[wynne jones]

Just out of interest how many calls do you get that you know came from your website or some presence you have on the web?

As well as voting I'd like to hear whether you are well chuffed with your work from the web or hacked off with the resullts after shelling out.

How does it compare to other stuff you do?

Wynne

[Shaun_Ashmore]

I get enquiries but web customers aren't the best, they can be too hung up on price comparison lots of tennancy enquiries and also no shows and cancellations to me the web is just another form of advertising.

Shaun

[wynne jones]

You are right Shaun, it tends to get people who have a list/directory in front of them. So the quality overall may not be as good as other sources. I've experimented with blatantly up market sites to deter EOT and shoppers but of course you get far less nibbles.

[Carpet Dawg]

I'm completely the opposite, I tend to get better class of customer from the web. Comparing it to phone directories and newspaper ads (that i used to do)

Tony (the tiger)

[clinton]

Must say i do get a fair few price shoppers from the web or maybe  i  its the same from y pages too now :

Still had a few nice jobs form it mind from clients who dont mind paying a litle more than the cheap guys.

[Shaun_Ashmore]

You're just a smooth talker though Clinton not like that rough arse that uses a meat waggon to take his Ninja out to work

Shaun

[clinton]

Learnt it all of you shaun 

Yes he is a rough arse really never thought of that,there again once he gets the home made scones out them housewifes are putty in his hands..

[Doug Holloway]

Hi Guys

I get lot's of enquiries which enables me to sort the wheat from the chaff.

I don't try to sell on price so am not hung up on it.

The web is where 90% of my marketing effort goes.

Cheers

Doug

[Dave_Lee]

Work Ive had off the web tends to be better than average. Am I chuffed or hacked off after shelling out? Well I have to say well chuffed because apart from Domain Name cost it doesn't cost me a penny and i designed it myself. I have thought at times that it doesn't look like a professionally designed site, and it probably doesn't but customers don't seem to mind and those that do call me say they really like it. They must do otherwise why would they book me.
Dave.

[Shaun_Ashmore]

Doug how many sites do you get work from?

I find in my area that the most common search term is Sheffield or Rotherham etc etc where as if you cover the same area in miles sq then if the places are smaller and more of them that there are more search terms ie Sheffield could be the size of 10 villages so 1 term to 10 (if this makes sense?)

Shaun

[Neil Williams]

Results from websites is probably comparable with recommendations, so it does work to a degree.
What I can't get my head around is the number of unique hits we get on the main side which currently is around the 50 per day rate, but only get about 2 per day enquiries on average. The phone numer is at the top of the front page for those who are too lazy to read all the rest of the stuff we spend ages typing out

The thing is: how do you get hold of the people who have visited the site but weren't impressed enough? It's all very well asking customers you get (because they obviously liked it) but what about the ones who weren't?

[garry22]

Wynne covered this in another thread somewhere. Basically he said, give them some sort of incentive and try to capture their e mail addresses and build a list.

Neil, would you be happy with a 4% return from a leaflet drop?

[Neil Williams]

Neil, would you be happy with a 4% return from a leaflet drop?

Without doubt yes, but....
If 50 people have search for carpet cleaning that must mean 50 people are seriously interested in getting their carpets cleaned.
This is different to leaflets whereby only those 1,2,3,4 people in a hundred who receive a leaflet have carpets or need it doing.
So as it stands I'd love to know what didn't do it for the 48 visitors. This of course is in it's basic form because of the 50 some of those will be marketing companies etc

[Mike Halliday]

considering the biggest percentage of us have said they get less than a job a week, I don't understand why we spend so much time talking about it .... it seams every day we get a post on websites or seo.

we should be finding out what does work and start asking questions on that

[wynne jones]

Neil, would you be happy with a 4% return from a leaflet drop?

If 50 people have search for carpet cleaning that must mean 50 people are seriously interested in getting their carpets cleaned.

Neil, do you know that for sure via some sort of analytics?

What you may well find is many of those visitors searched on unrelated terms that just so happens you rank for.

There are lots of other reasons as well.

 

[wynne jones]

considering the biggest percentage of us have said they get less than a job a week, I don't understand why we spend so much time talking about it .... it seams every day we get a post on websites or seo.

we should be finding out what does work and start asking questions on that

Mike maybe you could moderate peoples posts beforehand to see if they are in keeping with what you think is interesting?

[wynne jones]

Trouble is, most things don't work for most people.

 

[Neil Williams]

Neil, do you know that for sure via some sort of analytics? Yes it's part of my 1and1 package
What you may well find is many of those visitors searched on unrelated terms that just so happens you rank for. Again yes, it lists the routes that lead to my website like google, yell etc, I can even tell how many came via CIU
There are lots of other reasons as well.

[wynne jones]

Well that's good in a way then Neil, better to know than not to know. So change something on the site and see if it improves, then another thing, then another. Ideally have a smartnumber for the site so you know for sure your conversions.

[cannon]

When i first got my website i was getting a nice steady stream of work from it.

However on the run up to xmas (nov/dec) i got very litte work from it, I got most Nov/dec work from the leaflets i put out oct/nov