Ideas for my Geo website

[suzi]

A variant on one of Ty's:

Offer a prize to the best photo of someone holding a print out of your URL / logo somewhere in the town. Or, perhaps a prize to someone chosen at random from all the photos submitted of people holding the URL up.

Ideally, set up a page that prints it big across at least one sheet of A4.

Take out a small ad with the Council / local paper to get your URL on their websites.

Competition for people to find 'x' number of hidden 'somethings' around your website - makes them search through pages they might not otherwise visit.

Sponsored prizes - in return for free or reduced price front page banners or similar.

Trade directory. Free listing for locally based companies to include name and telephone with small (monthly) costs for email address, web link, text etc.

You probably do that anyway!

EDIT: Just had a look - not may businesses registered - maybe worth leafleting them with a sign up now 'while it's still free' type promotion. Or: 'sign up for the basic listing and get 12 months business plus listing with email, website link and description' - to try to create some urgency to get people to actually bother to do it now - not next week / month / year and to get a critical mass.

Leaflets are very cheap to print by the bucket load and can either be hand distributed cheaply, or inserted in the local rag for surprisingly little. They could even fill in a form and post it back - but then you have to deal with the data entry, so not as good.

Maybe also make it clear that the description can be very brief with some examples 'This can be very brief "We are plumbers/builders/etc" or a full description of your services'.

 

[SF]

I could really do with someone to overhaul the site - really needs re designing.

Anybody offer out standing web design?

 

[aZooZa]

Get hold of a sympathetic farmer, and have him dump a ton of pig shit on the council's front door where people go in and pay council tax. Be there with a video camera. Bound to attract visitors.

 

[retired_member13]

I could really do with someone to overhaul the site - really needs re designing. ?

For what it's worth I don't believe that there's anything that wrong with the design of the site as it is. Sure it's a bit old fashioned and boxy looking, but let's be honest, the design only really starts to matter a lot when you've got a lot of people coming to the site regularly though links or good SEO and you need to work out how to increase conversions, monetise the visitors, or bring navigational elements to the fore. Also without a sufficient volume of visitors it's very hard to measure with any accuracy if your design changes are resulting in increased pageviews per session, better user interaction and so on.

If a site's got content that people actually want they'll put up with dodgy design IMO in terms of using it. Ordering products is a slightly different matter, but that would be a different type of site.

Time and time again I see people spending fortunes on web design for sites that never actually end up getting enough visitors to produce a ROI.

Just a thought.

 

[Systreg]

This would have been cheaper years ago when there were £1 notes , but, how about, take 20 x £5 notes or 10 x £10 notes, cut them in half, staple a bit of paper to each half that contains your site address and a space underneath for someone to print their name/address, now walk around your town leaving the half torn notes on tables in a cafe, pub, library etc.

On your site, you'll have a message about these half notes, the finders of them have to register on your site and send the half notes back to you with their name/address written on them in the space provided, you then give a date on which you'll make a live draw, which you could do via live webcam, or video it and post on the site, the winner drawn gets sent the half notes and a reel of sellotape

[edit]

Depending on how much cash you have to spare/spend, you could go around to a few random houses and stick a £5 or £10 notes through their letter boxes, even the letter box of your local newspaper, bound to get a story out of it, cheap advertising anyway

 

[AssetDomains]

Get hold of a sympathetic farmer, and have him dump a ton of pig shit on the council's front door where people go in and pay council tax. Be there with a video camera. Bound to attract visitors.

That post deserves a like button

As suggested sort out the redirection .com & .co.uk ASAP then tell google via webmaster tools for good measure.

Are you doing some work on the image scroller at the moment as it doesn't seem to be working for me

 

[aZooZa]

This would have been cheaper years ago when there were £1 notes , but, how about, take 20 x £5 notes or 10 x £10 notes, cut them in half, staple a bit of paper to each half that contains your site address and a space underneath for someone to print their name/address, now walk around your town leaving the half torn notes on tables in a cafe, pub, library etc.

On your site, you'll have a message about these half notes, the finders of them have to register on your site and send the half notes back to you with their name/address written on them in the space provided, you then give a date on which you'll make a live draw, which you could do via live webcam, or video it and post on the site, the winner drawn gets sent the half notes and a reel of sellotape

[edit]

Depending on how much cash you have to spare/spend, you could go around to a few random houses and stick a £5 or £10 notes through their letter boxes, even the letter box of your local newspaper, bound to get a story out of it, cheap advertising anyway

Excellent idea! [Like]

 

[Pred]

This would have been cheaper years ago when there were £1 notes , but, how about, take 20 x £5 notes or 10 x £10 notes, cut them in half, staple a bit of paper to each half that contains your site address and a space underneath for someone to print their name/address, now walk around your town leaving the half torn notes on tables in a cafe, pub, library etc.

On your site, you'll have a message about these half notes, the finders of them have to register on your site and send the half notes back to you with their name/address written on them in the space provided, you then give a date on which you'll make a live draw, which you could do via live webcam, or video it and post on the site, the winner drawn gets sent the half notes and a reel of sellotape

[edit]

Depending on how much cash you have to spare/spend, you could go around to a few random houses and stick a £5 or £10 notes through their letter boxes, even the letter box of your local newspaper, bound to get a story out of it, cheap advertising anyway

theyre police cautioning kids for picking flowers for their mum from local park now, so guarantee there is some law against wilfully damaging 'her majestys' :rolleyes , cash
even if sellotaping back up

i liked idea of being n tshirt with domain on in front of cctv though
maybe sit in a deckchair in front of it :mrgreen:

oh no, then you would be obstructing 'the highway'

 

[BREWSTERS]

You could beat them at their own game - set up a webcam at the local dogging site!

 

[jimm]

Slightly different as I run a music venue but we have put on small interesting music happenings in towns. Something to get media attention.

Or leaflets in local towns handed out by lovely girlies.

Charity event sponsored by your site in your town?
Do something for charity and get in the media?

 

[SF]

I could do with a new complete redesign i think, I will look at some design companies in google.

 

[bensd]

I could do with a new complete redesign i think, I will look at some design companies in google.

This guy looks pretty good

 

[SF]

Ben ya piss taker

 

[bensd]

Ben ya piss taker

Sorry mate, couldn't resist

 

[newguy]

Some great ideas here. How big is your town?

 

[Tricky1]

Further to my comment; it looks like google have indexed the homepage of .com which is displaying as #2.

The rest of your site is indexed under .co.uk. Might be why your not beating the council website if google think yours is only a one page website.

Looks to me like the .com is a page that has been set up with the .co.uk in a frame

I can help you with a redesign if you want a chat..

Richard

 

[cc976a]

Don't know if already suggested (haven't read all posts) but do you have an option for a type of 'find the prize' type competition

Depending on budget but could hide an object, or point webcam on something obscure.......and if found you win the prize (or get local business to sponsor the prize in return for links / promotion / press coverage inclusion etc....)

Obviously bigger the prize the more interest - plus potentially some links from local press sites adding some nice SEO juice

Other option, similar theme, is a a type of Anneka Rice type Treasure Hunt where clues have to be answered about the town which unlocks clues to another question and so on. Could have an online leaderboard on progress to encourage visitors (which will also build up a newsletter type database for future marketing and promotion if the site)

Again going to depend on budget but bigger prize better interest etc....

 

[Bailey]

Stand in front of the webcam holding a banner with your site url on it

Thanks - I needed that.

Take out an advert in the local paper - disclaiming any association with the use of the .net

 

[fresh79]

Stand in front of the webcam holding a banner with your site url on it

PM,d you Sean

 

[SF]

Cheers Carlo, replied.