First year website

[daniel_cox]

Hi Guys,

I am still in my first year of business as a locksmith (within the UK), I currently advertise in the a few local glossy freemium magazines and work can be a bit hot and cold with them (I'm sure that's business all over though). Finances are a bit tight and my question to you guys is: Is it worth paying a considerable chunk of my finances on a website? I am being quoted in the region of £500 - £700ish. I would be happy to pay it if it made an impact and I understand that a lot of people are now using the internet as a means of finding services such as ours. And do I need an all singing, all dancing website or have people had good feedback from just a basic, no nonsense webpage?
Any information would be greatly appreciated.

Many thanks,

Dan

[cledry]

I would concentrate on a simple single page advert on the web that gives business hours, a map and contact details. This should be designed to work on smaller screens. The main thing is you want people with smart phones to be able to find you as the locksmith in your area of interest. You don't want calls from Norwich if you are in Northwich. You want just a @25 mile radius or whatever your main area is.

[daniel_cox]

That's great thanks, I didn't even consider people using smart phones or the requirement to see it on a smaller screen so that's really helpful thanks

[bjornnrojb]

Also bear in mind that you don't need to pay anybody to make a webpage in this day and age. If you just go to wordpress.com and sign up and make a site you can do it without any experience whatsoever. Then get one of your more nerdy friends to help you buy a domain name and have it point to your wordpress.com site and you are done. Then you can print out your business cards.

[Achyfellow]

I would say YES. Nowadays people don't look in the magazines when they are looking for a business, they just google what they want. If you are not there, you will be missing a huge market chunk.

Making a basic website is not hard (You could use any of the ubiquitous free tools that are available right now), it will take you less than two weeks to make a decent basic, single-paged website learning from scratch in your free time. Domains are around £5 a year, and they usually give enough space to have one of those small sites. If you need more space and you have a decent connection (i.e. you have constant connection to the internet and it doesn't explode every 5 minutes), you can pay for a cheapo hosting plan or simply leave a computer on in your shop/home and use an old computer as web server (It's incredibly easy once you do it one time).

Having a website is not hard or expensive, and it's a great tool even for small businesses (Specially in small cities, I don't know if that is your case).

If you need help or more info let me know and I'll try to help

[spoonzor]

£500 - £700ish for a professionally made website is actually a pretty good price, I usually charge a lot more (and have been doing so for many years).

But if that just get's you a site on the level of the in the above posts described "wordpress with standard theme" or other hobby work it's worthless.
If you have the budget available (so not right now) and you can find a designer with good references (don't just look at the sites, call those companies and ask them about there experience with the webdesigner) I would advice you to take the offer.

But for now, since budget is thigh, as said before, the most important think is that you at least have a one page site with all the information that people will actually be looking for:
- You company name
- Your address with a (Google) map
- Some services you provide that people will type into a search engine
- Phone number
- Opening hours
As said this site needs to work well on a mobile phone, doesn't have to look great just keep it simple (more simple is better in this case, you just want to get the information out there to people that locked themselves out and are searching for a solution on their phone).

Even for this my advice is to go to a professional and ask for an offer, it should be not more then 2 hours work and personally I would charge around 150 euros for the above. It would probably cost you days to do it yourself and it will still not be 100% what you want/need. That time is better spend making 150 euro by helping out customers doing what you enjoy to do.

I will usually see it immediately if i enter a non professional made website, especially those who just spend a couple of weeks with wordpress. I love to use wordpress for my customers to make it easy to change some text but i do give them some training and that's just for changing some text and maybe replacing an image. Even replacing the image often goes wrong and spoils the whole design, maybe just because the picture is the wrong color or whatever. I personally tend to go with the company that has a professional looking website over a company that has a home made website if the price difference is not huge.

Making a website without any experience in this field is like sending a webdesigner (with no lock picking experience) on a lockout job. It might get the job done eventually, but it ain't gonna look pretty.

[femurat]

Making a website without any experience in this field is like sending a webdesigner (with no lock picking experience) on a lockout job. It might get the job done eventually, but it ain't gonna look pretty.

I could not have said it better…

[bjornnrojb]

I must respectfully disagree with some of you. Though a great point is made that you are better off spending your time doing your job and paying somebody else to make a website, many people in their first year have a lot of time to burn because they have no established clientelle, and it doesn't take very long to make a wordpress site. Maybe the hardest part is setting up the domain name. Many of today's beginner locksmiths are very well-versed in how to use an ftp client etc. This is not rocket science, if you can follow directions on how to install a lock then you can design a website.
Take my website: http://mapleleaflocksmith.com/. I am not a professional web designer, and couldn't code my way out of a wet paper bag. Even so, it is a clean design that looks good on mobile phones, has all the right keywords for Google, has my phone number a lot of places, etc. Locksmiths are invariably predisposed towards tinkering and nothing scratches that tinkering itch like making a website. In addition, if you make your own website and have free hosting you are only paying for your domain name once every few years. A lot of people who fall for this "If you don't know how to make a website, pay somebody $500 and $20/month" trap don't realize that it doesn't have to cost more than $5 a month for your website's hosting.
A lot of locksmiths I know have really crappy looking websites, and you may think mine looks crappy too, but the one good thing about a homemade looking website is that with a little care it won't look like a cookiecutter scammer's website. I won't link to one because I don't want to help their SEO ratings, but search for fidelity l()cksmith or one of the other well known scammers and look at their website. It looks like it was made by a professional web designer.
A ratty-looking webpage is not going to inspire confidence in somebody who wants to buy a laptop with a credit card. My customers tell me that my website made them want to call me because it looks like a website a contractor would make. I have no incentive in telling you to build your own website, I am not in a position to make money from you. I can only tell you that I have real life experience in winning customers specifically because I made my own website.
All you need is your phone number, concise information about your business, maybe a few pictures of your van or your shop, and you are good to go. If you have the budget to get some pro to make a website for you then more power to you, but in my estimation it is very low on the list of things a first year locksmith need concern himself with. I literally spent less than $50 making my website, and I could do it again in less than a day. Thinking about this further, maybe I should start a side business in web design if people are actually getting paid $500 for a rinkydink joomla or wordpress site. I'd include free hosting for two years for that price.
If anybody has some constructive criticism, please post it here. I freely admit that I am not a pro. I just read a tutorial on wordpress.com and followed its instructions.

[bioggy]

Hmm if you need a website let me know I will make you a basic one free and all the costs you will have is a domain name a yearly subscription etc.


If your interested let me know.