Tradesman4u.com

[Tradesman4u]

If you click About Us at the top all the contact details are there. At the bottom our limited company is listed also.

Tradesman4u.com Ltd

20 Bispham Rd

Cleveleys

FY5 2RN

Tel 01253 857577

Cheers Dave

---------- Post Auto-Merged at 08:38 ---------- Previous post was made at 07:58 ----------

Just had it added to the contact page also. Cheers

 

[Sidewinder]

One other comment you have Fforest-fach (SA5) on your website, trust me it is Fforestfach (SA5) there is no hyphen.

I see you have updated some counties, though you still are using the old Glamorgan County names, I suspect that you have bought an address database?

Many of these don't seem to have been updated, but this is a minor point.

On an aesthetic point, and a personal one at that, I am not keen on the semi transparent drop down menu's I find it makes them hard to read.

 

[Tradesman4u]

Hi Sidey, we are working on that county list but its a bit of a job. I suspect it is some sort of database purchase as you say, obviously its the web company that bought it as I wouldn't have a clue. Why on earth a database thats 16 years out of date is still available is beyond me. I challenged the main person and he actually says many sites including RP use the same database. Anyway its a manual process now, so unlucky for him! Was a great spot though so cheers.

On those translucent menu's I'll see if they can be made solid. Its a fair point. Watch this space.

 

[Sidewinder]

Dave,

You would be amazed, you are not the only company using that database I bought some pneumatic fittings from a website yesterday and guess what...

Yep still West Glamorgan!

 

[SPECIAL LOCATION]

If you click About Us at the top all the contact details are there. At the bottom our limited company is listed also.Tradesman4u.com Ltd

20 Bispham Rd

Cleveleys

FY5 2RN

Tel 01253 857577

Cheers Dave

---------- Post Auto-Merged at 08:38 ---------- Previous post was made at 07:58 ----------

Just had it added to the contact page also. Cheers

:Blushing

I stand corrected,

And IMHO, now you have added it to the contacts page, (which is where I personally expect to find it), that is better....



I would agree that you need the e-mail contact as the preferred method..

But I always lose confidence with any organisation that you have to hunt around for real bricks and mortar addresses!

Not that it matters much but I would have worded the contacts page something like:-

For a fastest response please e-mail your questions and feedback using our form below.

We want you to get the best out of Tradesman4u. We aim to respond to your email within 1 working days.

Or you can write to us at the following address.

{address bit}

Or telephone during normal office hours 9:00 - 17:00 Mon to Fri (excluding bank holidays)

{phone number bit}

opcorn

I will add some other observations in a bit about the job categories....

 

[Tradesman4u]

:Blushing I stand corrected,

And IMHO, now you have added it to the contacts page, (which is where I personally expect to find it), that is better....



I would agree that you need the e-mail contact as the preferred method..

But I always lose confidence with any organisation that you have to hunt around for real bricks and mortar addresses!

Not that it matters much but I would have worded the contacts page something like:-

For a fastest response please e-mail your questions and feedback using our form below.

We want you to get the best out of Tradesman4u. We aim to respond to your email within 1 working days.

Or you can write to us at the following address.

{address bit}

Or telephone during normal office hours 9:00 - 17:00 Mon to Fri (excluding bank holidays)

{phone number bit}

opcorn

I will add some other observations in a bit about the job categories....

I'm liking that. I've made a couple of tweaks so it reads more as suggested. You're gonna start bashing my job categories now aren't you. Gulp

 

[SPECIAL LOCATION]

Right, heres a few more things for you to consider....

The types/categories of work... (especially the Electrician box)

Electrician only has 7 very broad categories.. :| :C

Whereas

A gardener/designer has 16.

A plumber has 8.

A carpenter/joiner has 17.

A plasterer has 11.

Roofers & Security blokes both have 10.

Now I am fully aware that there is a lot of cross-over skill with Security/TV/Electrical/Heating trades etc..

BUT

I would expect all of the key elements involved with electrical work to be an option listed under the Electricians box?

I am guessing this is because you have limited past experience of the electrical trade?

