Perfect Tree Care Website: Even a Caveman...

[M.D. Vaden]

Even a Caveman can do it.

Murphy4Trees started one website thread a few days ago about tags. This thread is for the PERFECT website for a tree service. I think that the perfect website for a commercial tree service is not perfect, as much as it is the perfect site for a particular arborist's needs.

This thread would be a good place to post links to various websites, and post comments about the good, or what could be better. Clean positive commentary.

This is the link that I posted in Murph's thread about website ranking and purpose for one...

Top Website Ranking & Website Purpose

For what websites can accomplish, I think it's a bit dark-ages-like to not have a site. Websites serve many purposes. As arborists design productive websites, the greater that internet system will be for the industry and public education.

I'm going to list some websites that illustrate good, interesting, or productive aspects to consider for website design. Please contribute...

BARTLETT TREE SERVICE http://www.bartlett.com
I like the colors on the home page. The menu is interesting.

VALLEY CREST http://www.valleycrest.com/main1.html
This home page look is very unique. I first landed on their page about moving big trees.

AVOCADO COMMUNICATIONS http://www.avocadocommunications.com
Check out the Portfolio from the menu. I like the style and color palette.

There is a benefit to smaller 800 to 1000 pixel centered pages, versus stretch to fit. Stretched sites are hard to read text if users have wide monitors.

HIGHRIDGE CORPORATION LANDSCAPING http://www.highridge.com
A lot of landscapers have commented about liking this site's layout and design.

FLORIDA WATER GARDENS http://www.floridawatergardens.com
I like the simplicity of it - deviates from the common rectangular home page look.

 

[John464]

http://www.davey.com

I think its a great site. Color & layout. Detailed info with pics on each page. The feel it gives off is a bit too corporate for the residential tree service.


http://www.rickstreeservice.com/

Love the video that auto opens when you visit the site. Sample action videos of how the business operates.Picture gallery of the crews at work. Has mailing list that customers can sign up to be notified. This is good to have to remind customers for spray, fertilization treatments, specials, etc

What I dont like is that they state they have the best price. I am never the cheapest price and would never want to be known as the cheapest. I want to be known as the best quality that people realize its worth paying a little extra for. Do not encourage lowest price shoppers. There are enough customers that encourage it that we dont need proffesionals adding fuel to the fire.

 

[l2edneck]

This one is mine.Very simple.Small host server,basic HTML(for those that dont know HTML the basics to yer page do/look like what you want.Odds are people wont remember
www.mycompanynameissocoolstumpgrindingnameofmycompany.com but they will remember. http://www.smalljobs.biz.
Also my page is almost entirely designed by me at my home PC.It works ok for me but if my buisness was really humping i would look to have someone else maintain/update it for me.

Im sure yall can pick it to death and it doesn't have meta tags yet but im still learnin and update when time will allow.Most of my HTML is copy and paste from what i call cheater sites.

If any body wants some easy links just PM me.

P.S. my site is horrid but im happy with it for now.

 

[diltree]

All these web sites are very good, and effective. My only observation is that many service oriented web sites share a great deal of similarities. My main goal with my web site is to keep things simple and make an attempt to be different then the common site you would encounter. We attempted a different approach with our site, and I have received an overwhelmingly positive feedback by our customers. The site is a work in progress an there is still a great deal more work to be done. We are currently working on the idea of a before and after flip-book, which I feel will be a great addition to the site. I welcome any feedback or advice anyone may have......like I said "its a work in progress"


www.dillontree.com

 

[M.D. Vaden]

I welcome any feedback or advice anyone may have......like I said "its a work in progress"


www.dillontree.com

I like the black background, which is not the trend of many. Two weeks ago, a mushroom collector's site switched to black, and it gave me the idea to try it. I messed around but it doesn't work for me. The colors of your home page fit the black.

Personally, I don't like click to enter pages. ISA has that. At least your click to enter is more noticeable than ISA's. The slideshow is cool.

The text to the right was too small to read. But text on a page should be able to increase and decrease by holding the CTRL key and rolling the mouse wheel, or clicking the text increase in the browser window.

 

[diltree]

MD...I felt the same way about font size.....my web guy hates scroll bars...but I am going to look into adjusting that problem. Overall...great feed back, next time I sit down with my web design buddy, we will view this thread, and take your comments into consideration


www.dillontree.com

 

[M.D. Vaden]

Your site designer identified his link on your home page as...

http://www.vccgraphics.com

After entering, I thought the work examples window was interesting.

Did you ever check out the page curl effect when the cursor is placed on the corner of the examples?

Remember when small animations were the latest and greatest.

 

[M.D. Vaden]

Tonight, I revisted Dynamic Drive

http://www.dynamicdrive.com

They have scripts that may be used. Basically, they just ask for a link back to them.

THE SCRIPT FOR THAT CAME FROM DYNAMIC SCRIPTS. They provide instructions.

Some are toys, some are very useful.

