If anyone is interested I'd welcome feedback on my website. Too much verbiage? Effective pictures? Does it look professional?

Thanks much.

Sorry, accidentally his post before putting up my website!

www.bellinghamcarpet.com

Thanks all.

Nice site Grant. I think it,s a good foundation for the personal contact you have with potential clients.

I like the pic on the homepage, but consider a bold headline at top of page that will make people want to look at your site and more important,call you!

Make the headline the grabber and let the pic be a reinforcement for your headline.

Think of your headline like it is the front page of a major newspaper.

Best to you.
Bill

The before/after photo on your home page (and, I think, also shown on another page) is a little dark in the upper regions, and kind of hard to see. When you get one that is clearer throughout, I would substitute it. Also, in one of the pet stain photos, it seems as if I can still see some of the original stains. They may, of course, be permanent. If you don't have any yet, I would order some of Excellent-Supply's 15" Fiberplus (beige) pads, as well as a few of their FiberMax (gray) pads. Sometimes these can scrub away marks still visible after scrubbing with the green-striped pad I sent you in your package.
Overall, a very good site.

Grant, website looks good, and is easy to read. Before and after pictures are important IMO. I do however think your prices are still to low. You are offering a special service compared to the compition. I am curious, if you clean a bedroom and go around the bed and dressers, which is noraml, do you still charge the full room price? what if you clean around all the furniture, do you still charge the full room price? Also 300 square feet is a big area. We charge by the square foot and we get 30 to 35 cent a square foot depending on if we have to move furniture. That means a 300 square foot room would be $90 to $105, and I have a lot of compition doing $17 to $19 room specials. Upholster cleaning is all hands on work and if done right takes longer than carpet cleaning. I think most cleaners are getting $75 to $95 for a couch. I know we talked about this back in June. Don't be afraid to raise your prices and you may want to consider square foot pricing. Anyway Good luck, you are certainly headed in the right direction

Thanks to you all for the feedback. I appreciate it as I am no webmaster and have done this myself through a feeble GoBatty template. Thanks Bill for the comment about the opening headline. I think I thought of a good one and updated that last night. Thanks also Mark for the comments about the pictures. I was taking my camera around with me months ago so these pictures I have to work from tend to be older, before I was using the fibre plus and max pads I use now. I'll try to get some more in the coming weeks/months and update the site.

I always appreciate your kind words too Jim. It helps me plan long term for growing the biz into something that pays better.

My dilemma about pricing is this: In April/May/June when I was starting I ran a special for 3 rooms/hall for $69 or 4 rooms/hall/stairs for $99 and got plenty of responses, enough to get me excited and get things started. Of course at those prices I was working hard and was spending all the $$ coming in on keeping stocked with supplies. Starting in July I raised the rates to a bit higher than where they are now and all of the sudden the phone quit ringing. 400 postcards mailed out and 1 call. Hundreds distributed door to door and not one call. Lots of people telling me when they called comments like "you've got to be kidding me". I do my best to explain the advantages of this system, but maybe I'm not very good yet at communicating the advantages vs. other systems.

So out of sheer need to have $$ coming in I don't know what else I can do until I get busy other than to lower my price point. When/if I get very busy I plan to raise prices again, particularly in the upholstery area. The competition is fierce here where I am, lots of steam people offering low rates, and another seeming very savvy marketing outfit in the low moisture arena who uses a rotary machine with a carbonated cleaning solution (but not chem-dry).

As far as the room pricing, I use the hall/mini area rate of $10 to make up for large or very small rooms. If a bedroom is tiny, cleaning a small area only around a bed I'll sometimes give them the $10 price instead of $20. I do the same thing in reverse for larger rooms. I've been taken advantage of by a huge house of about 1600 sf. that only had 6 rooms, and it's been the other way a couple of times too. However, if someone has a lot of small rooms I change a couple rooms to the mini-are price instead of a full room price.

Thanks, and further feedback is always welcomed.