https://youtu.be/WomVD3p00FY
IN THIS VIDEO, COREY PHILIP TEARS DOWN A SEEMINGLY “UGLY” PLUMBING WEBSITE.
Update: New Contractor Website Cheat Sheet Available Here. This cheat sheet I put together will show you what key elements you need to turn your website into a lead generation engine.
FULL TRANSCRIPTION:
Let’s tear down a plumbing website.
Hey, there.
It’s Corey.
For those you guys who don’t know me, I own a patio and screen enclosure company down in South Florida.
I also write the Homeprosuccess.com blog and teach a course on Facebook advertising particularly for trades businesses and contractors.
Now, I’ve been a long standing fan of having a website to grow your business because, well, it has been the growth engine behind my own company.
So, I’m always taking a look at other people’s websites, seeing what’s going on, keeping an eye out for interesting website and things that I could practice myself.
So, tonight I was poking around the internet looking at plumbing company websites in Seattle.
I love Seattle, by the way.
I got some friends out there, and I’m going there in the not too distant future.
I was poking around the Seattle area, seeing what the plumbers out there have on their websites.
I ran across one that was really, really interesting that I wanted to share with you guys tonight.
Now, do keep in mind that this is an unsolicited review. I’m simply reviewing the public website as its made available online.
I don’t know how the website actually performs but I’m going to make some opinions and guesses based on what I see.
So, let me pull it up right here.
Here it is, it’s coming to called Fox plumbing and heating.
You know what I think is really unique about this, well, number one it’s got a bright yellow background but it almost looks out of date.
It almost looks old-school.
It almost looks unprofessional.
And I think, if you were to go and get ten opinions from ten marketers — actually, I shouldn’t even say that– it should a say a hundred percent of opinions from any website guy out there, all these website guys will come back and tell you: “This website sucks. It’s horrible! You need to update this thing.”
That’s what I think most website people would say or most internet marketers.
Most people who don’t have much experience in the home service space.
But if you’ve actually ever owned a home service company and got into internet marketing like I have, you’d probably look at this and say, “Well, this is actually pretty effective plumbing website.”
I actually like it.
I think there’s a lot we can take away from it.
First of all, let’s kind of dive in here and see what that stuff is and that’s number one, the yellow background.
Everyone has a kind of a big hero image that’s kind of faded and dark or they go with white background.
That’s pretty much web design and in the last few years.
That’s what’s going to be happening.
This one bright yellow background — you certainly can’t miss it and you’re not going to forget about this website.
You’re always going to remember: “Oh, it’s the company with that bright yellow website.
And then you’ve got the blue.
I think most people would have just done a transparent logo on this background.
They’ve got the blue box.
I don’t think they did that intentionally but I like it.
That stands out along with some blue text.
And then the blue chat box which will mention later and a phone number up here.
When you land on it, obviously it’s yellow and it’s different from any other companies’ websites that you see.
Now, the first thing that draws your attention is this kind of main line of text which is centered here.
That kind of pulled my attention and it says “Fox Plumbing, Heating, and Cooling”.
Okay, so we know they’re plumbing, heating, and cooling.
Then, you’ve got this big image.
And I love this image by the way because you do two things here: You were showing off people behind the company making that personal connection.
And then you’ve got that image of Seattle with Mount Rainier and the Space Needle right here. You’re identifying the location.
So, you have the people and the location in one image.
I really, really like this image here.
This image style with the people, kind of cropped onto a local scenery that everybody in that region is going to recognize is something that many service businesses should do.
It’s certainly a very valuable and powerful image.
Whereas most companies have some stock imagery that’s really crappy.
Plumbing companies might have like a toilet swishing down.
I’ve seen that.
I’ve seen a leaky faucet.
Yeah, everybody’s got that.
Everyone is already here.
They know you’re a plumber.
That’s why they’re here.
They’re reading plumber on this website.
They don’t need this picture and the picture provides no value.
This picture here provides a ton of values.
You’ve really got a powerful connection with all the people in it.
You get an idea of the size of the company.
I think this is a fair sized company.
They’re not too small.
They’re also not a very big company.
I really like this.
So, it catches your attention.
Tells you what it is.
You have the picture.
Put some faces to it, kind of beefs up the location
— drives home the location, I should say, really.
And then, of course, the phone number’s up here.
One thing I would suggest, is maybe, put head shot near the phone number.
