Really like it but Electrics
part P you can do more than that aslong as it's not in the kitchen, Bathroom & GARDEN
You can extend circuits, you can add lights you can replace like for like
Not sure about shower like for like, but if you have faulty cable you can do that, read up a little more on Part P there's many things you can do more than listed.
see here
I'm not so sure about the 'we' myself actually. I know it's a standard 'ploy' but maybe it would be better to focus more on you the person, for this type of work? Maybe include a photo of happy, smiling, presentable, trustworthy-looking MedwayHandyman on the home page?
Anybody reading the site will realise it's a one-man-band in any case, which brings me neatly to my next point - the several recommendations to contact "my good friend **** ***** who does ********" - I know you can hardly write "our good friends" but don't you think it makes you sound a bit like a Nigerian scammer!?
Very minor points only - I do think it's a very good, effective site and I wish you well with your endeavours.
David
(PS - good move, canning the sound effects!)
I'd like to see some photos, particularly for garden stuff. Clip-art looks cheap. Now "cheap" isn't necessarily a bad thing - your value proposition here is "I'm just a bloke in a van, but I'm trustworthy and I don't have a head office to support". Have a picture of yourself on there - make it more human. Your strength here is that you _are_ human, not a brand like Ikea or DynoRod. We're all tired of those now.
Give me good instant guidance on how far you will travel - maybe a crude shaded map. Will you travel further for money ?
You don't charge VAT - why not ? Now check the rules for this, but it's entirely possible you'll go over the VAT threshold and have to start charging. Word this so that it's open and honest "I'm just a small guy starting out and I'm not big enough for VAT yet" is good, "Dodgy deals in rolled fivers attract 17.5% discount" can make you look like a cowboy
- and that's a real risk in this market.
The HTML has a whole bunch of issues, but this is neither the time and place (alt.html.critique is thataway). Nor is that especially relevant for your market.
Search engine placement might not be too good for this site as it stands
- get some more text on there, particularly text that includes local town names. You want to be found as "Handyman Rochester", not just "Medway"
No, you're right - get rid of sound. Rest of it is great - quick, clean and presentable.
Some suggestions - A page later for some customer references and maybe photos of previous jobs? Would you collect Flat Pack furniture in that van of yours? Include the rest of Graham Baron's tel number... Photo of your workshop perhaps? Photo of you, if you look reassuringly safe and capable? (use John Thaw if not!)
Good luck!
use a sig block and keep contributing here - it will spread by some strange means
strong words, but essentially true.
Great comments Andy!
What's he trying to protect?
The individual services on offer are not original, although the structured way that the site covers different groups is excellent. It means that I can go there, knowing roughly what I want, know reasonably clearly what he will do and what he won't and know whether it's worth emailing or picking up the phone.
For the time poor, that has great value.
However, it is not something that makes sense to encumber with legalese and techno crap. All that would do is to put people off at worst or be ignored at best.
Sig block?
Dave
Deceased!
I will be adding some.
People in the local area are fully aware of what the 'Medway Towns' means, for a local it is instant guidance.
So, do search engines now look at the text rather than metatags? Would I be better off saying "We operate in Rochester, Strood, Chatham and surrounding areas?
Dave
I don't live in Kent, but have an idea what the Medway towns are.
Wouldn't hurt to underline your catchment area explicitly.
Oh, and you could add "install light fittings" as well as "ceiling roses", in electrical.
Cheers
Paul.
This is fixed now (you must have made some other edit since I looked)
Still there...
Yup, Mozilla in fact rather than firefox....
The problem seems to be (eweeegh I hat reading code generated by front page!) that you have a paragraph tag round the text of each entry in the bulleted list, but the bullet itself is outside of the tag. IE renders it incorrectly (i.e. ignores the tag inside the table row) and Gecko based browsers don't To fix it you could lose the tags altogether in the tables like you have on the other pages.
Also the plumbing page borks under IE 5 - the bottom gets chopped off the bulleted list. (less to worry about since not many folks use IE5 anymore)
A like for like shower swap is not notifiable under Part P.
Adam
That is not really true - google ranks heavily based on (amoung many things no doubt) the number of off site links there are to your page. YOu only need to look at the way bloggers et al can google bomb phrases to web pages simply by repeating them enough times... (type "miserable failure" into google and hit the I am feeling lucky button!)
Let me know when the site is ready to go and I will give you a link from our site...
A signature on your posts that includes your URL. (like at the end of this one after the "-- "
(Various web based aggregators of usenet groups are crawlable by search engine spiders. Hence any url's in the posts may get indexed as a result).
Some interesting background on the whole issue:
Yup, in addition to any other clues that you can include in the text.
People in the Medway towns are aware of this, but what about out in the sticks ? How far rustic will you go, or is it just in the urban parts ?
Sorry, I have no idea what you are talking about! I visited that site and got even more confused!
Thats why my hyperlinks are red. As a regular internet user I had no idea that convention ever existed.
I'll take a look, hope I understand it!
Hmmm! OK, I'll chesk it out.
Good points. I'll ammend those.
Good point - ammended.
No idea of which you speak.
Another good point - thanks!
Maybe.
I know - try finding clipart for a UK plug!!
Cool.
Altered!
Cool!
Doug - thank you very much, I am a wiser man.
Dave
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