Any sole traders/subbies desgin there own website?

[paul_h]

I don't know if it breaks forum rules, But any of you guys make your own websites?
I'm not looking to steal because mines done. Just interested in whether the little guys out there has bothered with a website at all. My idea was spend as little on advertising in the papers as possible, just pay for a website address.
Not many people, including the big companies, put anything up worthwhile at all on the internet down here.

[The Viking]

Paul,

The company I work for got a "proper" site up and running a couple of years ago and nowadays we get a substantial amount of new (virgin) enquires from it.

One trick to remember is to ensure you tick all the search engines' robot's boxes.

For your website to work and attract new business it need to come high up on the most common search engines.
There are a lot of "tricks" to get that to happen and it's worth to spend some money on this (buy a book).

Also worth considering is who your new customer will be. It's more likely that an IT company will search the web for a new supplier than Mr Domestic Joe Blog down the road.

Get as many key words, that are relevant to your target market, in as possible.

For example; try searching www.google.co.uk for "the-viking.eu". What you will find is that this site (RE) comes above my site (even thou you almost typed in the whole of the address to my site), this is just because RE has a higher "Google value"

[Brian_UK]

A few years back I made up the website for the firm I was working for as an exercise for myself, showed it to them and is was then used as the basis for the firms one.

The addition of the web address and email on the company vans brought in quite a lot of inquiries and eventual work.

As The Viking says you do need to think of all the little tricks to get your site 'up the top of the lists' but if there aren't too many in your area then you should climb quite quickly I would think.

The other thing is that for a small financial outlay you have, potentially, a very large, semi-free, advert running.

Good luck with it.

[chillin out]

Just interested in whether the little guys out there has bothered with a website at all.

Well if they haven't then they are losing out on a lot of revenue. They also want a major kick up the back side from there employees.

With the help of a online web page a small company with a good layout and features can make them selfs financially much better off than their bigger rivals.

Chillin

[paul_h]

Paul,

The company I work for got a "proper" site up and running a couple of years ago and nowadays we get a substantial amount of new (virgin) enquires from it.

One trick to remember is to ensure you tick all the search engines' robot's boxes.

For your website to work and attract new business it need to come high up on the most common search engines.
There are a lot of "tricks" to get that to happen and it's worth to spend some money on this (buy a book).

Also worth considering is who your new customer will be. It's more likely that an IT company will search the web for a new supplier than Mr Domestic Joe Blog down the road.

Get as many key words, that are relevant to your target market, in as possible.

For example; try searching www.google.co.uk for "the-viking.eu". What you will find is that this site (RE) comes above my site (even thou you almost typed in the whole of the address to my site), this is just because RE has a higher "Google value"

I made my website because personally I will always do research on the internet, I hardly buy any product or use any service that I can't get info from the internet about
As far as optimization, I seem to have that done OK, it shows up not only when googling for exact name, but if you google for more general things.

[IceMan08]

Im a small guy ( yeah yeah ha ha!) and im developing a site at the mo for myself, seeing as most people are too lazy to pick up a phone book I think the web is a good way to go.
Also there are several free business directorys in the U.K as im sure there are others in your country.
To all the uk guys may I suggest looking up the Sun online business directory, its free and national, although they will ring you to see if you want to upgrade but I just kept the free one, better than nothing!