American Recycler, August 2010 | Salvaging Millions

If your strategy for growth doesn’t include the web, you’re likely missing a lot of sales. However, even if you’re a shrewd operator, you can easily spend a lot more developing a website than you need to. You don’t know what you don’t know. And in the case of building a web site for your business, what you don’t know can be costly.

This is how it usually goes – you meet with a web developer, you will give her some idea what you want your site to do, she gives you some thoughts and you agree on a scope of work. What you almost never get is the strategic marketing advice that you need to make your website ring the cash register.

Let’s face it – websites are a commodity. Just yesterday, I talked to a man who builds websites. CHEAP. Many of his clients are marketing agencies. After they determine the keywords for their client, they hire him to develop the site. Once the site is up, these agencies do some level of search engine optimization. In other words, they make some changes to make the website easier for the search engines like Google and Bing to find when a prospective customer types in a search term like “used 1998 Honda Accord transmission.”

Don’t be fooled. No matter what the developer said, the cheap sites (below about $1,500) don’t have much search engine optimization, though they may look nice. The web developer may very well tell you that your new or redesigned website is optimized, but how do you know?

Good news. You don’t have to spend tens of thousands of dollars, but you have to know what to ask and how to check.

The biggest problem, really, is that the developers don’t usually understand your business, and don’t know the right questions to ask. They don’t understand the complex issues surrounding part look up, or the strategic issues of your customer mix now and/or where you want to migrate it, or shipping issues, pricing issues, and don’t mention cores or they are for sure thrown for a loop.

And you don’t know what to ask of the developer, you just want all the “cool” stuff. A blog? Sure, no prob! (With no discussion about who will post to it daily, using relevant terms and content designed to boost traffic to your site.)

This is a three part article, watch the next two months to get tips and practical explanations of many terms, so you can pull together all the information you need to do better on the web.

Don’t forget to subscribe to Ron's free monthly auto recycling e-newsletter, with news and tips, register at www.autosalvageconsultant.com.

Ron Sturgeon is past owner of AAA Small Car World. In 1999, he sold his six Texas locations, with 140 employees, to Greenleaf. In 2001, he founded North Texas Insurance Auction, which he sold to Copart in 2002. In 2002, his book “Salvaging Millions” was published to help small business owners achieve significant success, and was recently reprinted. In June 2003, he joined the new ownership and management team of GreenLeaf. He also manages his real estate holdings and investments. You can learn more about him at WWW.autosalvageconsultant.com He can be reached at 5940 Eden, Haltom City, TX 76117, rons@rdsinvestments.com or 817-834-3625 ext 6#.