Although, in this case, and as you’ll see on this website, there are pictures of all the employees so I don’t think it’s too necessary.
And then they say: “Seattle’s most trusted service provider”.
That’s, well, what’s the word I’m looking for.
That’s a subjective term.
There’s nothing unethical about using that.
It’s kind of hard to measure but I feel like it’s a good copy for this part of the page.
That works.
Again, they’re kind of driving at home with Seattle’s number choice.
Down here, you’ve got some copy blocks which is really nothing too impressive.
Just kind of gives some basic info.
Bottom right you got the home service chat.
Alright, that’s Home Service Chats.
Yeah, Home Service Chats.
This company has been coming up lately.
They provide chat boxes like what you see right here which kind of stick in the bottom right.
Pop-up and then the user will speak to somebody from Home Service Chats.
I believe their general objective is to schedule an appointment.
They generally…I have kind of experimented them and looked at them a little bit.
I really can’t — they really don’t provide any trade insight.
We’re much into the much insight into the company.
Basically, all they do is: “What’s your information”, “We’ll have somebody call you back” if it’s specific to a company project or B, “Let’s schedule a time for someone to come on out.”
That’s really all they do.
I think it’s effective.
I do think it’s effective at capturing leads.
It’s not something I have on my website because I mentioned in one of my blog posts, I think I called it “The Problem with Content Marketing For Contractors”, in that blogpost I specifically talked about the with so much traffic that my website has.
My website gets traffic from all over the country, basically, anything related to our service.
So, we’re a service provider and we operate in one little area for County area in Florida but at the same time we get traffic from people all over the country.
We get a lot of, I guess, “valueless” inquiries would be the official way of saying this.
We get valueless inquiries outside of our area where they find our content.
The content positions us as the kind of a resource so they call us for information.
So, if we were to put this chat, we actually have put a chat on the website before.
All we had was an onslaught of stuff that was non-saleable that just kept us 110% busy.
And the people got disgruntled when we couldn’t answer specific trade insight type of stuff.
So, we took it off.
But if you don’t have several hundred to a thousand people a day visiting your website, I think this is a killer tactic for getting conversions.
No doubt right there.
Anyhow as you come down, let’s see what we got, we got more faces.
Notice that they’ve got faces all over this website.
You have three faces right here and then a whole team here.
So, more faces on this homepage than most service companies have on their entire website.
Actually, including mine, I believe.
They’ve got some basic content.
Let’s see where it goes.
We got “plumbing services…learn more”.
“Seattle.”
Okay.
See you got the service area.
So, it shows the service area and then just some basic stuff.
And I think you got the idea of what they are doing.
And they got some reviews.
“Heating and A/C Services”…
Let’s see what this page has on it.
Yes, these are just kind of just general service pages which I really don’t think these are entirely necessary at this point.
We got some nice testimonial videos but service pages,
I’m generally not a fan of, because as you can see with these two, they’re very thin.
There’s not much content you can’t put on the service page.
It’s basically a matter of — the customer finds your page.
You give your value-adding blog style content which is informative but there’s so many ways you can say we do…
What is this?
“We do plumbing, sewer, water heaters”.
You said it. That’s all you can really say about it.
There’s not a ton more you can really format up into this page.
Maybe you have some links to some of your best blog posts about that service.
That’s what we do on my website but overall, this page is pretty thin.
The real value is in the home page.
“Message From the Owner”.
Okay, this gentleman is the owner, Mr. David Brown.
And he’s got a nice message with a little signature scan, some trust-building icons — they’re doing pretty well here.
“Specials”– let’s see what their specials are.
Okay, so specials on a plumbing website –it’s certainly acceptable.
If someone’s browsing the website, I think they’ll find them and what I like about it is they’ve got some kind of information behind it.
I think if you were to read this, 21, they got a little bit of information.
One thing you can always do and I suggest doing that with specials, particularly as customers become more in tune with the concept of a lost leader, they know that with the specials you’re going to come out there and give them the sales pitch as you justify it.
Here is exactly what happens in a tune-up. In most cases, a tune-up is just a sales pitch.
Most people tend to avoid that.
Personally, I would avoid the tune-up.
I would just charge me your fare, a price to come out here and do whatever it is you got to do.
So, I think that with specials, contractors should back them up and add some bone affinity to them.
It seems that they may have been doing that in that video.
I’m not going to watch it, though.
