Needaexpert

[gutterball]

Anybody use them? I had never heard of them until they followed me on twitter. Welcome | I Need An Expert

 

[dingledong]

They are another just jumping on the bandwagon who will charge you for doing a very little

 

[gutterball]

according to their faq's they don't charge.

A. Two key points seperate us from everyone else:

1. We don't charge our tradesmen for membership or leads, this only increases prices for customers. So here, you receive the very best prices and value for money.
2. As we don't charge our tradesmen we don't need to keep them happy, we just need to keep it honest. We never remove negative reviews and every review we receive is qualified by us. So you know what your reading is true.

 

[dave274]

How can you get value for money if they dont charge? Point 1 contradicts itself.

 

[telectrix]

i assume they mean that the customers get value for money, as the tradesman is not paying for leads etc.

 

[dave274]

Good point well presented tel.

 

[HandySparks]

...I had never heard of them until they followed me on twitter...

And that's one problem with most sites like this; most of your potential customers won't have heard of them either. Almost all of my customers who find me online just use Google. It works, and produces a list of dozens of local companies, so why should they bother to look further? Getting your website onto the first page of the relevant Google search (preferably near the top) will do much more for your business than signing up to sites like this.

Although this one's free, they should at least get the website professionally checked for typos and grammar problems. I've noticed a couple (and I'm not talking about content uploaded by users). Plus, using their search throws up businesses in all sorts of distant places, even ones which are shown as only covering their own locality.

 

[gutterball]

to be honest i get more business from word of mouth than i do from google.

 

[telectrix]

what's google?

 

[TeamIneedexpert]

Hey all,

sara here from I Need An Expert. I wanted to drop in and say hey and just answer a few things in the thread. Before I get started let me just say - we are new - we are working hard to get it right and are making progress. We will never charge and have partnerships that will give us the awareness we need to support our community.


About the traffic - in the first 3 months we started our total members had around 2000 profile views. After 9 months we had hit over 100,000 so we are getting our community up the rankings as best we can.

On the typos - I will be kicking Adam's arse for that tomorrow as he writes all the copy on the website and clearly cocked up more than once!

About the search - we had very bad search results for a few months while members were thin as sometimes the closest member was 50 miles away - this has gotten much better over time and with a new site build coming in a few months we know it will be a great experience for users and trades.

I'm not expecting me posting in here to win you guys and gals over - but I wanted to say hi and let you know if you want to join us - get in the forum on the site and help us shape this to what you want it to be.

Stay busy everyone...

 

[Marvo]

Hi Sara, welcome to the forum. Thanks for addressing the concerns that have been voiced. I've removed the new member limitations on your account so your future posts won't need manually approving and will show immediately. I'd just point out that we have an advertising policy on the forum so whilst you're welcome to reply to questions and concerns about your company or products but please don't post outbound links and please avoid directly advertising.

Thanks in advance
Marv

 

[TeamIneedexpert]

Hi Sara, welcome to the forum. Thanks for addressing the concerns that have been voiced. I've removed the new member limitations on your account so your future posts won't need manually approving and will show immediately. I'd just point out that we have an advertising policy on the forum so whilst you're welcome to reply to questions and concerns about your company or products but please don't post outbound links and please avoid directly advertising.

Thanks in advance
Marv

Thanks Marv and apologies for the radio silence. We have been working hard on a few areas we needed to improve on before giving it another big push (for homeowners and trades). I'm not here to advertise like you said, but if anyone has any questions then please fire away ... happy to help.

Stay busy all.

Sara

 

[telectrix]

Thanks Marv and apologies for the radio silence. We have been working hard on a few areas we needed to improve on before giving it another big push (for homeowners and trades). I'm not here to advertise like you said, but if anyone has any questions then please fire away ... happy to help.

Stay busy all.



Sara

would like to see more categories of expertise ( electrical) on your registration page. e.g. alarms, CCTV, home automation,

 

[Andy78]

would like to see more categories of expertise ( electrical) on your registration page. e.g. alarms, CCTV, home automation,

Just had a look and yes, there are not many categories at all. Solar and renewable energy is a big one that is missing too, telecoms, data, fire detection, all need to be added.