Website

Are they actully worth the effort . Do people actully get any business from having their own website ?

I was reading up on it ,In fact I have spent quite a lot of time reading up on it ,Anybody can have one but is it worth it if you have not put the massive investment to get the traffic to it ?

I would say it is. It's the way the world is going/has already gone. How do you currently pick up customers?

Well a website can be made for as little as £3 a month with 1&1 or around a tenner with Vistaprint and both allow you to have professional looking sites. What you then do with the site is the biggy.We tried pay per click with Google and it gave us work, we ran the campaign for just short of a year and it gave a small profit, and don't forget it only takes one call to get that big contract we're all waiting for. We now do yell.com which brings in quite a bit, but it is localised, so if you're nationwide it ain't no good.

In reality Im probably not that serious unless it means profit for a not too much hassle.

Its not really as case of going out looking for customers as we have couriers and transport companies that phone us and we have 3 daily runs .

My boy works for me and if he can get his head around it all and he is keen to run with it like the bird on the apprentice said then I might put some effort in I am very open minded about it at the moment

For a customer to find you via your website is akin to finding a needle in a haystack.  However, as mentioned it is the way to go as without one it now seems strange and possibly off putting to a potential customer.

But............ a poorly put together website will certainly NOT create a good impression.  

I think it wise to invest in a professional website as some I have seen done with Vista are appalling!

It can also be the gateway for your customers to pay you [Visa. Links etc] and to point them to a short synopsis of what your business is about!


ps.  Don't put 24/7  on it though if you do not answer your phones    :)

A website has 2 roles for me

I get a lot of work from my website, but then bike work is more of a specialised market, with more specialised services it will be the easiest way for potential customers to find you. 

Agree Tony!

Especially the 'Niche' market selling point like this:

http://fafcouriers.sharepoint.com/Pages/default.aspx

Remember you're quite likely to have your location as another niche.

To answer the original question, there are others but I'm pretty sure 3D Courier Services does well with his website.

Courier in ******* usually has two results for couriers that are 100's of miles away, undercutting local couriers and selling them off!

You're totally right but you can be up there too. It's important to think about what people actually search for (and I'm pretty sure courier in **** is up there).

I've seen these sites using their subbies addresses to gain a local presence

Naughty naughty, but I guess they may have spoken to their subbies about this?

They are listed on google local using this postcode which when googled brings up another courier, I dont know this courier personally so I have no idea as to whether he has been asked, they have sub sections of the same website "Couriers in everytown in the country".

It annoys us too. ****** Couriers with local service that are no way near where the advert implies. We have had courier companies call us to cover jobs from these ads but we politely decline as we know they have told the end user that they are "Just seeing where there driver is" but are hastily calling local couriers and trying to squeeze the price down.
If i type courier Nottingham into Google we tend to be Position 1 or 2 but have these misleading ads on the Adwords bar.

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And how do you think you get on in Google SMH? Get many new customers from the website?

Good seo is the key to traffic.

you cant just set up a website and expect people to find it, life just isn't that simple. At the same token though there is no need to spend small fortunes on so called SEO experts as these are more likely to do more bad than good in the long term.

 There are plenty of free advise sights on the best methods to use for website optimisation. I rank no.1 in google for Birmingham courier and i never spent a penny on SEO.

Is it worth having a website? depends on what you want from it. we have gained a few regular customers through the website that are not locally based, so for us it is well worth it. We havn't got a retirement sort of deal but as you all know regular customers equals regular income. Not to mention the word of mouth advertising.

I founded my website in 2004 and apart from a small ad on Yell.com it is responsible for all of my work. The site costs me £52.00 per year to host. I rank well on google and other search engines, for my chosen keywords, and haven't spent a penny on SEO. Just found the free advice sites and followed their suggestions. In the early days I tried all the email marketing, flyers, cold calling etc but I found the results much better when the customer found me, via my website, rather than being one of many touting for business. I am like most businesses these days, I want a service I Google it.

For those of you looking to have a good website done, try these guys, they do a brilliant job at a really good price. 

http://www.internationalwebweaver.com

Good luck.

Im guessing they do a good job Mr Dutchy your second one down in the natrual listings when I did a search in Cornish Land!

Listen to me natural listing I never knew what that was up until yesterday

Website Admin  i dont use the web for work

You don't pick up new customers through your website?

sorry,  the last inquire i got from the internet was for work out of colwick nottingham and someone wanting my curtainsider 5 days per week at 50p round trip and 30days month end credit straight off pmsl,

so do you really think i go looking for work of the net nope if someone finds its then fine, when i get asked for the above it just makes me laugh out loud :-D

i dont need any more work, my vans our out 97% of the time they can afford to come back empty even from italy ;-) if i get any more work all i would do is sub it out then wait weeks to get the paper work back, its not worth the hassle, i turn over enough to pay everything earn a wage for me and the wife and i dont have to go out driving (to much lol) happy days

And you support Burnley!      :)

alan what a shambles last night mate :-( left winger playing up front,  lb playing right wing, i would love to know what goes through some managers heads at times :-/

alan you going out to france mate? got one to 34500 ;-)