Now they’ve got some reviews right here and I didn’t notice that it’s another page up here.
So, under the About Us, they got a History Page and Employee of the Month page.
That’s interesting.
David Brown’s message.
I think we’ve just read that.
Reviews.
Oh, they’ve got an Awards page.
Referral Program winners –that’s an interesting one.
The Fox community.
Fox News.
That must be like a blog of sorts service area.
That’s going to be your general fillers stuff and then the blog.
Okay, so, if you have an active blog, well, they haven’t done anything since December 2017, so that’s about six months now.
As we scroll through it, back to September.
See how many posts they have on here.
So, it looks like they’ve been filling this up for a few years.
They’re doing their part in blogging and content marketing. No doubt that’s doing well.
Every contractor should be.
And then, that’s one page.
We’ve been already into this page.
Fox media…this is their kind of news page.
“This year, Fox plumbing and heating gave away a ride with Patriot jet to Gina Goolsby. She was the winner of our social media contest.”
All right, that’s interesting.
That’s certainly worth taking another look at.
They do a social media contest.
I’m interested to see what that is.
Maybe I’ll do a second video for that.
And then as we come through here, looks like they’re very active in the community which is awesome.
It’s no doubt doing good.
Something about a race car.
I’m not going to watch all this on a screen recorder but I certainly will.
They’re sponsoring stuff in the communities.
Basically, looks like a tunnel boat race.
It’s interesting.
They’re doing a lot, getting their name out here.
No doubt that’s doing good.
And now, they’ve got video testimonials from their customers.
Looks like they’re doing that with a green screen to put those backgrounds in.
That’s very good.
The referral program — they’ve got a referral program.
How does it work?
“Customer Referral Program designed to reward customers for recommending our business to friends and family is underway. is underway. Our prize for this drawing is $500! Hey, nothing like getting cash! And all you have do is recommend us to people you know. Refer our plumbing and heating services to your friends and family have them mention your name when they call us. We’ll enter your name into a drawing for every referral you send us during this six-month period.”
Okay.
So, alright — this is very interesting.
They don’t just, they don’t just do a referral program like, refer us and you get a $50 steak dinner, whatever.
Instead, they just put your name into a drawing and then they draw it and somebody wins it.
It’s $500 for six months.
So, they got March 2017, November 2016.
So, they’re making the winners actually, publicly available which is nice.
Puts a lot of bone affinity to the referral program here.
I see a lot of ways that this could be incorporated into, well, every service business but also into improved a little.
I generally speak about referral programs being a lot of problems and issues.
In this case, what you could actually do is essentially give a referral ticket to your homeowner or your customer.
Have them say, “Hey call this company and if you go with them you give them this coupon and then you get entered”.
Then, just run this drawing every six months.
I like this. I like this type of referral program.
This is very interesting.
I’m generally not a fan of referral programs.
I find that they’re more headache and frustration than they’re worth.
You’ve always got people disgruntled over who gets what who gets credit for a referral.
In this case, it’s one person gives us the referral coupon and that gets tracked — a referral drive. This is very interesting.
I really like this actually.
I’m looking at the screen,
I’m kind of processing how I could implement this in my own company.
This is a very interesting concept and I think it could work.
And the fact that they’re pulling it out with the actual customer on here, it’s winning it.
It just adds so much value to this whole page on this website.
Awards — they’ve been nominated for some Angie’s List awards, lots of good stuff going on here; trust building and authority building.
And then their reviews so, they’re fetching them.
These look like Google reviews.
Oh, no.
These are some type of reviews on their website.
Here are the Google reviews.
Right there.
Doing a lot of good things.
So, if we go back to the very beginning here, as I pointed out this website would not win a design award.
Nobody’s going to say this is an award-winning website and while it might not be an award-winning website, there’s no doubt in my mind this is a money-making website.
So, it doesn’t need to win a Design Awards.
It doesn’t need to look very fancy.
It doesn’t need to look awesome.
It’s all about the content and the stuff that you put on it.
If I were Fox Plumbing, Heating, and Cooling, maybe the only thing I would do differently is to put the reviews and trust-building material content right here underneath this picture.
That would be it.
I think their website is overall pretty effective.
And what they’re doing in terms of marketing and the content they’re putting out there is something that certainly any service business could look to for guidance in ways to improve.
I certainly can.
I’m genuinely impressed with this lackluster or not so impressive website by modern internet marketing standards.