Founded in 2008. The Landscape Juice Network (LJN) is the largest and fastest growing professional landscaping and horticultural association in the United Kingdom.
LJN's professional business forum is unrivalled and open to anyone within within the UK landscape industry
LJN's Business Objectives Group (BOG) is for any Pro serious about building their business.
For the researching visitor there's a wealth of landscaping ideas, garden design ideas, lawn advice tips and advice about garden maintenance.
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Hi Sam
LJN can become your landing page if you do some work on it.
Your name and occupation are already ranking higher on LJN than on most other sites on Google search results. I'd suggest that you upgrade to premium and set about updating your page.
I'd then suggest you start adding some well written content on several different blog posts.
I can always help you (that goes for anyone else).
Hi Sam,
I went ahead and had a quick look over your website, here is a few of my thoughts..
IMPROVING THE CONVERSION RATE
This is what you can do to immediately get more enquiries from the people already visiting your website.
The first thing I spotted was all the text at the top right, it’s really small, too much text, and not enjoyable to stop and read. I understand the idea of showing your services, but you can do that within your content and on the services page. Likewise, a local phone number will roughly show the area you are in, and then in your page title you can include the area i.e. “Garden Design and Construction in Ely”.
The next thing I noticed was the colour of the text. Looking at your gallery, it doesn’t appear to me you want very low end work, but the only websites that can get away with colourful text is kids nurseries. Excuse me for being blunt. On that topic, there is too much text and too much “fluff”.
When a prospect visits your website, they are looking to solve a problem they have i.e. an unpractical garden, they don’t particularly care about your business, aside from the fact that you may be the solution to their problem. Focus more on what the prospects wants and needs are, rather than trying to sell yourself.
Another thing that will help is to add more images in a way that is easier to consume. The gallery page is not user friendly, the thumbnails are really small, and the pictures themselves aren’t that large. Also the auto-changing is a bit fast and can be annoying, better to let your visitors choose when they want to change image.
It would be useful if you had individual images of different types of services, rather than a bunch just bundled up. Significantly easier to consume this way, on your services page as an example, you list a bunch of services without explaining more about them or showing photographs of them.
The contact page should have a contact form, this is huge. Many people today, will not want to make the first call. And you are asking too much of them, if they have to copy the email address, login to their email provider, and compose you an email. Instead have a form they can fill out on the website, that will automatically email you.
You can take this a step further with a “call back form”. The homepage is the first page people visit, you could add a short form here, maybe “Name, Phone Number, and Email Address”, as a quick way to request a call back from yourselves. With there only being 3 fields, there is little commitment here, so the conversion (the number of people that complete it) will be significantly higher.
And also to improve the “conversion”, you should have your phone number in the top right corner of the website, where all that green text is at the moment. Alongside this, you should have a “call-to-action” and link to your contact page. A call-to-action is where you ask the user to take some type of action, i.e. Request a free consultation. Or you can be more specific calling it a “garden design consultation”.
GETTING MORE VISITORS
With your website setup to convert your visitors into enquiries, the next step is to focus on getting more visitors to your website.
I suggest creating a different page for each individual area you target, you could just use the homepage for Ely.
At the moment, if I were to search “landscapers ely” you are on the third page of Google. This is a good start, but ultimately won’t get you many (if any) visitors.
To do this, I’d like to introduce you to a few very strategies.
The first one is in your “title tag”. At the moment the title tag of your homepage is set to “grow gardens - Home”. Instead, you should make it focused around the searched phrases you want to start coming up for.
So you could use…
“Ely Garden Designers & Landscapers - GrowGardens”
As this example shows, you’re targeting the area “Ely” and terms related to garden designers and landscapers. This way if someone were to type in something like “landscapers Ely”, your title is optimised to help you come up.
This alone will have a dramatic influence on how high your website is positioned in search engines.
Repeat this on every page you create, targeting each individual city, town, or village that you cover.
One final tip on this topic is regarding your meta description. At the moment, your homepage is set to…
“Landscaper in Ely and Cambridge: Grow Gardens - Ely & Cambridge, garden design and construction, garden studio, garden maintenance, landscaping, landscapers Ely Cambridge”
This is called keyword stuffing. The act of deliberately including several keywords to help improve your chances of ranking for them in search engines. Make sure to tone this down, otherwise you could be penalised for it in the future.
