In this video guide series you’re going to get up to speed on what makes a contractor website that drives business with real world and practical examples! No bs.
Learn what simple key elements a home service website needs to become a lead machine without wasting time and money.
This series is intended to be watched in order… but you can use the table of contents to jump around. Personally my favorite section is the one on mobile conversion optimization.
The Growth Engine For My Contracting Business (and any others)
Every business needs a website. For trades businesses a website is arguably more important than other businesses as trades businesses often exist without retail centers and rely on customer to respond to an ad and call in. In other words, for contractors, your website IS your retail center.
The website for my patio / exterior contracting company generates dozens of leads every day. The phones ring off the hook during business hours. After business hours they come in via the contact form.
Literally, every new customer that we get comes through our website. It is a lead machine. It’s collecting leads while we sleep which ultimately lead to sales.
Even more important, the website positions us as premium service provider. It is not uncommon for customers to mention to my sales people something to the effect of “your price was higher, but your website was just so good”.
One time we even had a customer say and I quote. “if you’re half as good as your website, I’ll be impressed”. Impressed was an understatement, as our service is better than the website implies.
A contractors website is often the first impression a prospective customer gets of your brand. Within a split second they infer things such as your trustworthiness, level of service and pricing. This is vital, as it can mean the difference between selling projects at a premium or a discount. Customers need to see your website and say “wow these guys are the real deal”.
On the flip side however you want to be sure that your website doesn’t say “corporate” or “big business”. Think about it; large or corporate home service companies have a reputation for over pricing and delivering low quality of service. I’ve found it’s much better to appear, via website, that you are a small local business that has an established reputation for quality and professionalism.
1. Understand Where Your Website Fits Into The Marketing Process
Information without CONTEXT is useless. In this video you see how a website fits into the Market Domination Method and will get an understand of where you should be focusing your marketing efforts. Maybe it is not your website.
2. The Clear Objective Of a Contractor Website in 2019 (and a quick Word on Content Marketing)
Your website should be a lead generation engine; first.
The focus should be to capture leads from all visitors that find your website whether through paid advertising, or simply through Googling your business name. Through this guide we’ll be covering ways to make this happen.
Second, a distant second, your contractor website should be a resource center. A place where customers can find detailed information about your services offered and your company operations.
Why a distant second? Making your website a ‘resource center’ is a time consuming, and education intensive process. You need to create content, and stay on top of web development processes. Simply put many contractors lack the resources and skills to turn their website into a comprehensive resource center. At the same time, the return on publishing content publicly on your website is declining. Shorter attention spans lead to fewer people consuming the content. Changes in search engines have lead to few people actually finding your content.
Spending countless hours building a website into a ‘resource center’ isn’t adequately rewarded; hence the focus needs to be on capturing leads. You really have to decide if it’s worth it to sink the investment into making your website a ‘resource center’; and for most contractors, without an ‘in-house’ marketing team, it simply isn’t worth it.
I cover more about content marketing, in my post on SEO For Contractors.
3. Simplify Your Website To Adapt To User Behavior
Attention spans are diminishing. Content marketing isn’t rewarded. On one hand that complicates the contractor marketing process, but on the other hand it makes it easy. You no longer need a complex website. A simple, lead capture oriented website will work quite well.
4. Have The Right Platform
ClickFunnels. For quick simple intent driven lead capture websites Clickfunnels is a great choice. The sites are easy to edit, and maintain… unlike wordpress websites can have maintenance issues and often require constant fixes. We even offer a free clickfunnels one page website that is conversion optimized. The Home Pro Website Funnel.
WordPress. If you’re ready to invest into making your website a resource center; you need to be on wordpress.
5. Make Sure Your Website Is Responsive
A Responsive website is a website that ‘responds’ to the browser size. Your website needs to be user friendly across all devices.
6. Use Images That Sell
A picture says a 1000 words. Authentic images of your company say 1000 great words, while stock images say 1000 negative words. Avoid stock imagery at all costs. Nothing works better for establishing trust, and building a connection on your website, which will ultimately lead to business, then using authentic images. In this video, I explain our contractor image framework which covers the key images you should have to drive business!
7. [DESKTOP] Implement The Key Elements To Convert Visitors Into Leads
(covered in video above)
8. [MOBILE] Implement The Key Elements To Convert Visitors Into Leads
(covered in video above)
9. Create Top Ranking Local Pages (Follow The Framework)
Top ranking local pages get organic traffic (SEO). Now I don't mean 'doorway pages' -- tacky pages on a website stuffed with keywords like 'HVAC Repair My Suburb' repeated 82595828 times with no purpose other then to manipulate search engines (that stuff was left behind in 2012), but rather value adding pages with rich content that keeps users engaged on the page. This framework covers my format for the page and the type of content.
Top Ranking Local Page Framework Has Became a Part of The Market Domination Method.
RELATED INFORMATION
Should You Have Live Chat On Your Website?
Live chat on your website gives a personal touch that turn website traffic into leads 24/7. As a general rule of thumb, properly handled live chat will capture more leads from your website then a contact form will.
However there are 2 main reasons why I don’t get overly excited about live chat.
#1) on a mobile device the live chat feature can detract from the more valuable objective, of capturing a live call.
#2) on a high traffic website (such as my own), the majority of traffic comes from visitors outside of our service area. This would also radically increase costs whether done in house or outsourced.
Plumbing Website Teardowns
Let’s take a look at a few plumbing websites for inspiration.!
Sections Coming Soon
There’s always more ground to cover! Some of the upcoming planned sections are below.
- How To Build Trust With Your Contractor Website
- HVAC Website Tear Downs
- The Value in Your Thank You Page
Who Can Make These Changes To My Website?
Glad you asked! For contractors using WordPress you can have access to our development team to make unlimited changes/edits/improvements for a low monthly price — with a 30 day money back guarantee. This includes all of the conversion optimization features, and trust building elements mentioned in this post (although rare; limitations may apply depending on the coding of website).
Learn more about our Contractor Website Support Plan.
(this is not for new sites — existing websites only)
