How to make a great FREE website for your trade or property business

Getting your construction or property business online pt1

A lot of building trade and property businesses either don't have a website for their marketing or have done it poorly themselves, so I thought I'd write a couple of posts about websites and doing it yourself for free and how to make it work for you.

Now, I'm not discounting web designers and going to one for your website, it has advantages over making one for yourself, however it has a cost too! At the end of the day it's your decision, I hope this series of posts will help you, if you do go to see or already have a website designer doing your site.

So, What do I know

Firstly let me tell you about why I think I'm qualified to talk about websites. I'd like to point out I'm not an expert web designer/ builder, however I've read a lot and formed my own opinions of what I think makes a good site and there are a lot of differing opinions out there, I've also had a bit of experience in building my own sites.

I built my own first website back in the 90's using HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language) which is the main programming code for websites, since then I've made several websites using hosting packages from companies such as 123-reg.co.uk which is the type a lot of trades use now or the hosted ones from the likes of Yell!

What free website builder to use 

I now use Google sites and have made 19 sites to date for myself and other people using Sites, I made my own electrical website for my business, which is now dormant, in that I don't work on it, there is a lot I could do to make it work better, however it still gets me calls every week for jobs, so I keep it live to pass that business on. I've also made the Marketing for Trades website using Google Sites too.

I like Google sites as it's simple to use, there are plenty of templates to choose from and if you spend a bit of time learning how to use it and can use something like Microsoft Word then you can make a perfectly good site to start marketing your building trade or property business, for free which is really great if you're a start up!

What makes a good website

There are some key things that I think make a good basic website; 

• What you do and how you can help solve a customers want or need should be in the top left of the home page of your site (As on my sites), not your logo, I've said it before people do not care about your logo, it's only you that does, people want to know that they can find what they are looking for, so you need to tell them straight away how you can help them.
• Your contact number needs to be on the right in a large font to make it easy to see/ find. Some people will call you straight away without looking at the rest of your site, don't make it hard for them to contact you by looking for your number or going to a contact page (still have a contact page though) otherwise they may just leave and go somewhere else.
• Your logo I think it's still important to have this but have it on the right or left, lower down but above what is called the fold, that's the top part of the website you can see without scrolling down.
• Keep colours & fonts to a minimum, too many and your site looks messy and it makes it harder to read, you should really only use one maybe two fonts maximum and 3 or 4 colours. Less really is more.
• Use pictures They make a site come alive and break up the text on the site, if you've got your own that's best rather than use stock photos, it makes a site more personal and everyone has seen that american tradesman in a hard hat!
• Have a contact form rather than an email address, if you have a contact form it's easy for people to contact you, with an email address, you're reliant on them having to open their email program maybe cut and paste or type your email in and then send it to you, a contact form is easier.

One of the most powerful things about having a site you've built is that you can add and edit pages as and when you want, with a website designer/builder you'll have to wait and there will be a charge.

There is far more to a website, and just having a website alone will not get you business, I'll save the rest for the following posts over the next few days...



To your online marketing success

Paul Jennings


Once you've digested this post you can move on to part 2 about how to start getting your website found

A Website is not enough......

Many business people think their foray to online marketing is to have a website made and then that is it, and to be honest when I first started I thought the same thing, I thought the phone would ring off the hook and then........nothing. A single website on the internet is essentially a small fish in the ocean, there are things that need to be done to show people that fish!

A website is essential now days and you're missing out if you don't have one, but there is a lot of work that needs to be done to get people 1. finding your site and then 2. Taking action and calling you.

There are now many ways that you an get people visiting your site, both offline and online, I'll be covering these in the blog over time, but here's an overview. 

A Google search page with PPC ads in the red boxes

Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising is one of the fastest ways to get visitors to your site, when someone searches for something on a search engine they are shown results for that search term, as Google is the biggest search engine I'll use it for this example, at the top and right hand side of the page are the PPC ads (See pic). A company bids by setting the price they are willing to pay to be shown in those positions then when someone searches for those terms  lets say 'plumber in Hertford' and if they win the bid they'll then be shown in those positions, however the clever bit is that they won't pay a penny for that until someone clicks on their ad and goes through to their website. You can get PPC up and running within half an hour.

The results on the search page below the ads are the organic and Google Local listings, these are free but it takes work and time to get a site showing here and you need to have a half decent website again I'll cover what goes into a decent website in future posts. 

Other ways to get people viewing your site is to use social media, Facebook ads, article writing and blogging, submitting your site to directories.

Reciprocal links (you put a link to my site on your site and I'll do the same for you) can be okay but there is a little bit to be known about it, Google used to rank site based on how many links it had linking to it, we called these backlinks, however Google pretty much no longer does this, what I mean is if you had a link to your site say from the BBC site, Google would see your site as important and it would help,  there is no point in having reciprocal links to your site from a site that has nothing to do with your trade, also if you get a link from another site it's better if there is content on that page relevant to your business, so a page with Top 10 plumbing maintenance tips would be good if it then linked to a plumbers website.

Also you have all the offline methods of trying to drive people to your site, via ads, business cards, PR, flyers and so on.

Of course if you have a poor website then you will be wasting your time doing any of the above as people will come on to it and just think it's an unprofessional company and leave, I've also once seen a plumbers website before with absolutely no contact details on, which would have helped.


To your success
Paul