Without a greater idea of what a customer wants done....

It would be hard to decide if you wanted to pay for a lead for a job that if you had known a bit more you may have thought I would never have quoted for that job anyway!!!!

For example....

Electric shower, Some electricians will NOT touch the water pipe works, (they get a plumber mate to do those bits for them), others will!

And which box does the customer select?

power showers and pumps are listed for plumbers...

But I can't see Electric showers listed?

Lighting & power internal...

covers ANYTHING and EVERYTHING in a house?

say a customer has a faulty electric storage heater..

which box do they tick?

Some customers are notoriously bad at describing what they want done....

So in the current trends of government guidance you need to help "nudge" them into giving as much info as possible...

IMHO it would be better if the customer had the same tick-box options (i.e. multiple boxes can be ticked) to select their work as the tradesmen do to select the type of work they do.

For example the following seven categories would at the moment be under your lighting & power internal..

• Lighting
  
• Power
  
• Showers
  
• Cookers
  
• New circuit
  
• Addition to exsisting
  
• Fault finding.
  

But if the customer could select any combination of the above, it would give me far more info to decide if I wanted to"buy" your sales lead.

And the customer still only has to put a few ticks and not worry about writing long descriptions of works...

I will try and put up some more/better suggested ideas for additional categories in a bit if you are interested?

ut the kettle on

 

[Tradesman4u]

That is a great post cheers mate. I'll go through it properly tonight as I'm reduced to looking at it on a crappy phone screen. Your help (& time) is really appreciated. I'll come back to you properly tonight. Dave

 

[a1]

That is a great post cheers mate. I'll go through it properly tonight as I'm reduced to looking at it on a crappy phone screen. Your help (& time) is really appreciated. I'll come back to you properly tonight. Dave

I was going to say that I am impressed with the answers and your response to them Dave.

Also, please feel free to "thank" a post by clicking on the "Like" link within it.

And more so, please add to, if you think it warrents it, the posters reputation by clicking on the black star symbol on the bottom left of each post. You can add a Positive or Negative reputation (negs are annonymous) and you can also add a comment in there too.

The reputation is then added (pos) or deducted (neg) in each post (the little green bars on the top right of each post).

 

[Tradesman4u]

Hi Admin, cheers, I didn't know about the reputation thing. I'll certainly be using that in future. Shame I have none. Dave

---------- Post Auto-Merged at 17:15 ---------- Previous post was made at 16:45 ----------

Right, heres a few more things for you to consider....The types/categories of work... (especially the Electrician box)

Electrician only has 7 very broad categories.. :| :C

Whereas

A gardener/designer has 16.

A plumber has 8.

A carpenter/joiner has 17.

A plasterer has 11.

Roofers & Security blokes both have 10.

Now I am fully aware that there is a lot of cross-over skill with Security/TV/Electrical/Heating trades etc..

BUT

I would expect all of the key elements involved with electrical work to be an option listed under the Electricians box?

I am guessing this is because you have limited past experience of the electrical trade?

Without a greater idea of what a customer wants done....

It would be hard to decide if you wanted to pay for a lead for a job that if you had known a bit more you may have thought I would never have quoted for that job anyway!!!!

For example....

Electric shower, Some electricians will NOT touch the water pipe works, (they get a plumber mate to do those bits for them), others will!

And which box does the customer select?

power showers and pumps are listed for plumbers...

But I can't see Electric showers listed?

Lighting & power internal...

covers ANYTHING and EVERYTHING in a house?

say a customer has a faulty electric storage heater..

which box do they tick?

Some customers are notoriously bad at describing what they want done....

So in the current trends of government guidance you need to help "nudge" them into giving as much info as possible...

IMHO it would be better if the customer had the same tick-box options (i.e. multiple boxes can be ticked) to select their work as the tradesmen do to select the type of work they do.

For example the following seven categories would at the moment be under your lighting & power internal..

• Lighting
  
• Power
  
• Showers
  
• Cookers
  
• New circuit
  
• Addition to exsisting
  
• Fault finding.
  

