Website Review and Suggestions

**MattCoops** · 01-15-2007, 12:27 PM

http://www.contractorsearchandreview.com

nationwide directory of contractors
allows users to submit reviews of contractors

let me know what ya'll think

**travelagent** · 01-15-2007, 02:47 PM

Being retired from Construction Engineering (Electrical / Process Controls), you have a great idea -- seems like alot of work ahead, if you plan to place numerous companies in each state heading ... best of luck!

**tonya** · 04:19 PM

Having been a contractor at one time I think the idea is good but there are quite a few job sites and community sites already out there for contractors.

Site REview - colours are nice. Layout seems quite sharp and clean although I am a fan of sites which are more central. It did resize when I changed screen resolution though and looked fine in both opera and firefox.

I notice no tables and applaud you for that ! The code looks very clean.

Well done

**MattCoops** · 01-15-2007, 04:57 PM

not too many contractor REVIEW sites

where homeowner can log on to find a contractor, and see what others have to say about that company's workmansip

only other site like this I know of is Angieslist.com
and it charges its users a monthly fee

http://www.contractorsearchandreview.com is 100% free

and we also offer marketing and design services to contractors

like logo design, business cards, web design, postcards, targeted mailing lists

now do we seem unlike the rest of the competition?

**tonya** · 01-16-2007, 10:15 AM

That is very true - a place to search for contractors and check their testimonials etc - like an CV section is actually a really good idea along with advice about marketing etc. All small business's (which I guess is what I always considered myself when I worked as a Contractor for myself ) need advice and guidance sometimes and actually I found very little of that around when I needed it. Apart of course from your business bank who seem to want to charge for their advice and its not always impartial.

Yes very good idea & best of luck with it. Certainly the website looks great which is a great start.

Have you considered aproaching a business networking group to get some coverage? They are always looking for people who can offer their members advice, help, services etc and often groups like BNI have lots of contractors as members. The BNI annual AGM conference in london is usually in the spring. Also the NEC IT contracting fair - another place that I did actually find some good advice & suppliers.

**aldor** · 01-16-2007, 05:55 PM

I liked the look of your site and thought that the idea behind it was good and potentially useful.
I ran your home page through the W3C validator and came up with a number of errors.
It seems that you are making things unnecessarily difficult for yourself by using the strict DOCTYPE. Also I notice that you are using an HTML DOCTYPE and trying to incorporate elements of XHTML, such as implicityly closing meta tags in your head section. This isn't allowed in HTML. You have also closed your break tags like so <br />. This is not required or allowed in HTML only in XHTML. If I were you I would attend to these points and any similar and then validate your page.
Hope this helps.

**katkac279** · 01-16-2007, 05:56 PM

Good idea, I wanted to do something similar but did'nt know how to go about the technical side of it.

**MattCoops** · 01-16-2007, 06:38 PM

thanks aldor,

but the errors wont mean anything to search engine robots or the users who view my site.

I guess I should fix em up anyhow,
just to keep the critics quiet

**MattCoops** · 06:53 PM

homeowners get to see contractors and read / write their reviews

contractors get their name, number, website promoted

and we also offer other promotional mediums for their marketing campaigns, like:

web design
business cards
postcard mailers
targeted mail/phone lists

we can even get deals through a silk screen company for shirts, hats, etc.

as far as OUR promotion,

I don't want to pour any money into advertising as I already have a budget for my contracting company: http://www.cupantileandpaint.com

The reason why I designed the site was for our Referrall program.
Whereas, our customers could submit reviews and we can have an online database for the people they refer to check us out, and see what others have said about us.

Then we decided to make it nationwide. And give something back to the other contractors fighting the battle.

Right now, this forum and http://www.contractortalk.com (where we obtain listings) are only places we have made announcements of this site.

I used this site to gain insight on how well it looks, functions, and ranks.

I really got to get PR up, but that is another topic post for another category...

(continued in Miscellaneous Internet Marketing Discussion forum)