Looking for advice/input for website

I am a long time reader of The Think Tank and love the fact that we have a free forum to share ideas with each other. There aren’t too many free sites like PMQ.com around. I visit the pmq.com everday and will continue to be a lifelong reader.

I am often scouring the internet in search of websites that have pizza related articles, forms, checklists, guides, advertising product directories, reviews, etc. I have yet to find a website that has all of this stuff available for free. Here on The Think Tank we email each other different forms, employee handbooks, etc. that we use in our businesses from time to time. I always thought it would be great if we had a website to share all of this stuff with each other and have access to it 24/7 with the click of a mouse button.

I am in the process of trying to create such a website. I have been working on it during my spare time and it’s not quite finished yet. There’s still a lot that I want to add to it. So far I’ve tried to take a lot of my own personal collection of forms, checklists, etc. and put them on the site. It was a great way for me to categorize and organize it all. I still have some more things to add. I also wrote a few articles for the website as well.

Hopefully this website is something that you guys will find useful. If you get some time check it out:

http://www.pizzaads101.com

I’m looking for any advice, things to change, any additions, ideas, etc. My vision is that this website can be something that we all can contribute to. A place to share our marketing and advertising materials with each other. Something like restaurantowner.com but FREE. Would this be something that any of you guys would be interested in contributing to?

If so I will create an email address on the website for people to email their advertising and marketing materials, guides, checklists, forms, etc. to.

I appreciate any advice you guys can give me. I’m in the beginning stages and still have a lot of work to do on it but I wanted to get everyone’s input before I got too far into it. Hopefully this is something we’ll all find beneficial.

Roger
This is a good start. I noticed the pictures loaded a little slow on my PC but that is minor. I have just had Royce do a memo baord for me to use as a fund raiser would you like that type of thing emailed to you?

Yeah, I’ve noticed the same thing with the pictures loading slow. I’m not sure how to speed it up but I’ll figure it out. I’ve been kind of teaching myself how to build a website as I go.

The memo board would be a great addition. Thanks.

“Would this be something that any of you guys would be interested in contributing to?”

Absolutely:)

MyPizzaPromo,

Thanks for the advice. They’re all very good points. I’ll do my best to implement them. I’m just a beginner when it comes to website design. Hopefully by playing around with this website I will get much better at website design and improve the looks of it.

In point #3 you told me to add a promotion for a better ROI. I think you have me confused for a marketing/advertising company. I currently own 2 pizza shops and about a week away from opening a 3rd location. I am often trying different forms of advertising. The problem I find is that it is often time consuming searching the think tank archives and other websites, while also going through my own records for different ideas, reviews, companies and other resources. I thought that this website I’m working on would be a great all-in-one resource for me and other pizza shop owners. I also enjoy making websites and thought this would be a fun project to take on in my spare time. I’m not trying to make money off of it. I just think it will be something very useful for all of us. With this site along with The Think Tank, we will hopefully have all of our advertising and marketing needs met.

One of my main goals is to get a large collection of everyone’s systems that they use in their shops. As with any successful restaurant/pizza shop, effective systems are vital. I would like to accumulate as many forms, check lists, and procedures as possible for the website. I have many more forms and checklists that I am currently using that I will be adding in the near future. Hopefully everyone else will share theirs as well.

Like I said in my earlier post, I still have a long way to go before the website is where I would like it to be. I hope that with help from others, I can add a lot of content. Since I will be opening my new place soon, I will be pretty busy for a few weeks. As soon as my life gets back to normal, I will bust my butt on the website.

Thanks again for your critique. I’ll try my best to make the improvements.

-Roger

Alright I understand what you’re saying now. That’s a good idea. Thanks again for your input. I appreciate it.

I look the site a lot! It is nice to have it all online organized.

One section that might be nice is to post marketing material that we send to you. This way we can see other doorhangers, postcards and the like…

Seeing designs and ideas from other have inspired my own creativity. Could be worth a little time and effort to have a sort of “Rogue’s Gallery” of things people are proud of.

I’m actually working on that right now. Daddio sent me his memo board design yesterday. If any of you want to contribute anything, you can email them to me at roger@cathyswingsandpizza.com

Thanks guys.

I added the marketing material that you guys sent me plus some of my own.

Here’s the link: http://www.pizzaads101.com/Samples/

Daddio’s Memo Board is my gallery at
http://www.memoboards.ca/memoboardgallery.html

Royster,

I added a caption under the picture stating that it that it was designed by your company. I also included a link to your website next to it.

You mentioned doing a bit more web site stuff would get you much better at web site design. That really isn’t the way to go. You could spend thousands of hours studying, and still everything you learned would be outdated in 2 years. An incredible resource is elance. Concentrating on content and outsourcing your site is a much better strategy.

I tried to stay on top of web site design, but things changed so quickly that I ended up spending all my time on that aspect to the detriment of every thing else. At a minimum, you can toss your site design ideas out there and get some free responses and feedback.