goldenpages.ie

crackity_jones

Hi there,

Our company has had an entry in Golden Pages, the printed version, for a good many years now and will continue to do so as I believe it is still the first place many people look when looking for a particular product or service.

However, we also have an entry in the online version and with this soon expiring I am curious as to whether or not it is of any real benefit to us. We're paying little more than 1000 euro for a one page entry which lists the products we manufacture along with our contact details including phone numbers, email addresses etc.

We have been told that the page in question has been viewed in and around 300 times which is not insignificant. What are people's opinions of company listing services? Goldenpages.ie is probably one of the best well known so I guess our money could be worse spent.

I will be pretty much revamping our website in the coming weeks and I'd be interested to know if a clean, sharp site which is properly parsed by the major search engines would be a more than adequate replacement for goldenpages.ie.

Of course the more exposure a company receives the better so maybe retaining the service AND revamping the site is a good idea.

Just curious as to what people think about this.

Thanks in advance for any feedback.

Take care.

CJ

smiaras

This post has been deleted.

alleepally

crackity_jones wrote:

Hi there,

Our company has had an entry in Golden Pages, the printed version, for a good many years now and will continue to do so as I believe it is still the first place many people look when looking for a particular product or service.

However, we also have an entry in the online version and with this soon expiring I am curious as to whether or not it is of any real benefit to us. We're paying little more than 1000 euro for a one page entry which lists the products we manufacture along with our contact details including phone numbers, email addresses etc.

We have been told that the page in question has been viewed in and around 300 times which is not insignificant. What are people's opinions of company listing services? Goldenpages.ie is probably one of the best well known so I guess our money could be worse spent.

I will be pretty much revamping our website in the coming weeks and I'd be interested to know if a clean, sharp site which is properly parsed by the major search engines would be a more than adequate replacement for goldenpages.ie.

Of course the more exposure a company receives the better so maybe retaining the service AND revamping the site is a good idea.

Just curious as to what people think about this.

Thanks in advance for any feedback.

Take care.

CJ

Presumably you track where new leads come from? Do people in the company ask "where did you hear about us" on a regular basis? What do your website statistics themselves show? If the company isn't tracking where your leads come right now I would say that you would be well advised to retain your goldenpages profile and re-evaluate it next year. There is no sense in dropping something which, by the sound of it, you haven't tracked or measured in terms of what leads it brought.

Personally, I use the goldenpages website quite a lot primarily to get phone numbers but if I see an enhanced listing with website and email addresses, that company is the one that will attract my attention more and I will click through. It is very important that once I am on the site, I am presented with an up to date and well designed site.

A very simple suggestion for you is to create a re-direct page on your site e.g. www.yoursitename/goldenpages. the index page then re-directs to your main index page. This way, you can see very easily on your website stats how many visits came from goldenpages.

foamcutter

We have a block entry in the book and a page online. The best response we have had, has been with Google Adwords. The online page is only going to be accessed if you are lucky enough to be on the first page of a search, l dont think people would be bothered to scroll down 4-5 pages. As always you can pay the premium to get preferential listing or change the name to A1 Acme Trading Ltd.

The effectiveness of the of the book or an online page, is very dependant on the product or service you provide. I think if you customers are the general public it could be a good way to go. We have got better results by targetting directly to potential trade customers.

fintan

I agree with foam cutter, if your aiming at the public I would recommend the golden pages. Whereas if your aiming at trade / business its not as good.

My experience with the goldenpages is that we only get calls from people trying to sell us stuff, which isnt quiet the desired effect.

Figment

If you are paying 1000 pa it would not be too much more to get yourself a second phone line. Use that second line as the contact phone number in your listing and judge it for yourself.

edbyrne

I use the yellow book the odd time, but never goldenpages.ie! If I'm searching on-line for something in Ireland it'll be Google.ie with the 'pages from Ireland' option. You can see how 'optimsied' the goldenpages.ie site is by how many links it provides it google (hint: I've seen none).

A combination of yellow pages ad and google adwords would make sense to me. Of course, if you're doing Google Ad's you'd better have a decent site that can convert clicks - to - sales. And you can analyse your site in detail with Google Analytics - a stats package that used to cost 200 per month and is now free!

crackity_jones

Thanks everyone for the feedback. I do love boards.ie! Yes I do.

Just a little extra information to answer a question or two posed.

Our company is mostly involved in the design and manufacture of tanks. The large majority of which are cardon steel or stainless steel pressure vessels. These tanks can range in size from small bunded units 2000 litres in size up to fuel storage tanks 100,000 litres in size. We are involved in many other areas of engineering but it is tank manufacture that we would most like to concentrate on.

So it is safe to say that we are pretty much in a specialised field. But that does not mean that we are not interested in retaining the goldenpages.ie entry.