For your meta description, I recommend trying to explain what you do in short, and “sell your business” to get people visiting your website.
List the benefits of using your company, and have a call-to-action asking them to visit your website i.e. View our website to learn more, Learn how we can help you, or View our previous work.
CONCLUDING
There is a lot of potential Sam, but it will take a lot of work.
If I’m correct, the website is built using VistaPrint Site Builder? I know you said you want to do it yourself, and as a consultant for a marketing agency I am biased, but I highly suggest you find another solution for your website. If you truly want to do it yourself, the absolute best platform I can recommend is WordPress with a premium theme. It’s significantly more expensive, but if you are not willing to invest in your business, why would you expect anyone else to?
If you would like a full explanation of the strategies mentioned here, and more, you can read a free 22 page book I wrote
I hope I’m okay to include that link, it’s completely free and you don’t need to sign up.
With that said, I hope this response helps you Sam. Good luck!
- Daryl
Thank you Daryl
Loads of really good tips there. I will have a go at making some changes and see how i get on.
I dont like wordpress at all.
I used to build websites professionally and just uploaded my new gardening one. It still needs tweaking, so many more hours to spend on it. I prefer sites which are more personal and not the cold sterile touch.
Currently I use Serif Webplus x8. Its really easy to use.
I have another 5 websites which I work on during the winter months. (not horticultural related)
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You might want to look at your homepage spelling of whatsapp? As I have never used what's up!<br />
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I also have had a quick look at your site. Once I got onto the prices page it wouldn't let me visit the about page. Never ending loading loop. <br />
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And your site isn't very friendly on mobile! Objects to click are to small and far to many!
Yup I know, But I had a link on the site from Age concern. As I severed my business arrangement with them they gave me a few days to remove the links. As life takes over, I never got to do it in a reasonable time frame, so yesterday was the "D" day and I had to change it all in two days. And they have been watching, emailed me to let me know they see the links and any mention of them is off the website. I am quite proud of myself to have done a large site like that in 2 days. It was around midnight when I loaded it up.
My old site was mobile and tablet friendly, but this one is not as I have not yet built the "mobile" pages. I will do them bit by bit. I am not too worried about that as my customers seem to be using their computers more than mobile devices. I always ask how they found me, did they look at the site, how what when etc. I may add a form as well plus the direct email address, but find people prefer to email instead of completing a form.
Thanks for the heads up on the loop. I did not notice that. Will check it out later. As for Whatsup Whatsapp I always said and typed Whatsup and no one ever corrected me. Looking at it now pinging away I clearly see its called Whatsapp. Been using it or many years and never paid it any attention ... LOL People know what I mean. But will check that one too of course.
Having said all that had 4 contact requests from the site today. So people don't care. Just want a gardener they can trust.
Whereas we have a wordpress site www.damsonhousedesigns.co.uk which we found easier to use than our previous Joomla site. http://www.asking4gardening.co.uk/ .
We sorted our own hosting, it costs £50 per year, we have full control now. This is for up to 5 websites.
We have another wordpress site www.chickywicky.co.uk
There are a huge range of wordpress templates to choose from, many are F.O.C e.g our chickywicky template.
Others you buy, we paid about £45 for the 3 clicks theme http://themeforest.net/item/3clicks-responsive-multipurpose-wordpre...
Many many themes are a doddle to customise colours, fonts, change layouts, etc
It also very easy to change templates, sample new ones,etc
Of course our websites need attention, as well
Why would you try and do things yourself when a professional can do it better and more cost effectively?
The last few websites Jason has worked for me are:
NMGS.co.uk
Final-5.co.uk
Greenkeeperpro.co.uk
Nick.
Why not? Instead of just watching dumbed down TV in the evenings, one can educate oneself and build ones own website.
I enjoy doing it and have been for the last 20 years in many subject matters. Even done it professionally.
My gardening website looks quirky as does my van (all very much thought through). Seems my customer base likes it a lot. I guess those that don't like it won't call.
I looked at your sites and don't like the Final 5 at all. Too flashy corporate looking compared with the actual subject matter. Plus I had to wait for something to load before accessing the site. Too much scrolling up and down. The site responded fast on the scrolling once active that it jumped over the information. I actually did not get what it is your selling there unless I really dig deep. Most customers would not have the patience to do that. I know I don't.
Would be interested in actual numbers of customers buying from those sites or converting into real customers from the amount of traffic you get. You got any stats?