ZEUS Posted September 8, 2016 Share Posted September 8, 2016 I moved to another part of the country almost a year ago and as I'm self employed I have had to start again with my business. I'm a painter and decorator and had my own business for 16 years , I've always had too much work and never needed to advertise......until I moved. Anyway I've had about four jobs in the last year so I'm getting desperate and everyone keeps telling me I need a website. I don't have a clue about websites, how they work, the cost involved,or how to sort one out. I'm also completely clueless about computers and the inter web too! If anyone knows about this sort of thing and could help me out or point me in the right direction I'd be very grateful. Cheers Chris. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Adrian@TORQEN Posted September 8, 2016 Share Posted September 8, 2016 Hi Chris, Try www.wix.com should be pretty easy to set up for someone with basic knowledge. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ZEUS Posted September 8, 2016 Author Share Posted September 8, 2016 Hi Adrian , cheers for the link I'll take a look at it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ekona Posted September 8, 2016 Share Posted September 8, 2016 +1 for Wix. dead simple to use. Very WYSIWYG in nature, templates can give a pro looking site and will automatically give you a mobile site too. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Bounty Bar Kid Posted September 8, 2016 Share Posted September 8, 2016 +1 used it for our wedding site. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HaydnH Posted September 9, 2016 Share Posted September 9, 2016 My Mrs uses Wix a lot, +1 from me... well her... personally I'd code my own but it takes so much time it's just not worth the cost/hassle if you can't do it yourself. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
brillomaster Posted September 9, 2016 Share Posted September 9, 2016 WYSIWYG... I love Dans acronym guessing games... I managed to work this one out I think, What You See Is What You Giraffe, right? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hodaka Posted September 9, 2016 Share Posted September 9, 2016 WYSIWYG... I love Dans acronym guessing games... I managed to work this one out I think, What You See Is What You Giraffe, right? When You're Stumped It's Wise You Google! So proud of myself Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Juggalo Posted September 9, 2016 Share Posted September 9, 2016 (edited) Facebook is great for getting work. Join the For Sale or Swap groups in your local area, and put your name out there. Problem with websites is SEO. It's an art. You don't have that problem with FB Edited September 9, 2016 by Juggalo Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ricey Posted September 9, 2016 Share Posted September 9, 2016 Facebook is great for getting work. Join the For Sale or Swap groups in your local area, and put your name out there.Problem with websites is SEO. It's an art. You don't have that problem with FB This is true but you do get all the divwits giving it; 'you can do it yourself' 'Our bob does that' (click on bobs link and inevitably a picture of a missing chromosome specimen appears) 'Eric the pole can do that for 30 quid' (ususally when it's a £300 job) That's half the problem with social media.....its main population is cretinous spuzzbubbles Sent from my SM-G900F using Tapatalk 5 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
brillomaster Posted September 9, 2016 Share Posted September 9, 2016 painter and decorator? watch out you don't become a JOATMON! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HaydnH Posted September 9, 2016 Share Posted September 9, 2016 What about check-a-trade and those kind of websites? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hodaka Posted September 9, 2016 Share Posted September 9, 2016 'Our bob does that' (click on bobs link and inevitably a picture of a missing chromosome specimen appears) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ZEUS Posted September 11, 2016 Author Share Posted September 11, 2016 (edited) Cheers for all the input guys, all sorted now. I shall sit back and wait for the tidal wave of work to roll in! @ brillo,I'm already a bit of one of those (Google was my friend) Edited September 11, 2016 by ZEUS Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sargara Posted September 11, 2016 Share Posted September 11, 2016 Just make sure you've indexed and listed your site properly, nothing worse than going to the effort/expense and then getting no traffic/hits as people cannot find it. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Juggalo Posted September 12, 2016 Share Posted September 12, 2016 Facebook is great for getting work. Join the For Sale or Swap groups in your local area, and put your name out there.Problem with websites is SEO. It's an art. You don't have that problem with FB This is true but you do get all the divwits giving it; 'you can do it yourself' 'Our bob does that' (click on bobs link and inevitably a picture of a missing chromosome specimen appears) 'Eric the pole can do that for 30 quid' (ususally when it's a £300 job) That's half the problem with social media.....its main population is cretinous spuzzbubbles Sent from my SM-G900F using Tapatalk lol, you're not wrong. Half the reason I closed my personal account. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ZEUS Posted October 19, 2016 Author Share Posted October 19, 2016 (edited) Right thread revival, I've set up a free website with wix, weeks ago. I've spent weeks and weeks trying to sort it , the website exists http://chrispacker.wixsite.com/painteranddecorator when I search it's sometimes missing from google listings or just on page 15. It's not on local searches (sometimes page 13-19) . I've told google it exists via there web tool. I'm really desperate, I've got no money coming in at all and I need to work basically, else we lose our house. Also I have no idea about the internet or how it works! (Obviously). I really need some help as I'm at the end with it all really. Edited October 19, 2016 by ZEUS 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Adrian@TORQEN Posted October 19, 2016 Share Posted October 19, 2016 It takes a good while until the website start showing in search results. What keywords are you targeting? If budget allows, I'd look into being listed on these websites: https://www.ratedpeople.com http://trustedtraders.which.co.uk http://www.checkatrade.com https://www.mybuilder.com On your website you need a lot more text and details, try including keywords that your potential customers might use to search for somebody with your trade, more image, more areas where you provide your services, testimonials and case studies. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ZEUS Posted October 19, 2016 Author Share Posted October 19, 2016 (edited) Thanks Adrian, I can't afford those websites, you need to pay/bid for the leads which aren't guanteed work. Thanks tho Not really got a clue what I'm doing! Edited October 19, 2016 by ZEUS Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GappySmeg Posted October 19, 2016 Share Posted October 19, 2016 Think about what search terms, that when used, should show your site high up... e.g "painter manchester" A quick and dirty is to ensure these words are included in the title of your main page... or the meta description (i dont actually know if Wix lets you control these things). I can take a look tomorrow and give you some pointers... or search for SEO Tips to get some ideas... it is a little bit of a black art though. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ZEUS Posted October 19, 2016 Author Share Posted October 19, 2016 Thanks Gappy, the thing is I have no idea what I'm doing! Give me tools and I can do a full rebuild on your engine, give me the internet and I'm clueless! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hodaka Posted October 20, 2016 Share Posted October 20, 2016 (edited) Please don't take this the wrong way as I'm really just trying to help, but I think Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is the wrong approach to be taking if you're looking for immediate work. Even if you do everything right with SEO, it'd still take a while (probably a few months) before you see any change to your ranking. You're unlikely to get any significant traffic to your site unless you put a lot of effort in optimising your website (relatively speaking, the easy bit) and then building links back to your website consistently over a long period of time. Once you start getting traffic to your site, then you need to start worrying about effectively converting them into paying customers. I'm no marketing/SEO/anything expert, but what sort of other avenues have you looked at? In my opinion, anything would be more productive than SEO. For example I've listed ideas that immediately came to mind below. I'm sure you would have thought of / tried some of them, and not all of them will be good ideas, but just to try and help: I assume you have business cards, but if not, get some from a website such as Vista Print. Hand them out like there's no tomorrow to anyone you speak to. Well, maybe not quite everyone. Might be weird if you start handing your business cards out to cashiers at Sainsburys! Create some flyers (even if it's super simple ones that you create yourself) and drop it through people's letter boxes Putting an ad in your local newspaper? Register to area based websites such as Streetlife and keeping an eye on it in case someone is looking for painters Joining various business groups. This seems to be one near you ( http://youruptonupon...-association-2/ ) although I have no idea how helpful it'll be. There might be a Chambers of Commerce in your area that host networking events as well. I hate those kind of things, but if you're desperate it might be worth a shot? Is it worth contacting various related businesses (builders, boat yards etc..?) to see if they need more help? Or maybe they're unhappy with the painter they currently outsource to? I don't know if this is related/applicable at all, but my colleague gets furniture from FreeCycle and upcycles them and sells them on. She does it on the side and lists whatever she gets on eBay as collect only (or free delivery within a certain area). Might be worth doing that while you try get more relevant work in? I'm out of ideas for now! No idea if any of the above is helpful as I have absolutely no idea about your industry... It sounds like you're going through a hard time so just trying to be as helpful as I can. If you do have any money you can use to market, I'd maybe try Google AdWords. It's basically a way to advertise your site/service whenever someone searches for a certain key phrase, e.g. "painters". You only get charged when someone clicks on your ad and you have a lot of control over when the ad is shown. E.g. You can set it to only appear if they're within a certain area, set the time of day it shows, set the maximum amount you want to pay per click, daily budget etc... Definitely worth looking into, but I'd read up about it first. My ex-colleagues dad was a carpenter and had a positive ROI on it. Also my driving instructor (director of the driving school) had great success with it - I think he said that he was paying £20 on average for a student, which is pretty insane! I'm rambling on... Hopefully some of the above word vomit was helpful!!!! Edited October 20, 2016 by Hodaka 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ponsonby Posted October 20, 2016 Share Posted October 20, 2016 I would agree with Hodaka. Get some decent quality flyers produced and put the legwork in. A local printers may even help you with the artwork and layout for your flyer. Hit all local residential areas, businesses and shops. Go for the more affluent residential areas where they can afford to pay a painter and / or are too busy to do it themselves. Do a good job and word of mouth will spread and of course make sure your van / vehicle is always tidy and clean and has your contact details. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GappySmeg Posted October 20, 2016 Share Posted October 20, 2016 Above advice is exactly right... getting your website high up on search results, on SEO alone, is going to require a disproportionate amount of effort and is not going to realise quick benefit... and even then, said benefit may be minimal compared to other avenues outlined above. If you are able to make a few changes to the website though, it may help a little... I don't have the time right now to do a thorough look at it, but just as a starter, the TITLE tag of your landing web page simply says "painteranddecorator"... which is also the NAME of the page itself (Nb in Chrome, it is the TITLE of the page that appears as the text in the tab at the top of the browser... think other browsers are similar). If you could simply change that TITLE tag (not the NAME of the page itself) to "Painter Decorator | Upton upon Severn | Tewkesbury | Pershore | Malvern" then that would help a little... see here for how to: https://www.wix.com/support/html5/article/changing-your-page-title 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bandit Posted October 20, 2016 Share Posted October 20, 2016 We also used Yell.com find it very good. Hope you get work in soon. https://business.yell.com/promo-paidadvertising/?utm_source=google&utm_medium=ppc&utm_campaign=PPC_ap_google_yellpaid&_vsrefdom=AandPYellPaid&gclid=CMqVi7Lq6M8CFRRmGwodOVMHBg&gclsrc=aw.ds 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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