with GD's free hosting and save some big bucks too.

heartoftexas · 10-29-2008, 07:50 PM

Thanks for your honesty RBS.

heartoftexas · 10-29-2008, 08:02 PM

They did an awesome doorhanger design for me so it's not a total waste. I have only had 75 visits or so since sept 29 and only 42 are new. I always tell people about our site too. I am going to try and hang in there a while. I also should mention our business is new. 7 months old on Nov 7th. It's my current baby!

rbsremodeling · 10-29-2008, 08:05 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by heartoftexas

They did an awesome doorhanger design for me so it's not a total waste. I have only had 75 visits or so since sept 29 and only 42 are new. I always tell people about our site too. I am going to try and hang in there a while. I also should mention our business is new. 7 months old on Nov 7th. It's my current baby!

I agree they do a good job and it was not knock on FB I like them. I think the population is to small for it to be effective. Also if the people there are not Computer savvy or looking online for services the point of a website is mute.

woodmagman · 10-29-2008, 08:15 PM

I would ask myself what I expect from my website, and then ask whether it does that or how it is going to do that. The site may be just a step in an entire exposure formula. If you are expecting to get a job from a site that is catering to 20 thousand people, I would expect you to be able to tell me how many people own computers in the population and how many people in that market even fit your criteria as an ideal client. Hanging a shingle with your name on it, on a side street that only sees’s two lost people a week is not the ideal location. You need to find a way to get people to travel that street or find a different type of shingle to hang that brings your business to the people that you are targeting….

buildpinnacle · 10-29-2008, 08:37 PM

Wish you well with FB as I am a new subscriber to their services as well. My area has two major (we consider) cities within 50 miles of each other with 80K each. The marketing area we service has well over 400,000 people within our 45 mile range. I have found the people in this part of Texas to be very web savy, but the businesses have not picked up the trend. Don't just rely on your website. Use the newsletters, send out radius mailers from jobs that you do, saturation mailers for summer service coupons, etc, and a town that small probably has a pretty good local paper to get into to. You have an opportunity to market your business well and become the branded name in that town.

BuildingHomes · 10-29-2008, 09:22 PM

What the hell is FB and why are they charging so much to host a website?

Why do you expect your website to automatically bring in sales? Your website is what you refer people to when they call and want to see pictures of your work. Your website is something you put on the side of your truck, your business cards, your letterhead and everything else that you give out to someone.

Your website needs traffic, how are you getting traffic to it?

If your market is only 20000 people, you could probably pay a couple of kids $125/month to go door to door to hand out flyers with your websites address on it.

SethHoldren · 10-29-2008, 09:57 PM

Yeah, a market that small is tough for search engine optimization.

After all, it's all about search volume. Which you can easily research here.

There are some other "offline" ways to drive traffic to your site, but they are usually better used as a supplement rather than a primary source of traffic.

I agree you should not be paying so much per month, but perhaps you get other things for that service?

I do really like Footbridge because they seem to always design a great call to action into their sites.

kevjob · 10-29-2008, 10:03 PM

footbridge did my site and in even in denver it too some time to rank organically now we are 1,2,3 on some major keywords. do adwords to supplement the organic rankings. we get alot of new business thru my website and some other online sites.

SethHoldren · 10-29-2008, 10:21 PM

Yeah, if you get to the top in less than five, six months in a really big market, "ya done good." Teach us how.

rbsremodeling · 10-29-2008, 10:22 PM

They did the same for me as well.

heartoftexas · 10-29-2008, 11:04 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by BuildingHomes

What the hell is FB and why are they charging so much to host a website?

Why do you expect your website to automatically bring in sales? Your website is what you refer people to when they call and want to see pictures of your work. Your website is something you put on the side of your truck, your business cards, your letterhead and everything else that you give out to someone.

Your website needs traffic, how are you getting traffic to it?

If your market is only 20000 people, you could probably pay a couple of kids $125/month to go door to door to hand out flyers with your websites address on it.

FB= Footbridge
Website is on our cards, doorhangers. fridge magnets . We have alot of web links.

My Town is 20,000 but we cover alot of other smaller towns as well. I would love for the website to atleast pay for itself. We get most of our business from Referrals.

BrownCan · 10-30-2008, 10:26 AM

Quote:

Website is on our cards, doorhangers. fridge magnets . We have alot of web links.

My Town is 20,000 but we cover alot of other smaller towns as well. I would love for the website to atleast pay for itself. We get most of our business from Referrals.

Well IMHO you should get your website optimized for local market. I understand the traffic is really really small but the conversion ratio would be really high. You said there is no other competitor having a website which targets your area. I think this is the best time to optimize your site for local searches.

I say this because other traditional / off-line marketing methods would be expensive as compared to online methods. Also, getting your website promoted definitely need online promotion.

Cheers

Aiken Colon · 10-30-2008, 10:51 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by heartoftexas

We pay $125.00 a month with FB. 3 months later and no sales from it. We recieved one lead but did not result in a job. Our town is only 20,000 an no one else even has a website. Does it just take time? I hope it kicks in soon. I think the site is way to informational .

Many SEO guys will tell you there is something called the google sandbox. Basically what it is, is if your domain is young it doesn't rank well no matter what you do.

There is no actual proof of this other than guys that do this for a living watching it over time happen to pretty much every site they build with a new domain. We saw it with ours as well when we first put it up. After about 6 months, for us at least, we seemed to get out of it. Our PR shot up, and most of our pages started to rank extremely well. Many ranked number 1-3 for a particular pages keywords.

Things you need to do off site wise, if you have not already.

1. Sign up and monitor google webmaster tools. And monitor any errors and diagnostic issues you have, and fix them. Google likes people who keep up with stuff they recommend.

2. Register you site with dmoz.com. This can take upwards of 18 months to get listed in, but it is the best webdirectory out there. And google gives it some weight.

3. Consider also registering with yahoo.com directory. It cost $299 a year, so it is up to you.

4. content, content, content. And update it regularly. At least update something weekly. New content, IMO, is the single best thing you can possibly do to get ranked higher.

5. Create a sig link in these forums for pages on your site. This site is an authority site and has weight for its backlinks. It also helps you get your pages indexed.

6. I am one of those people that has to do everything himself, which causes great lag in getting things done on my own site. Depending on how much your time is worth or how much extra you have you might want to consider farming out your SEO work. Don't just hire any clown though, do your research and ask others. If an SEO's own site doesn't rank well for his/her keywords or has a low PR then obviously they are not that great.

7. Probably the most important thing is be patient. Don't cut corners and do things google doesn't like. If you are not sure what they do and do not like, check out the google webmaster tools I talked in about number 1. There are a ton of valuable resources there.

Good luck

JJ

SethHoldren · 10-30-2008, 11:03 PM

Excellent advice all around, aikencolon.

Yahoo directory pulls a lot of google weight, and if you have all your other stuff optimized it's worth the money.

And use keyword anchor text in your signature links.

Nice post!

heartoftexas · 10-31-2008, 08:36 AM

You guys are awesome! Thank you

nlgutters · 10-31-2008, 01:54 PM

Whats your web address?

DamionR · 11-03-2008, 12:06 AM

Have you tried Google Local, or Yahoo Local? Google is free, Yahoo charges like $20 or so for a listing.

Keep in mind... a wonderful website with all the bells and whistles and offers... makes no difference if there is no market for it out there.

Find where your market is, and put your offers in front of them there. You might find more business putting a sign on the wall of a pizza shop. Who knows