But if the customer could select any combination of the above, it would give me far more info to decide if I wanted to"buy" your sales lead.

And the customer still only has to put a few ticks and not worry about writing long descriptions of works...

I will try and put up some more/better suggested ideas for additional categories in a bit if you are interested?

ut the kettle on

Cheers again for this. There's some really good suggestions, I'm not too sure how we could work it in to give the customer more tick box style options like you mention. The homepage needs to have this is dropdown menu style (and of course you can only select one in that example) as it wouldn't look particularly attractive, I don't think, to a potential poster to have it in the same format as when a tradesman registers.

Perhaps an option could be that if a customer selects 'electrician' in box 1, then if in box 2 they select 'Internal power and lighting' a third dropdown box could appear which would then have, Full Rewire, Showers, Cookers, New Circuits etc to drive it down to a more accurate description. I'll get my head around that I'm sure.

One thing that does happen is that the full contents of the description box gets emailed to you in the lead email so providing they are fairly explanatory in that box you will get the full description, which hopefully will make your decision a bit easier on whether you want the lead or not. I know some other websites, literally give you a tiny tiny snippet of the job and expect you to buy it or not based on a 1 line description. I do agree that customers are notoriously bad a describing a job though. I could make it so that the description box requires a minimum number of characters before it is accepted, to promote a more thorough description. I still think a customer description is the best way to make a decision over tick boxes, so its a case of getting them to do this properly.

I'm going to have a mouseover/flyout appear when they hover their mouse over the description box, which will pop up a message explaining to them the needs and benefits of providing a thorough and accurate job description.

I am actually a partner in a plumbing and electrical contractors too mate so I'm giving myself an -F for not having more options in the electrician tab. We all know gardeners should have way more categories really!

I will get my head round the best way of doing this though.

Dave

 

[Tradesman4u]

Hi all, quick question. Do you think giving the customer the option to request up to 5 quotes is too many. i.e if you got a lead through and the customer had requested 5 quotes would it put you off that lead knowing 'potentially' you could be quoting against 4 others? Let me know what you think.

 

[Theorysparky]

It would put me off !!!!

3 is fair enuff

1 would be ideal :^O

 

[Sidewinder]

I knew an engineer at a large company who would always ask for 5 quotes on the following premise.

The cheapest were cowboys who know nothing so that went in the bin.

The most expensive did not need the work, so that went in the bin.

He would then look at the last 3 and did not always select the cheapest.

However, having the 5 gave him the spread and ideas he wanted.

 

[Theorysparky]

trouble with that is.......

we are talking about cheapskate domestic customers who will take the cheapest..........

a suck it and see approach may be the best option for the time being....

 

[Tradesman4u]

It would put me off !!!!3 is fair enuff

1 would be ideal :^O

Would be nice if we lived in a world where nobody ever quoted against you

Even if it were set at a maximum of one (I know you were only joking) we all know there's also nothing stopping the customer picking a name out of the yellow book! They might also get 5 quotes from the site and not like any of them.

I think the suck it and see approach might be the best option for now then. If 5 ends up a problem then I think I'd probably cut it back to 3. Like you say we are dealing with Joe public so although its a fair point Sidey makes price is very often the major factor for them. I want it to be as equitable as possible for the trades.

I saw you're point on the other thread, so I'll bring it into this one so as to not be running multiple threads. I don't really think we could handle the distribution of the quotes for each tradesman. Think we'd end up getting dragged into all sorts of things if the tradesman supplied us with the quote to then dish out. The website's goal is to bring customers and tradesmen together not really to influence pricing etc.

I would say though that if someone is putting prices out that are simply not right and you are aware of it then you need to let me know.

Cheers

 

[NozSpark]

How about charging the customer and not tradesman ; )

It'd stop time wasters

 

[Sidewinder]

^what about it, fully refundable from the tradesman who gets the job?...

 

[Tradesman4u]

Not sure how many jobs we'd get!!!

 

[Sidewinder]

Think about it though you would get serious enquiries and the punter would be assured that they would get their money back.

 

[Tradesman4u]

Its got me thinking I must admit