So, you’re getting ready to start your roll off business: You’ve got a solid business plan in place, you’ve sourced your waste management equipment, and you’ve printed up your business cards.
What’s next? Your website.
Because in this day and age, if you don’t have a digital presence, you may as well not exist.
And, the good news is that today, with user-friendly website builders, you don’t have to know how to design or code—or have deep pockets—to launch a professional-looking website for your roll off business.
So, let us walk you through your options—with some help from our digital agency—and give you some tips to get you started.
Website builders
Many small to medium-sized businesses run their websites on WordPress. We do. And, if you have the budget to hire a web development agency to build a professional looking site, and maintain it, more power to you. Done well, you’ll get better performance and more opportunities to customize and optimize your site.
That said, you can launch your first website yourself—without ever inserting a single line of code.
That’s where website builders come in.
And, our agency recommends you take a peek Wix, Weebly, and Squarespace.
Weebly
If you’re looking for something that’s simple to use—and the idea of less flexibility gives you confidence that you won’t create a Frankenstein’s monster of a website—then Weebly could be a great option for your business.
- Benefits
Easy to use—some say it’s the easiest to use of the three—so if building a website gives you heartburn, you’ll feel most in control here - Support for some third party apps allows you to extend your site’s functionality with plugin add-ons
- Basic photo-editing capabilities are built right in
- You can switch to a new template with a click if you don’t like the one you started with
- Supports multiple levels of navigation, so it’s good if you’re planning a site that’s two or three levels deep
- Paid plans offer unlimited storage
- Info buttons on Weebly features provide helpful direction in-place
- Allows you to put customer-only content behind a password
Drawbacks
- This is not true drag-and-drop flexibility—you won’t be able to change the page structure in the same way that you can with Wix and Squarespace
- You can change colors and fonts—but other changes require edits to the code
- While the new themes are responsive, some of the older ones are not—be sure the theme you choose will support mobile users
Take a look at Weebly’s pricing and features.
Wix
If you’d like a lot of flexibility and a user-friendly drag-and-drop website builder, Wix might be right for you.
Benefits
- 500+ mobile responsive, professional-looking website templates, including templates designed with service businesses in mind—and even one for dumpster businesses
- Artificial Design Intelligence (ADI) can create a website for you
- Help buttons on almost every feature give you support no matter where you are or what you’re doing
- Offers the largest App Market of the three, allowing you to integrate 200+ apps and services to extend the functionality of your website
- Supports text and graphic element animations
- Responsive customer support and a deep knowledge center
Drawbacks
- You can’t easily switch to a new template—if you don’t like your site and want to switch, you’ll need to start from scratch
- Free plan features extensive Wix advertising and limited bandwidth
- Not all templates are responsive – so be vigilant and make sure the template you choose will be responsive or offer a mobile version of your site
- Some plans don’t offer unlimited bandwidth and all plans place limitations on storage—so make sure you choose a package that will serve your business needs
Take a look at Wix plan pricing and features.
Squarespace
If you’re looking for a clean, modern website, Squarespace is a great option—especially if have some design or development experience and want a highly-custom website.
Benefits
- All Squarespace templates are mobile responsive—meaning they’ll look great and work great on tablets and smartphones
- You can count on 24/7 support and a rich knowledge base
- If you start with one template and decide you don’t like it later, you can switch templates with one click—you don’t have to start your website over from scratch
- If you don’t have great photography to support your site, you’ll get access to Getty Images’ library for only $10 per photo
- Offers built-in photo editing capabilities with Adobe Creative Cloud Image Editor, the most advanced of the three
- All plans are completely free of Squarespace advertising
- If you’d like to launch a blog, Squarespace offers the most advanced blogging of the three—including multiple authors and the ability to schedule content
- Unlimited bandwidth and storage on all plans
- The developer platform gives you access to your website code so that, if you do have someone on your team with development experience, you can fully customize your site
Drawbacks
- While the templates are beautiful, Squarespace offers the fewest templates of the three—so you have less to choose from
- You can’t build a deep website with Squarespace—you can create top-level pages or top-level folders with pages that live one level deep, which could be a problem if you expect to have a large and deep website
- Absolute beginners might take a bit longer to figure out how to use the platform
- There is no third-party widget marketplace, so you’re limited to Squarespace features and functionality
- There is no free option with Squarespace—the company offers a free trial, but you must purchase a plan before you can take your website live.
Check out Squarespace plan pricing and features.
Tips for building your roll off business website
Building a professional-looking website requires great photography, strong copywriting, and a knowledge of how people interact with websites.
Here are some tips and tools to get you off on the right foot.
Design
Typically, a designer will choose different fonts for the website headers and paragraph copy. We suggest you check out Google Fonts for some support:
- Find a font you like for your headers
- Click See Specimen
- Scroll to the bottom of the page
- Google Fonts will suggest font pairings that ensure your site looks professional
As far as your color palette is concerned, simple color palette generators like Colormind can help you arrive at a color scheme that looks smart and polished:
- Select your primary color
- Lock it
- Click the “Generate” button to continue checking out complementary colors, and locking them as you go.
Save the hex values—the codes that begin with a hash symbol—as you’ll enter these into your website builder when setting your font and background colors.
Online readability
When it comes to writing for a website, the writing rules you learned in your 9th grade English class do not apply.
Your roll off customers don’t read online in the same way that they do when reading a book or the newspaper.
How can you get it right?
- Present lists in bullet list format as opposed to sentence form
- Break large blocks of paragraph copy up so your pitch doesn’t look overwhelming
- Use headers and subheads to break content up and make it scannable
Online, your readers will scan for keywords and then pause to read when they find what they’re looking for. It’s your job to make that easy.
Search engine optimization, or SEO
Search engines are becoming more sophisticated. Now, they have a pretty good sense of what your customers are looking for, and they work to deliver the best, most relevant content possible.
What can you do to optimize the content on your roll off business website?
Think about who will want to read your page, first, and then brainstorm the questions they’ll be asking and the phrases they’ll likely use to find a page just like yours. They might include, “construction roll off rental” and “Roll off rentals in Oklahoma City.”
Then, use a tool, like Google’s Keyword Planner, to find out which keyword phrases get search traffic:
- Click “Get search volume and forecasts”
- Enter your search phrase ideas
- Click “Get Started”
- Click “Historical Metrics”
Try to incorporate some of the search phrases that get regular search traffic, especially those that aren’t highly competitive—but only where they align with your web visitors’ search intent.
Promote your roll off business to grow
Your new business needs visibility to grow, and a website can help you do it. Just think: When you need someone to repair your lawnmower, install a new bathtub, or deliver a roll off dumpster, what do you do?
That’s right: You start by searching online.
Make sure you’re there.