 

[ASD]

OK THIS IS OURS WHAT DO U PEOPLE THINK

http://WWW.SANDCTREESERVICE.COM

 

[M.D. Vaden]

Basically, I like the layout. The menu is nice too. I had thought of going back to a horizontal menu myself, but plan to stick with the text links for now. I've had 3 styles of menus and buttons already.

On your page, the bottome center image is the only main feature that seems a bit out of balance. Bigger than the rest, and not in line with the others.

At the top, I'd eliminate the second tree clip art, move the ISA logo over the menu since width matches better there, and switch the name with it's tree image over to the right.

But it looks very presentable regardless.

 

[Ekka]

Many web designers have no idea!

The eye appeal of a website has little to do with how search engines locate and rank them.

For instance, the Bartlett site's menu's are in flash ... unreadable to bots. Poor meta tagging, no geographical referencing are other problems.

Flashing animations, images etc can confuse bots, they cannot read them.

Over indulgence in meta tags descriptions can also turn bots away. Some people try to have like 50 keywords! Individual pages not meta tagged correctly, for example ... the stump grinding page isn't tagged or worse still repeats the same info as the index page.

Spamming keywords can also lower your rankings.

Poor use of headers such as H1,H2,H3 means poor rankings

Frankly, search bots dont see colours, they hate frames and tables, and despise flash.

So, whilst Bartlett's site may look good, it's junk in the SEO world.

TreeSpydie has one of the most comprehensive sites

http://www.mytreelessons.com/

But you'll find as far as some-one finding it off a google search it would be a fluke.

Know what you are selling, know what your clients will be searching ...marry the two up.

Colours, graphics, pictures, and all that jazz means little.

What makes Mario's site rank well .... content. That's right, words and information. Careful if you copy from another site ... you could get sandboxed!

The best menu is a text one, what links say is far best and ranks well. For example, tree lopping like this carries a lot more weight than some fancy button where the bot cant read the text or worse still a flash link. Look at the bottom LH corner of your computer when you mouse over a link, if you see the URL come up then it's a good start ... you wont see that with flash, neither will the bots.

There's a lot more to success in websites than what they look like ... you need to know the rules to play the game.

 

[M.D. Vaden]

Yes, I've been to "TreeSpydie's" site before too.

It has part of the resources I referred to earlier, that benefits the industry.

When posting in these forums, sometimes it's easier to to write one sentence on a subject, with a link to a website like that.

I tend to lurk around longer in websites with topics and photos.

 

[Ekka]

Sure, never forget the human factor.

I learned the hard way. I paid webdesigners $2k for a site. The site was all built in flash with the odd HTML page.

Search performance was zero. 3 years of that site running zero performance. So I started to tinker, and a whole huge learning curve had to follow.

Anyway, I figured rather than just pay some-one else to fix it up I could learn a few things so over the last 6 months I got pretty clued up and took some training.

In a nutshell, it aint rocket science, but neither is using a chainsaw however enough people show that it's a tough task in the injuries dept.

There's a balance. A balance between robot and human friendly. There's better ways to do things. And simple is effective.

Subscribe to newsletters on webdesign, there's thousands of them and ironically I see by the few I get that topics seem to circulate ... of course the authors subscribe to there competitors etc. Little things make big differences like font, bolding a keyword, using alt tags on your pics etc.

The biggest advantage of website stuff is the instantaneous thing, you change it and bang ... it's done. Where as if it's a print ad in the Yellow Pages you have to wait a year.

 

[John464]

Sure, never forget the human factor.

I learned the hard way. I paid webdesigners $2k for a site. The site was all built in flash with the odd HTML page.

Search performance was zero. 3 years of that site running zero performance. So I started to tinker, and a whole huge learning curve had to follow.

Anyway, I figured rather than just pay some-one else to fix it up I could learn a few things so over the last 6 months I got pretty clued up and took some training.

In a nutshell, it aint rocket science, but neither is using a chainsaw however enough people show that it's a tough task in the injuries dept.

There's a balance. A balance between robot and human friendly. There's better ways to do things. And simple is effective.

Subscribe to newsletters on webdesign, there's thousands of them and ironically I see by the few I get that topics seem to circulate ... of course the authors subscribe to there competitors etc. Little things make big differences like font, bolding a keyword, using alt tags on your pics etc.

The biggest advantage of website stuff is the instantaneous thing, you change it and bang ... it's done. Where as if it's a print ad in the Yellow Pages you have to wait a year.

see thats what been holding me up in getting one made up. I want to be able to add photos, update, change etc. I have zero knowledge on how to do this and it seems the "pro designers" want to have the ball in their court to do these updates so they can charge you the upkeep.

I would like to hear some recommendations on who to contact that understands arborist meta tags and can design a quality website with user friendly features that would allow us to constantly update ourselves.

 

[John464]

Sure, never forget the human factor.

I learned the hard way. I paid webdesigners $2k for a site. The site was all built in flash with the odd HTML page.

Search performance was zero. 3 years of that site running zero performance. So I started to tinker, and a whole huge learning curve had to follow.

