Setting Up Your Lawn Care Business Website

Set Up Your Lawn Care Business Website

 Are you ready to set up your lawn care business website?  Do you already have a website, but it isn't getting the phone to ring?  This article is for you. 

Your web site will serve double duty as a sign-up point for opt-in potential customers and a sales point and information hub for current customers. There are several things you must consider when setting up your business web site.

 Name Your Domain

 What’s in a name? Your domain name, technically, are the words in the middle of the string of characters you type into a web browser. It is generally preceded by www and followed by .com or another extension, that loads your website onto your computer. Choosing a domain name is one of the most important steps in setting up your site. Try to choose a domain name that is easy to remember and spell (for example, Joeslawncare.com rather than Bestlawncarecompanyinoklahomacity.com). You should avoid odd or alternate spelling (www.craZlawns.com) and use as few underscores, dashes and special characters as possible. People will be more likely to visit your site if they are able to instantly memorize your web address and don’t have to bother using a search engine or backtracking through several previously visited sites to find yours.Ideally, you will be able to buy your business name.  If not, get as close as possible. You may have to add a city name if you have a common business name like “Bestlawns”. 

What About Free Website Hosting

Why should you pay for a web site when you can get one for free? There are several advantages and disadvantages to consider when choosing between free and fee hosting companies for your web site:

Will you have your own domain name? With free web sites, domain names can make your URL difficult to remember, and you may lose sales as a result. Free hosting sites or big sites that host a lot of domains usually give you a shared domain. For example: Joesmowing.freehosting.com.  Not only does this make your domain name more complicated, you are sharing your authority and traffic.

That means the host site gets the benefits of you building your site.  Also these sites are usually limited to only a few pages. You want to invest in your lawn care business website just like you invest in your equipment.

Will your website allow high traffic volume? Free sites have bandwidth restrictions. This means that after a certain amount of people in a given day visiting your site, the page will no longer load and potential customers will receive a message such as “This web site has exceeded its bandwidth limit. Please try again tomorrow.” Some free sites provide sufficient bandwidth, especially if your site is light on graphics…but many do not.

 Will your website be online at all times? Some servers are better than others. With a free site, you run the risk of downed servers showing visitors the dreaded “Error 404: Page Not Found” message when they click over to your site. Most paid sites have precautions to deal with server failure. Will you have to become a computer programmer? 

Before signing up for any web site service, find out whether they have templates and easy-to-use drop and drag site building tools—or whether you have to create your pages in HTML code. If you plan to use a program like Dreamweaver or FrontPage to create your site, this won’t matter. But if you’re not, and you don’t know HTML, you need to make sure you will be able to put things on your web pages with relative ease.

Will your visitors mind outside advertising and/or popup ads? Probably.  Most free sites use outside advertising on all their pages—this is how they make money. Banner ads are usually acceptable, but if you have a page with three or four popups that spring out at unsuspecting visitors, they’ll be quick to leave and never come back.

Find out what type of advertising the hosting company uses before signing up for a free program.This is not to say you absolutely should not go with a free site. Particularly when you’re first starting out, a free site may be just what you need, and you can always upgrade to a paid site. For that reason, you should look into a web hosting company that offers both free and paid sites (or just start out with a paid site).

 Getting Started

 Check out the main hosting providers.  All the main hosting providers also sell domains so consider using getting both your domain and hosting with the same company.  This makes things much easier when you have issues with something not working.  I suggest Hostinger.com as the ideal place to start.

Now, you have signed up for a domain and website. Now what? What are the components of a successful autoresponder-driven web site? Following is a guide for creating an integrated lawn care web site that is fully functional, easy to use, and most important: sells your services. 

The Landing Page. This is the “Front page” or "Home Page"of your web site. The one visitors surfing the internet will open when they click on your link in a search engine. Basically, it will take the form of a sales letter with an opt in form. The main purpose of the landing page is to get visitors to click on a button to call your office or to submit a form for an estimate quote. 

 The Services Pages.  The service pages contain information about each of the services you offer.  You might have a mowing service pages, fertilization and weed control, aeration, insect control, ornamental plant care, etc. You should have links from these pages to other internal pages.  If you have bundles, they should also have pages.  The parts of the bundle should link to the pages of the separate parts of the bundle.The product page can contain testimonials, cover graphics, and/or “teasers” about the benefits of purchasing your product. 

The Resource Page. By creating a page where visitors can find useful, free, and frequently updated information, you will increase repeat traffic and inbound links. Inbound links are when other people visit your site and decide it’s so cool, then put a link up to your page from theirs. Inbound links are a powerful way to increase your search engine ranking). 

On every page. Be sure to place an opt-in subscription box and phone number. Include your e-mail address often. Link to your autoresponder on every page of your web site, in a prominent position. Also, provide a link to your product page from the other pages. Be consistent, honest, and direct with all your web site content.  

Page Do's and Don'ts

Your website content is just as important as any email  autoresponder message content. Avoid a spam feel for your site. Don’t use lots of graphics or huge colorful fonts, don’t use all caps or excessive punctuation. Don’t stuff your site with “exciting” fluff words, and do make sure your spelling and grammar is correct.

 Keep your lawn care business website content simple, clear and informative. Also, a web site is a great opportunity to get repeat business. One way to do this, which also helps to increase your search engine ranking by attracting web crawlers, or “spiders,” to your site, is to provide fresh content on a regular basis. Add new articles or links weekly and give people great reasons to come back soon. 