Alleepally, you are correct in saying that we haven't tracked the activity and no, we generally do not ask our customers how they found out about us. This is something I hope to change. As I mentioned I will be revamping the website in the near future so hopefully I can get both these entities to work together (along with Google Adwords).

Considering our product we wouldn't actually take any sales through the website. Tanks, certainly the larger types, are not "bought off the shelf". So the site will be a go-between of sorts. A place to learn what we do as a company and the products we provide.

Thanks again!

mneylon

I spoke to them about listings last year some time, but was not that impressed with their responses.
There maybe changes afoot there in the not too distant future, so I would hold off for another couple of months before making any judgements.

Irene Helen

Hi Just seen posting re Goldenpages.ie
As someone who has just come on board to manage the development of the site I may be bias. The site has just undergone a redesign and we have some new functionality which will be promoted heavily in the coming months.
The site on average has over 1 million searches each month so I would imagine that you are getting some traffic from it. Comment from Spoiltchild is also a good one about the phoneline or you could just put a referrer to track your traffic.
Best of luck.:)

alleepally

Irene Helen wrote:

Hi Just seen posting re Goldenpages.ie
As someone who has just come on board to manage the development of the site I may be bias. The site has just undergone a redesign and we have some new functionality which will be promoted heavily in the coming months.
The site on average has over 1 million searches each month so I would imagine that you are getting some traffic from it. Comment from Spoiltchild is also a good one about the phoneline or you could just put a referrer to track your traffic.
Best of luck.:)

Can you do something about Wicklow listings. When you select county Wicklow and then get the "Refine by location", the expanded list does not have anything for Wicklow Town. Wicklow Town listings get lumped into "Other Wicklow locations".

fintan

Hi Irene

Great of you to join the conversation. I see that the site has undergone a re-design which looks great.

One thing, I just tried the email feature on the site. I tried to send a test email to the company email address from the "email" link goldenpages have put on the Contact Us tab on our ad.

And I get an error message "To address cannot have zero length"

I have tried several ads all with the same problem, could you have a look into this?

Thanks

Fintan

Irene Helen

"Great of you to join the conversation. I see that the site has undergone a re-design which looks great.
One thing, I just tried the email feature on the site. I tried to send a test email to the company email address from the "email" link goldenpages have put on the Contact Us tab on our ad.
And I get an error message "To address cannot have zero length"
I have tried several ads all with the same problem, could you have a look into this?"

Fix underhand. Many thanks for that. Really good to get the feedback, all critique good and bad welcome.

Re Wicklow person - working on fix we are going to a further upgrade shortly so will work through it. Thanks BTW

Irene Helen

Hi guys
We have just launched our new site and upgraded the functionality so I am hoping that you will find wicklow town now. If not please let me know and I will see what I can do......
Irene

alleepally

Irene Helen wrote:

Hi guys
We have just launched our new site and upgraded the functionality so I am hoping that you will find wicklow town now. If not please let me know and I will see what I can do......
Irene

Hi Irene, just checked it out and seems (for me anyway) that while it does drill down better to specific locations in Wicklow, Wicklow Town businesses are categorised as "other wicklow locations" still. All the other major towns have their own heading making it easier to locate a business and considering Wicklow town is the county town it should have a proper heading too.

But it's definitely way better than before you made the changes and site is looking great and scores pretty high in my book on usability on the very front page.

MaryJordan

Hi just wondering if anywas has tried http://www.localpages.ie . I can see they have a lot of visitors from the number at the top of the webpage. Wasn't very impressed with my responses from Goldenpage, Adwords was definately better but this site seems like value for money.

TechieEddy

Thanks "Mary" for the plug. I did try your site but im using Firefox and as a result I can't fill out the required fields due to bad web design.

heggie

nor does it work on a mac, great site you got there

Finn Media

alleepally wrote: »

Presumably you track where new leads come from? Do people in the company ask "where did you hear about us" on a regular basis? What do your website statistics themselves show? If the company isn't tracking where your leads come right now I would say that you would be well advised to retain your goldenpages profile and re-evaluate it next year. There is no sense in dropping something which, by the sound of it, you haven't tracked or measured in terms of what leads it brought.

Personally, I use the goldenpages website quite a lot primarily to get phone numbers but if I see an enhanced listing with website and email addresses, that company is the one that will attract my attention more and I will click through. It is very important that once I am on the site, I am presented with an up to date and well designed site.

A very simple suggestion for you is to create a re-direct page on your site e.g. www.yoursitename/goldenpages. the index page then re-directs to your main index page. This way, you can see very easily on your website stats how many visits came from goldenpages.

seen this online, check it out, may be help tips for placing goldenpages adverts http://bit.ly/ctt2QG

Finn Media

have any one been successful with goldenpages adverts?