ForConstructionPros.com

There’s no question that the Internet has changed the way we do business. By this time, you know it’s important to have a presence online. Many rental businesses have websites, but it’s a constant challenge to keep content fresh and visitors coming back.

If properly constructed and promoted, your website can become a magnet to attract customers. But simply sticking a website out in cyberspace and waiting for customers to find it is not the best method to increase your bottom line.

Here are some helpful hints to get people to your website - and to keep them coming back.

Design basics

According to Bob Shaffer with Point-of-Rental, there are two primary types of websites: static and dynamic.

"A static site simply displays pages of text and usually some images," says Shaffer. "It’s simple and consequently, cheap. If your goal is to simply provide prospects your company phone number, address, hours of operation, directions and possibly some broad categories of equipment you offer, this is all you’ll need. Essentially it’s a ‘yellow pages’ ad on the web. With a static site, any changes to the store’s inventory or pricing would need to be manually updated on the site, resulting in additional maintenance and cost.

"On the other hand, a dynamic site provides a richer user experience and is a lot more interesting to the visitors since they typically can interact with site content," he explains. "For example, a dynamic site for a rental store probably has a shopping cart so that a prospect can assemble a basket of inventory items to create a quote that is e-mailed to the rental store for follow up. A dynamic site for a rental store also typically has an online database that provides visitors the ability to browse through categories of inventory items as well as search the inventory using keywords. Finally, a dynamic site typically allows the rental store owner to update at least some of the website’s content on demand without any cost or involvement with any design or programming."