Above all, be professional. Don’t try to make your product look better by trashing other products or sellers.  Bad mouthing other businesses just makes you look bad.

Don’t use “bait and switch” by planting descriptions that have nothing to do with your services. Son’t flat-out lie (your services will not give them a completely weed free dark green lawn in a week). Believe it or not, honesty is still valued in the marketplace—and your honesty will earn you more sales and repeat business. This is your first chance to build trust with these potential customers. 

 Build Your Opt-In List

 What an opt-in list ? It is a collection of e-mail addresses you get from people who are interested in your services, and request to join your autoresponder list (usually a newsletter). This means your autoresponder messages will not be considered spam and be rejected. This will help you build the reputation of your business and build consumer confidence and increase sales.

Now that you know why you need an opt-in list, let’s talk about how to get one. There are several ways to collect addresses for your opt-in list, and you should institute as many as you can to develop a wide subscriber base

Free Methods: Articles, eBooks, and Min-Courses

You can’t beat free! Though these list-building techniques take a little more time and effort than paid methods, they can be extremely effective in getting subscribers for you. In fact, you may have already done much of the legwork during your market research phase.

Articles

You can write articles pertaining to your topic, or articles that contain some of the information found in your product, and post them across the internet. Be sure the article contains useful information that will pique readers’ interest and get them to want more. When submitting your articles to other sites for publication, be sure to include your name (and company name, if you have one) and a link to your web site. If you have professional credentials that tie in to your subject, write a brief bio to include as well.

Ebooks and Giveaways and Contests

Just as the idea of free list-building methods appealed to you, the idea of valuable freebies will appeal to potential customers. Obtain short, informative e-books on a topic (or write one yourself) and then offer them as an incentive to sign up for your opt-in list. The topic should be lawn or landscape related but not exactly what you offer.  For example, topics on pavers, best trees and shrubs to buy, watering, landscape lighting, etc. 

You can also advertise a contest to give away a certain number of your services. The people should be chosen at random from people who sign up for your list during a prescribed period of time. NOTE: Setting limits on sign-up time and the number of giveaways gives people added incentive to act now. This is a technique you may want to incorporate in your autoresponder messages. You can use this method to build up your customer count in areas you are already servicing. 

Build Your Website Visitors With Mini-courses

 Developing a mini-course related to your services. If you offer mowing, do a short course on which trees are best for your area.  Show them ways to make a small garden. Teach them to sharpen mower blades. This is a great way to ncrease interest in potential buyers. When setting up a mini-course, break your product up into several sections. Give away a few secrets in each “lesson,” but not all of them.

Remind mini-course subscribers that much more information can be found in the full version of your product, and include links to both your product page and your autoresponder landing page in each section. Plug your mini-course into your autoresponder program and fire away!

Pop-Ups on Your Lawn Care Website

 Pop-up ads can be an effective means of gathering addresses for your opt-in list when used on your own website. No one enjoys visiting a site about a topic they’re interested in,only to be bombarded with boxes proclaiming they’ve won free gas for a year or can lose 10 pounds in the next week. But used on your own site, pop-up ads let people know immediately that they can sign up for your list and get exactly the information they’re looking for delivered straight to their inbox. Recent studies have shown on-site pop-up ads to increase sales levels by up to 33 percent. Create your free course or handout, then offer those to your website visitors to collect their emails.  At least offer them a weekly or monthly newsletter to sign up for.

Bring Traffic To Your Website

 Once you have your website, and all your accounts like an email autoresponder in place, it’s time for the fun part driving traffic to your web site. Then even better, watching your customer magnet in action. 

Using Keywords - Don't Over Stuff

  Make your website visible to search engines by using, but not abusing, keywords and phrases related to your topic. Over 90 percent of Internet users find sites through search engines, and the more relevant information web crawlers (programs that travel the internet “capturing” information for search engine listings; also called spiders) discover on your web site, the higher up in search results your site will appear.

Mention your keywords often, but don’t bludgeon visitors with them. This not only makes for sloppy copy, it can get your site banned from search engines altogether. Also, be sure you submit your site regularly to search engines, either manually or with a submission service.  

Keep Visitors Coming Back

 Update your business website constantly. Be on the lookout for articles and new information on your topic that will interest the people who visit your site. You will keep your customers happy by providing them with more than just a product, and you’ll keep search engines happy by listing new content.

One way to keep visitors returning and get more traffic is reciprocal linking. This is the practice of putting up links to other sites on yours in exchange for a link on theirs. You can create a separate web site page for your links; it will give your listeners even more resources as well as draw traffic from other sites. Though not quite as effective as inbound non-reciprocal links (links from other sites to yours when no return link exists on your site) in influencing search engines, these links still carry some rank weight.

It is important to ensure that all the outbound and reciprocal links on your web site are related to your topic—otherwise, it will reflect badly on your professional image as well as your search engine rank.

Summary

There are several important things to consider when setting up a lawn care business website.  Hopefully this article gets you started.  There are several resources on this website, both free and paid to take you step-by-step through optimizing your business website. 

 After you have your 3-4 basic pages, a frontpage, contact page, and a page listing your sevices, be sure to set up an autoresponder to collect your leads. For your next step, here is an article about setting up an autoresponder and the first few emails for a lawn care company.  See that article Autorepsonder Email Article here.