Your van is your best advert — is it doing its job?

Think about where your van actually spends its time.

Parked outside a job, all day, in a street where the neighbours are watching work happen on a house like theirs. Then driving through the towns you cover.

There's no advertising you could buy that targets better than that. And most van signwriting throws it away.

Can they read the number from across the road?

The most common mistake by a mile. Phone numbers in tasteful, sensible-sized lettering that's unreadable from anywhere useful.

Somebody standing on the opposite pavement should be able to read it without walking over. Somebody at the lights behind you should get it in the time the lights are red.

Rule of thumb: the phone number should be the biggest thing on the van after your name — often bigger.

Say what you do

"J. Smith Ltd" tells a passer-by nothing.

"J. Smith — Joiner" tells them whether to write the number down. Trade first, cleverness never.

If somebody has to work out what you do, they won't.

Say where you work

"Perth & Perthshire" does more than people expect. It tells someone in Crieff you'll come, and it stops calls from Aberdeen you don't want.

Local also reassures. Between two vans, most people ring the one that looks like it's from round here.

Website beats Facebook on a vehicle

A web address is short, spellable, and works when someone types it a day later. A Facebook page name is long, hard to remember, and needs them to already be logged in.

If you've only got a Facebook page, that's better than nothing — but a domain is about £15 a year and is one of the few things on a van that gets more valuable over time.

Put it in a form people can retype: smithjoinery.co.uk, not a URL with slashes in it.

Keep it clean, and keep it accurate

A filthy van says something about how you'll leave someone's house, fairly or not.

And an old number on a van is worse than no number. If anything's changed — number, name, services — get it changed. People do ring numbers they read off a van three weeks earlier.

Don't put too much on

The most common overcorrection: every service you offer, three logos, an email address, a QR code and a slogan.

At 30mph nobody reads any of it.

Four things, big:

1. What you do
2. Your name
3. Phone number, large
4. Website

Anything else competes with those four.

The bit most people miss

Photograph your van and look at the picture on your phone at arm's length.

That's roughly what it looks like to somebody across the street. If you can't read the number in that photo, neither can they — and the van has been doing nothing all year but getting you to jobs.

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Have a look at yours in the driveway tonight. Most people find at least one of these.