Does your sign company have a website?

[onesmf]

Website

Actnowdomains has a pretty good tool to create a website. One does not need any "web building" knowledge. You build your website from templates. Very simple and doesn't take a great deal of time. With the designing skills that everyone here has, a pretty clean webpage can be created relatively quickly.

 

[grafxxx]

mine is basically for portfolio work and I'm always changing it I'm actually working on a revamp now.
i also have a myspace page for networking also.
http://www.graphicsbyjarvis.com/welcome.htm
http://www.myspace.com/graphicsbyjarvis

 

[Deaton Design]

Another tool to help direct traffic to your site is google adwords. I use it for my toon factory site. You can set the amount you want to spend each month, set your keywords, and how much you are willing to pay each click. The ads you see to the right on google when you do a search is what you get. A block ad with your main info. Ive been using it for a few months now and have gotten decent results.https://adwords.google.com/select/Login?sourceid=awo&subid=na-en-ha-aw_syn_search&medium=ha&term=google%20ad%20words

Lol, sorry tec, just saw your post.

 

[jinx]

Yep, lots of new stuff coming soon. It just seems hard to find time to keep working on it.

http://www.jenkinswoodcraft.com

 

[Ken]

NOt so weird that someone would revive this thread..you're just reminding me of things undone...
Ugh..does anyone have a 36 hour clock I can borrow?
Cheers!
Ken

 

[kazoosigns]

http://www.consort.com

Our site is in dire need of updating. Our web designer has been very diligent in getting the wheels in motion, and has a really great idea for it. The biggest thing we need to do is provide some sort of continuity between all of our sites and products.

 

[mariessigns]

before you do anything do some legwork IE lotsof piks on a photobucket type site . Write alot of stuff in microsoft word ///// name of business adress owners phone # s . mission statement = who we are and what we can do for you . Links to your favorite customers or local stuff . Do some piks with explanations and brief text . I do all the leg work for my guy then he puts it together nice and cheap . I would be scared to pay for it if i didn't kick ass on the frontside . You have the knowledge and the ideas most WEB people will say what do you want it to look like ? if you look at sites you like then keep a record of them so web guy can see them .Do homework save money = faster web site design . www.btropical.com www.racetearoffs.com << not advertisements

 

[Dan Antonelli]

Adwords is OK for a short term strategy, but not really advisable for a long term one. Most region-specific terms can be achieved naturally on Google if your site is properly optimized. It can get costly to rely on adwords alone.

Here's link to our site: http://www.graphicd-signs.com

We average about 30 inquiries per week for new business from the site. We're #1 for many terms. We get about 900 unique visitors per day.

 

[Joe Diaz]

On top of SEO there are a bunch of other strategies to help promote your website. A lot of these should be easier to implement due to the nature of our business. The first would be to put your web address on everything: shirts, signs, your vehicles, biz cards, brochures, invoices, estimates, on your signature of email messages, hats, shirts…. Everything. On your answering machine, it could say:
”Thank you for calling Any Sign Company, We are out of the office………………..and check us out on the web at www.anysigncompany.com for a full list of services and photo examples of our work” The same message can be said while a customer is on hold.

In fact, last year, when we updated our own logo we added a dot com at the end. So our logo is our web address. Basicaly every where you see our logo, you see our web address. It has seriously become a major part of our business. We are rebuilding our website as we speak, to implement the new identity. We are doubling the content and spending even more time on the SEO side, to make it even stronger.

I will say this, if you are a smaller company and you are shooting for 900 or more unique visits a day or 30 or more inquires a day, be prepared to implement some sort of system to respond to these inquiries, develop template messages for certain inquires because it will be extremely difficult to answer them all uniquely. It’s not very personal, but unless you want to spend all day responding to messages, rather then getting work done, I would recommend doing something like that.

I have also noticed that Dan sends out newsletter… I get them. This is another great way to promote your site, even if it only reaches those who have already been on his site. The goal here is to get people coming back. We developed a section of our site and another sign company’s site where customers login to see sketches of their job. The purpose of doing this, rather then just sending it via email, is to force the customer to visit your site where hopefully they will see other services that you offer, service that they might not have known you offer. We don’t do this with every sketch but when we are really trying sell more services to a certain company this is a strategies we like to use.

Okay, that’s enough info for one sitting.

 

[Border]

I couldn't live without my website. Years ago when I wanted to first establish a website, I had the problem of finding someone who could design a site like what I had in my mind. And the costs were well into the thousands for those that did give me bids.
My solution was to enroll in a web design course at one of the local tech schools which cost me a thousand bucks....Best money I ever spent for my business!

One of the first things I did after getting my own site up and running was to design a new website for my former employer (an Autobody shop) I charged them a thousand bucks and just like that, my schooling was paid for.

I only took the basic class and would like to someday take an advanced class for some of the really cool stuff. I designed every navigation button from scratch in Photoshop to make sure my site has a custom feel. My website has landed most of my bigger accounts. "Thank you Al Gore, for inventing the internet!"

It's quite a large portfolio for my work and it is near the top and many times right at the top of all the major search engines in my state and surrounding area. I have it geared to try and focus more on my local area for the most part.

I also have it set up with Google Analytics so I can go in and see what the most common search terms are that gets people to my site, if they are on high-speed or dial-up (helps me to decide how to optimize photos, etc) and about another brazillion other handy statistics that it keeps track of. That has really helped me to tweak my keywords to attract more hits.

 

[TheSnowman]

We have the name...but at this point, there's nothing on it. I got tired of having a generic email address w/ whatever internet company I was with at the time...and having it change every couple years. We bought a domain a month or two again, and got that settled, now just gotta do the web part sometime.