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Has anyone got experience or signed up with http://www.btcustomerstreet.com/btdirectories/
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I got a sales call last night, the package which includes guaranteed page one rankings in your town, multiple directory entries, a website etc etc comes to nearly £700 for the first year!Don’t want to get caught out..but on the other hand, if it works well…
Would be glad of your thoughts and experiences.
And if you signed up or have been contacted, how much £…Neil
Re: Advertising with BT Customer Street Websites
I signed up with Yell once on the promise of being No1 in the area, 2 months later I was no 16.
What I have learn’t is if there calling you there calling everyone else and if everyone else say’s yes there not going to turn them away.
Lots of small print and clever sales people who don’t lie, they just don’t tell you the way there going to screw you and if you don’t ask the right questions or have little knowledge you are fair game and likely to waste your money, I did with Yell.
You also get a lot of time wasters, I regularly had calls at 8pm asking for stupid repairs or unwilling to pay a call out.
A web developing friend of mine charges £300 for a web set up with it optimised to No 1 spot, but its not guaranteed because there is no such thing as the no1 spot as there is no control over the position, another web developer can place another business in your area straight after yours.
The top spot is the holy grail, which is why major companies employ IT people to constantly monitor and update the position.
BT has the man power to do it, so it could work for you, but its a lot of money to get wrong compared to doing it yourself with a developer.
If you can afford to loose £700 do it, if not look for cheaper alternatives, it may take some time, but you could save several hundred and get a better coverage with better responses.
These type of calls rely on people not knowing a great deal about web development etc and can seem very attractive, it isn’t that difficult and there are plenty of small web developers self employed.
Im a fan of small business, there are just as many decent web developers out there and you get in with them, they’ll pass on your name to there clients and vice versa.
Ask yourself this
Would you pay Repaircare £125 to repair your fan oven not heating or call you out and have it done for far less. 😉
Re: Advertising with BT Customer Street Websites
Good advise Lee, my son works with a leading web development company and he is a webdesigner with them. They have a impressive portfolio of high profile clients who have spent big bucks on elaborate websites and you would be amazed at how much these companies have at their disposal for webdesign, these companies pay monthly service retainers costing not hundreds but thousands of pounds for SEO to maintain their profiles at the top and that is the only way to ensure these top places. The likes of Yell and the rest of them have very basic and in some cases amatuer like web design capabilites and I would say that you are much better off with a local web design company to build a decent site but dont get drawn in to elaborate looking sites with bells and whistles, save money for SEO to get you up the listings against your compeditors would be money well spent.
When I look at some of my compeditors sites they range from obvious DIY efforts to some which have cost them serious money but still lack the impact of what is really needed in our particular trade. Try and look at the various compeditors sites not only in your area but also country wide, make notes, steal ideas which appeal to you ! and sit down and sketch out rough plans of how YOU see your site based on what you have put together, this way when you find a web company for your design you will have a much better idea of what you want from it and more importantly so will they. Then haggle the price as much as you can 🙂
Re: Advertising with BT Customer Street Websites
i think rep-care have 6 full time web developers , constantly adjusting and tinkering to keep them high on google etc ,,
you can make your own site very easy … and use google add-words you can set your own spend budget, key search words , and geographic area , but all very time consuming..
but to be honest if you want a sh*t hot web site and top rankings you will have to pay .
fb
Re: Advertising with BT Customer Street Websites
funkyboogy wrote: and top rankings you will have to pay .
It ain’t necessarily so, 😉 My business name is Iadom Domestic Appliances. I have a very modest DIY website that I cobbled together many years ago when I stumbled across a free web page compiler on my WIN 95 powered PC. I only did it just to see if I could, it was never intended to be an advertising outlet. It is pretty basic to say the least but just enter iadom into Google and see what comes up. 8)
Jim.
Re: Advertising with BT Customer Street Websites
I let Yell.com build me a free SEO website a couple of months ago.
It was utter pants and worded like it was translated from Japanese.
Told them if I came across that site as a customer I’d skip to another as it seemed so poor. I think (hope) it was removed, but since then keep getting calls to repair LCD t.v.s :con: and come up first in Google if you put in LCD repairs Preston 😥
I don’t even own one.TC
Re: Advertising with BT Customer Street Websites
Exactly !!! The Yell rep tried to hook us into their web design and to be honest I let him rant on telling me how he could have me up the listings and how we would have everyone ringing for jobs and our profits could well go through the roof !!! Ha after he finished he made the mistake of asking me if I had understood what he had gone over and if I had any questions. Well after I asked him one question after another he was soon out of his depth and couldnt answer any of them telling me that he would need to get someone from the web office to call me.
As we do use Yell.com as an advertising vehicle Yell did ring me and started giving loads of stats on how they were building our business and stats of all the hits they had refered to our site. I asked them to send me the stats to look at, when they arrived I compared them with my own server stats and they were a work of fiction, when I called the rep and the web office they were unable to comment and said they would need to look into it. Well I dont know if they did but it was no surprise that we never heard anymore from them !
Ah ! the silence told me all I needed to know, Beware !
Re: Advertising with BT Customer Street Websites
WWW advertising is a bit of a mine field… unless you are very good at web design / seo , you wont get the desired results..
iadom..your potential new customers would have to know your name 1st to enter iadom into google.???
search engines test your home page for consistency words in the right place context etc and if they dont like it they wont rank you high – so even if your web site looks good it wont rank good because of your home page set up …
we intialy built our own site which is still running and we do get quite a few jobs from it , we have on online booking form which i think helps with customers who are at work and cant use the phone …as i said we built this ourselfs took a few days and loads of editing etc -still isnt perfect but in a way i think a lot of customers like it as they kinda know they are dealing with a local repair buis and not a multi national corp…
have a look http://www.4kitchenappliancerepairs.co.ukwe also paid a web developement co , about £600.00 for a more profesional site , which does look the part …but we have had loads of problems trying to get web co to edit and change stuff that we dont like ..
still an ongoing issue after about a year … so be warned if you do use web developers make sure they are willing to work with you going forward as their is always things you may want to change…
having said that i think the site is very good and we get a free phone no with it with 1000 mins a month and seo etc …
http://www.4kitchenappliancerepairs.comhopefully these 2 sites will give anyone an better idea of what you can do yourself and if you are prepared to pay someone , both sites works for us
and both are still working progress ..ally
Re: Advertising with BT Customer Street Websites
funkyboogy wrote:
iadom..your potential new customers would have to know your name 1st to enter iadom into google.???
Correct, but I don’t have it for advertising purposes. I do not advertise anywhere and have not done so for over 25 years.
It was as I said just done as an excercise to see if I could do it about 8 years ago. 🙂
Re: Advertising with BT Customer Street Websites
The best form of advertising is clients passing your details around, word of mouth is priceless, but also time consuming.
Internet WWW helps but its not something that I rely on for revenue, it just helps to look as if your in it for a career and not for a quick buck.
Having said that now a lot of Watchdog customers have a top notch web presence. 😆
I try not to over promote myself as I don’t trust deals myself, my impression of free call out and percentage off for OAPs is a waste as nobody should believe them, a bit like Yell promises.
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