The Web Address Painted on the Van

Three seconds at a red light

A van with a web address on the back doors gets read in passing: from the next lane at a light, across a parking lot, from the sidewalk as it pulls away.

Nobody types it on the spot. They remember it, or think they do, and look it up an hour later or that evening, usually on a phone.

Yard signs, door hangers and flyers on a community board work the same way. The address is seen briefly and recalled later, often imperfectly.

Between the reading and the typing, two things can go wrong. The address gets mistyped, or it arrives at a page that has nothing to do with what the sign said.

How a remembered address goes wrong

• Hyphens vanish, because nobody remembers where they went.
• The ending becomes .com when it was .ca, or the reverse.
• Plurals and small words appear or disappear: the, and, services.
• Doubled letters at the joins, where one word ends as the next begins.
• Numbers typed as words, or words typed as numbers.
• Long names remembered as their first two words.

The first does the most damage. A hyphenated address looks clear in large letters on a van, and from memory it is typed without the hyphens, reaching someone else's site or a parked page of ads.

Short beats complete

The address on a vehicle should be the shortest form that still says the name. Words like services, solutions and group make an address longer without making it easier to recall.

Leave off www and http, and capitalise the start of each word. Domain names ignore capital letters, and the capitals show a reader where one word ends and the next begins.

Read it aloud as a test. If it needs spelling out, or the word dash, it is too long for a van.

Own the obvious mistakes

Register the versions people are likely to type: the .ca and the .com, with and without any hyphen, and the plural if your name has a noun in it.

Each costs little to register, far less than repainting a vehicle. Point them all where the main address goes, with permanent redirects, rather than leaving the registrar's parked page of ads, some of them perhaps for competitors.

Check what the hyphen-free version of your current address shows today. If somebody else owns it, that is where some of your sign's readers already go.

When the address becomes a search

On a phone, anything typed into the browser that does not look like a complete address becomes a search. Half-remembered addresses mostly end up there.

So the name on the van should match the name in the home page title and on the Google listing exactly, giving a search for what people remember the best chance of finding you.

A page that continues the sign

The lettering makes one promise, usually a single service in a few words. The visitor who types the address expects to find that promise again.

Most addresses on vans lead to the home page, which tries to introduce the whole business and may not mention the service on the van at all.

Point the address at a page that repeats the van's words and shows the same kind of job, with a price range and a way to book.

Put the phone number where a thumb can reach it. Many of these visitors would rather call than fill in a form.

A worked example

A mobile shredding company runs two trucks that shred documents in the parking lots of offices, clinics and law firms, while the client watches on a camera screen on the side of the truck.

The trucks spend hours parked outside other businesses, which makes them rolling billboards. Their lettering carried the company's full name and two service words, joined by hyphens, ending in .com.

People who looked it up later typed it without the hyphens and landed on a parked page of ads, a few for other shredding companies. Those who found the site arrived at a home page about records storage.

The owner registered a short .ca matching the name on the truck, with the .com and the plural, and redirected all three to one page about on-site shredding.

That page opens with the words on the truck, a photograph of a truck at work, prices per box and per bin, and a booking form. The short address went onto both trucks at the next lettering refresh.

Lettering that can be read at a distance

Dark letters on a light van, or the reverse, in a plain typeface, read from much further away than script or outlined letters.

Keep the address off door seams, handles and rear doors that fold away when open. A parked van often has its doors open.

One address and one phone number are enough. A row of social media icons is too small to read in passing and competes with the two things people need.

Counting what the signs bring

Analytics cannot see a person read a van, but it can count visits to an address used nowhere else.

Give the vehicle address a redirect that adds a campaign tag, and those visits show up as their own source. The count runs low, since some people search instead, but it shows whether anyone types it.

Asking callers where they heard about you fills in the rest. Write the answer down every time for a month.

The counter-case

Some businesses get almost all their work from the phone number on the van: emergency plumbers, locksmiths, towing. For them the number deserves the biggest letters, and the address comes second.

A business with a long address that has carried its email and links for years should keep it, and add a short one for vehicles and signs that redirects to it.

For everyone else the advice holds: a short address, the likely mistakes registered and redirected, and a page that continues what the sign said.

Before the next lettering job

1. Type your address from memory on a phone.
2. Check the hyphen-free version and other endings.
3. Register the likely mistakes and redirect them.
4. Build a page that matches the van's message.
5. Match the name on the van, site and listing.
6. Tag the redirect so Analytics can count it.
7. Ask every caller where they saw you.

Step four is the one most often missed. A visitor who typed the address from memory has already done the hard part, and a page that picks up the van's message is what turns that effort into a call.

The same gap between a first impression and a later look appears in home show visitors who look you up later.

Frequently asked questions

West Coast Media Solutions Inc. provides web design, web development, hosting, digital marketing, and business consulting to organisations across Canada, drawing on more than twenty-five years in the field.