Web Site
You need a web site. Yes, you do! You can get a free website along with tools to help you build one. There is no excuse not to have a web site! With a little time and patience you can do it yourself or pay a little money and have one built for you.
Website Content
The design isn't nearly as important as the content. If you aren't comfortable doing anything else, you can have 1 page with black text on a white background.
Answer the following questions on your web site:
Who?
Who are you?
How?
How can you be contacted?
What?
What do you do? Pictures are critical for this type of business! Take pictures with regular film and have them scanned or buy or borrow a digital camera.
When?
When can you be reached?
Where?
Where do you offer these services? (THIS IS CRITICAL!! The Internet is international- you will get inquiries from around the country and the world if you do not clearly state your service area.)
Why
Why call you? How are you better than anyone else?
How Much?
Save yourself a lot of hassle and wasted time by putting prices out there. People who contact you are then pre-qualified and won't be surprised when you quote your fees.
Web Site Building Choices
Do It Yourself
Try Bravenet Web Services. They offer free hosting, free web site-building templates, and tons of tools to make your site interactive. The down side? Lots of ads served with your site. You probably won't want to keep your site here forever under their free plan, but it is a good place to start and to grow. Their webmaster tips are excellent if you develop an interest in doing more with your site.
Have One Built
You can check into local services and agencies offering web sites as well as a wide range of services available on the Internet.
Our sister company, Right Click Web Services, offers a discount to moonwalk rental companies. Right Click built this site and our other site, Hullaballoo Rentals.
Website Promotion
Use your website to tell customers about what you have to offer and build confidence in your service.
Put your website address in every marketing effort you make. Most marketing is limited- your site gives you the opportunity to sell the customer. Don't waste an opportunity to give a potential client another way to contact you.
Trade links with local businesses. In order to be found on the search engines, you must either pay to be included or be found from another site linking to you. The more sites that link to you and you to them, the higher your site will rank. Send e-mail requests to webmasters of local businesses and ask them politely if they will link to your site and you will link back to them. It will help you both and make for a stronger local community on the web.
Get listed on Hullaballoo Moonwalk Rental's Regional Directory at www.hullaballoorental.com/business.html/. Simply place a link on your site to the directory then e-mail link@hullaballoorental.com and request a link back. This page is indexed often by the search engines and will help your site to be found by the search engines when they follow the link on the site.
Submit your site to the Open Directory Project for free. Go to www.dmoz.com , find the appropriate regional category (your state, your city or county), and click the "Add URL" button. Once the ODP adds you, Google and other search engines will eventually add your site as well.
