Lets talk Websites

A buyer's site and a recycling site are two different things. For me, I prefer visual sites that really pop out. They look the nicest, and are usually easier to navigate for me than text-heavy sites are.

There is lots of info on the net about making effective websites.

The keys to making a site effective is generally not what the uneducated in the medium thinks. A lot of people say " Don't have too much text" for instance but research shows over and over again that the majority of people will read everything they can when they are interested to learn about something. This goes with the old adage " The one that tells, sells" This was coined in the 50's when a famous advertising writer took a tour of a beer company he was working for and saw all the processes they went through. He was amazed and told them so and they said Meh, this is how everyone makes beer, we don't do it any different. The guy wrote ads that described the process and they are some of the most successful ads ever written because no one else described the process and the market was just as impressed as he was when they read how it was done.

Personally, I try to write the long and the short version. If someone doesn't like reading, They can look at a few lines and move on. For the people that are more literate and interested, There is more in depth information for them.
One thing that's a big mistake with sites in to make them pretty but not effective. Most people want a real WOW! site with all the bells and whistles when what they should really be after is a site that gets the phone ringing or clients through the door. Again, despite what people will say and think, The 2 are not the same and there are many examples in the advertising industry where gee whizz sites fell on their backsides and much plainer, non spectacular sites did bloody well.

The important thing is to appeal to your target market. Who are they? If you are mainly catering to commercial or experienced people in the trade who are used to different yards, they won't be put off by them. If you want to appeal to home/ business owners, a yard is probably a scary place and the last thing you want in the joint looking like a hell hole from a mad max movie and all the staff looking like escaped Murderers. No offense to anyone but thats pretty much what all the places round here look like.
It's no good just having a site that looks good and appeals to your market, you have to carry it through to the business over all. The yard owners where I go would do well to invest a few hundred bucks in Monogrammed work shirts for the staff rather than them not being able to be told who was who from the customers except the staff are the worst looking and smelling.

Get some DECENT pics of your yard done. No Phone crap pics. Show it off in the most professional light possible and use that as an excuse to clean up the counter or customer area if it could do with one and lord forbid, even considering giving it a lick of paint. Money isn't everything. If you have a place that looks presentable and people LIKE or feel less intimidated coming to, they won't worry if you don't pay the highest prices in town. Push service, organization, friendly service etc and back it up.
If you have all those things going for your yard already, make sure you convey it to the site Viewers.

As part of your overall marketing, Your staff should ask every single person where they heard about you from and if they have been there before. This should be recorded. That way you know if people are coming from your Craigsmissed ad or the website or Flyers etc.
If you see that only 50 people a re year are finding you through that $2000 Yellow pages ad, you know you either need to change it or drop it completely. If On the other hand you find 20% of people came in because they saw your sign when they drove past, You can consider whether you can make the sign bigger and more brightly lit to pull in even more people.

Telling people how to prepare their material, what to do when they get to the yard, what the procedure is etc are all strong rapport builders and will be appealing to new clients who now don't feel so out of place and will come to you because they feel more informed.
Those people will DEFINATELY read all they can on what the procedure is so they don't look like twits when they get there.

Again, there are lots of sites and info on the net about building and EFFECTIVE website so invest some time reading up before you even plan what you are going to do or what you are going to write.
It will pay off for you for a long time.
:0)