Anyway, I figured rather than just pay some-one else to fix it up I could learn a few things so over the last 6 months I got pretty clued up and took some training.

In a nutshell, it aint rocket science, but neither is using a chainsaw however enough people show that it's a tough task in the injuries dept.

There's a balance. A balance between robot and human friendly. There's better ways to do things. And simple is effective.

Subscribe to newsletters on webdesign, there's thousands of them and ironically I see by the few I get that topics seem to circulate ... of course the authors subscribe to there competitors etc. Little things make big differences like font, bolding a keyword, using alt tags on your pics etc.

The biggest advantage of website stuff is the instantaneous thing, you change it and bang ... it's done. Where as if it's a print ad in the Yellow Pages you have to wait a year.

see thats what been holding me up in getting one made up. I want to be able to add photos, update, change etc. myself. I know that type of stuff cant be that hard. I have zero knowledge on how to make a website itself.

it seems the "pro designers" want to have the ball in their court to do these updates so they can charge you the upkeep.

I would like to hear some recommendations on who to contact that understands arborist meta tags and can design a quality website with user friendly features that would allow us to constantly update ourselves.

 

[M.D. Vaden]

see thats what been holding me up in getting one made up. I want to be able to add photos, update, change etc. myself. I know that type of stuff cant be that hard. I have zero knowledge on how to make a website itself.

it seems the "pro designers" want to have the ball in their court to do these updates so they can charge you the upkeep.

I would like to hear some recommendations on who to contact that understands arborist meta tags and can design a quality website with user friendly features that would allow us to constantly update ourselves.

John464...

There are some album options that a web person can setup for you. But one easy option, is an album host like image event. Go to the link in my signature line that ends gallery1.shtml

Then pick any album on that page. Each one of those looks like it's on my website, but it's not. I insert a fragment of code from Image Event into the body of my page. It basically stuffs images from them, into my own layout.

Also, with website page ideas, you could find a blank template and tweak it to your needs.

You could use an image host like image event, and put a text link in your home page to the albums. In that case, it would go to a page like this...

http://imageevent.com/mdvaden

What you see on that image event gallery main album page, is the same thing available from my website album pages. The difference being that I stuffed 2 lines of code into a blank page for each album I want to have look like it's on my site. Either way is decent. That's why I chose Image Event - ZERO advertising whether I direct people to my album page there, or "suck' the album pages to my own page layout. They have a trial period for free, if you want to upload a few images and toy around with editing captions.

You could start with a single home page, with a nice photo, a few paragraphs and your contact info. The same page could link to your image host album, giving you complete control.

Or, have your own album on your own server and site. Although, that can raise your bandwidth use.

Image Event gives me no limit, and I can store about 1500 one meg images there for $24.95 per year.

The benefit to putting their code in your own blank page, is isolating viewers from any albums that may not seem "professional". Now my pet bird album doesn't exactly give the "corporate" image to an album. But then, I don't link to it from my website. Or, if I did link to the entire album page, I could skip having any albums besides just professional work photo albums.

 

[Ekka]

Also, just like this forum there's website building forums.

And if you dont know how to do something you just post the question and some-one gives you the code.

Go and look at this search, there's plenty of places to start. Many hosts will have a few templates available to get you started.

http://www.google.com.au/search?hl=en&q=website+building+forums&btnG=Google+Search&meta=

Or you could go to some places like from this list and get a few.

http://www.google.com.au/search?hl=en&q=free+website+templates&btnG=Search&meta=

It's easy really!

And dirt cheap.

 

[John464]

M.D Vaden & Ekka, thank you, very helpful!

 

[M.D. Vaden]

Hey, I tried some flash buttons for a while from this site...

http://www.flashbuttons.com

About $20 for a year, and quite a few menu styles are worthwhile. It's as easy as filling in tables and the code is generated.

You can retry again and again to get the hang of it. It takes a bit of practice to get the width right and stuff, but it's actually quite easy.

Colors adjust with most. There are 7 pages of choices with the membership.

For the heck of it, I made a flash menu for the bottom of my home page tonight - check it out.

I had to mess with it a few times, because I tried to make the menu 798 pixels or less, but it seems preset to 800 pixels wide, so I finally just went with that.

The key is to not close your working window. Feel free to delete the generated menu window, since you can regenerate, but don't close your workspace. It only takes 5 seconds to respawn so to speak. I whipped out a dozen until I stretched the button spacing the way I wanted by adding a couple of extra pixels between in each version.

You can even make isolated little menus to stick anywhere in your site. They insert easy, I stuck mine in a table.

Yes, it's bit of a toy, but it's fun.

My year membership expires in March, I see.

 

[046]

sites that use flash as a primary means of navigating sucks!

flash when properly used can be effective. it's a common problem with web designers not knowing how important usability of a web site is.

most folks attention span is under 5 seconds for web sites. if you are not able to navigate because your flash is not working. they're gone...

not everyone uses IE. lots to be said about lowest common denominator.