A website not only gives your company more visability but also more credibility. Imagine if you were a customer looking for a window cleaner and you had the choice between a few after flicking through the yellow pages...if one of them had a professional looking website - which one would you choose?
You can advertise your services and prices and the fact that the user can visit your site is more likely to remember a website name than a phone number. It also means that you are advertising your services 24 hours a day and at a time that is convenient for the customer.
Having a web presence shows the customer that you are promoting and advertising your business and so gives the impression of a professional and reliable company. It also gives them more ways to contact you than just a phone number.
Getting to No.1 on Google is quite straight forward once you understand what it is that search engines are looking for. It just takes a little knowledge and a little time. Its quite exciting watching your site once it enters the index and starts to climb - most webstie owners become obsessed with their position in Google!!
The other main advantage to having a website is the ability to advertise on other websites. This not only builds your link popularity but also your exposure. There are so many directory listing style website for every area of the country and having the ability to include your details and website address can only help get more visitors to your website.
Getting visitors to your site is only one side of the battle, the next thing you need to do is convince them that they need your services. To do this you need to create rapport with the customer by answering all the questions they may have about what you offer and why they should use you other another cleaner. Its a fine art converting visitors into customer but there are a few simple guidlines you can follow in terms of site design and the copy (the text on the page) that will help.
So there are things you need to do to get a website:
1) Buy a domain name.
Make sure that the domain name is relevant to your business and most importantly easy to type and remember. Its no good having a domain name like
www.johnbottingssuperiorwindowcleaningandothertypesofcleaningservices.co.ukA .co.uk has a more local feel about it and if you are in the uk then it is advised to used .co.uk instead of .com. A .co.uk domain costs about £5-£6 a year. Make sure that whatever company you decide to purchase from that you are able to change the name servers yourself and without any charge. A domain name taskes about 24-48 hours to register.
If you want my list of recommendations for companies that sell domain names then just ask.
2) Get yourself a logo.
Having a logo gives your company a sense of identity and pride. Logos can cost anything between £50 upto £1000 depending on who you use and whether you want an off-the-shelf logo or one developed just for you. I personally pay about £150 per logo.
3) Buy some hosting
Hosting can cost anywhere from £15 a year, it all depends on what services you want. If you dont require anything special (for example a database to hold customer details etc...) then you dont need half the features that most hosting companies offer. Hosting can take about 24 hours to set up.
4) Design your site
You can either do this yourself or you can get someone to design it for you. There are 2 initial steps in getting a site, the design and the the code. Its difficult to say how much a site can cost as it depends on how many pages, the complexity etc...
5) Upload and promote
Once you have your site and the hosting all set up you need to upload your site so that everyone can see it. This is normally done via something called FTP. There are many free programs out there to help you do this. Depending on who you get to do the design they may do this for you.
The next step is to start promoting your site, make sure that you include it on ALL your correspondance (letters, quotes, invoices) with customers and include it in any adverts you place. You dont need to worry about submitting your site to thousands of search engines, simply submit it to Google and the rest will follow :-)
Start to sumbit your site to directly listing sites for your area. Make sure that you are using the title of the website and the keywords as the link text (extremely important). For example if your keywords are 'window cleaner peckham' then make sure that this is the text the customer sees in the link to your site.
I have seen some of my sites indexed in the first couple of days whilst some have taken months. Just be patience.
Hope that gives you some thoughts and some guidence...
I am just in the process of launching some software for window cleaners and after that I will be offering corporate identities (logo, business cards, letter heads etc...) website design and hosting to window cleaning companies.
If anyone would like any advice about search engine optimisation, domain names, websites or anything else related promoting your business then I am more than happy to answer any questions you have, my personal email is
ian@windowcleanerpro.comHope some of you find this useful
Ian