websites

[terrydoo73]

Some of you I know have your own websites and I was just wondering if you found them useful in your daily business. I am based in Northern Ireland and have my own website but it is never visited so am trying to assess whether to keep it up and running or not. I think the problem over here is computer literacy - other childminders do not advertise themselves on the web and when you try to encourage them to even come on to chat on a site such as this they wouldn't have a clue how to do this.

I was thinking of trying to provide courses for local childminders to see the usefulness of the world wide web but it would be difficult to get people genuinely interested in such an idea. I do have a website which was set up as an agency type thing - where childminders could source parents and visa versa - we do not have a childcare link type thing that you have in England so this was where I thought I could fill a gap.

Any suggestions to help me promote such an idea or improve on availability of vacancies would be helpful.

[sarah707]

There are plenty of free hosts so your website should be ok just sitting there.

Promoting it is a matter of getting it into google listings... and the best way to do that is with reciprocal links from and to other sites.

As for telling everyone it's there, why not get free business cards from Vistaprint, put it on company stationery and generally let everyone know it's around.

Also put a link in the relevant bit on this forum, it will get spotted by Google from here too.

If you want to you can buy a catchy name (maybe with your town and childminders in it) so that parents who are searching for childcare will stand more chance of finding you.

it's a gradual process of building up website hits and links and hits and links.

Hth :D

[mrs.h]

hi,

i find my website helpful because parents can get a first impression before contacting me. even if someone calls without knowing about the website i let them know it is there and they can have a look at some aspects of my childcare.

mrs.h