A website is an essential marketing tool for home service providers, such as contractors, plumbers, painters, electricians, pool companies, and construction companies. Unfortunately, many small construction-based businesses are so busy doing the work that they don’t have time to create and maintain a website, much to their detriment.
With these types of home services, we often see a longer and more research-based buying process from consumers. This means that your potential customers are doing a lot of research before committing to a company to handle the fixes and upgrades to their homes. And the majority of this research is done online, most often through online reviews and a company’s website.
Because of this type of buying process, you have the opportunity to sell your customers your services 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. This makes your website your best and most cost effective salesperson! This type of online buying process means you can use a well-constructed and thought-out website to show potential buyers why you are different and why they should consider your company for their next home project. And, you need to make sure that you stand out from your competitors when doing so.
It’s important to note the types of information visitors may be looking for when visiting your website. And how they are getting there.
A website visitor who wants to hire a service provider will decide how they feel about your company within a few seconds of landing on our website. They will want to be able to see that you provide the service they are looking for, see some examples of your work, learn a bit about you, look at your qualifications and experience, and know that you can solve their immediate home problem.
Here are a few tips on the types of things buyers consider when hiring a home service company that you need to consider when developing or beefing up your home service business website.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
If your customers are looking for a contractor, they will most likely be searching online. This type of research means that they will be using a search engine like Google or Bing to find a provider. They will be typing in terms such as “construction company,” “contractor,” “house painter,” “electrician,” “pool service,” and “plumber” to see what comes up in their local area.
You should make sure that your website is well optimized for search engines.
Your website must contain many “keywords” that your potential customers would be using to find someone in your industry. In order to accomplish this, your website copy needs to be plentiful and solid, with great descriptions of the services you provide.
In addition, you should have a well-designed service provider website with relevant content that is easy to navigate and an intuitive menu.
Aside from the website, you must claim your Google Business Profile listing and have optimized it to the fullest to increase your search engine rankings, especially for local searches.
Show Your Work and Projects
Whether you are a plumber, painter, contractor, electrician, HVAC company, or other home service provider, you should organize your portfolio to give consumers an idea of your capabilities and a clear look into your work.
Users should be able to sort projects according to their relevance to view the best works for each category. Each project should include details about the type of service rendered, a project timeline, a summary of the project’s scope, and a short description of how your company brought the project to reality. It would be wise to post a story of how the project started and ended. Photos should be able to convey your overall expertise, your professionalism, and how your design services
You shouldn’t just have a website that’s easy to navigate and integrates your work, but you should also make sure that your website has integrated your work, whether on your Homepage or by using your blog posts and About Us page.
Link Services to Projects and Projects to Services
Your “Service” and “Project” pages should allow customers to see real-life examples of the quality of work you provide, and they should also give insight as to how you approach working on problems.
Your Service page should demonstrate a range of tasks you use in your line of work and cover all of the areas of service you provide. Ideally, you would also want to create landing pages for each service you provide to maximize your SEO and search engine results for that service in your local area (more on that in the Landing Page tip section below). These links are not only great for your UX and SEO but also help with your organic SEO.
Robust and Complete About Us Page
Providing a detailed and robust About Us page can instill confidence in a potential customer of a contractor or home service provider. In addition, the website visitor can get to know more about your company, you as a founder, and your team members from this page. Use this space to share what differentiates you as a company with visitors.
We try to encourage our web design clients to include pictures of themself and their employees, and maybe even short bios. Personalizing your page helps potential customers think of the people behind a business, rather than just a business name and logo. People generally like to do business with people, not companies.
This page is also often a great page to help attract new hires to your business. If you aren’t creating a separate page for this information, you may want to include links to open job positions or applications for employment here.
Display Key Industry License, Certificates, and Stats
For service-based industries, such as plumbing, contractors, home construction, electrical, and pool care companies, it is helpful to include any industry certifications, awards, or licenses you have on your website. We will often put this information in the footer area to show up on all pages and lend credibility to your company.
Include Client Testimonials
The importance of customer satisfaction is one of the primary reasons business owners tend to have at least one page on their websites whose purpose is to display the testimonials of real people who have used their services.
Some businesses may choose to sprinkle them throughout their site on various pages. Others may highlight them on their Homepage, or some may create a dedicated page strictly for testimonials. Of course, some will do a combination of all of the above.
However, when it comes to testimonials, they must be verifiable. One of the downfalls of simply slapping testimonials on a site with no way to verify them is that no one can be sure if they are actually true. Of course, from a lack of understanding of this concept, many people choose to do it this way, and it comes off as disingenuous and not entirely believable.
We prefer to have our clients incorporate a live testimonial or client review feed on their site. The live feeds pull in these reviews from websites such as Google, Facebook, Home Advisor, Thumbtack, and Trustpilot. As a result, website visitors can cross-reference them and know they are true and accurate assessments of a particular business. These types of live review feeds are a feature we can offer to our web design clients when we build their websites.
Video testimonials are also a trend business owners should consider moving forward.
Maximize Findability With Service & Location Based Landing Pages
Suppose you want to take your marketing up a notch after your initial website has been launched. In that case, you may want to consider expanding the site by creating specific service and location landing pages for SEO purposes. These landing pages will help you be found more easily online and increase the potential customers reaching out to your business.
These pages generally focus on only one service at a time, as it’s important to remember that search engines rank pages, not websites. You can also create pages that focus on one location to maximize your potential for finding clients in that area.
If you are planning on running any Pay-Per-Click advertising, these are the pages you would want to send the clicks to, based on the ad copy you are using. Unfortunately, one of the worse things business owners do with their PPC ads is send people to their home page only.
Conclusion
Taking these tips into consideration and maximizing the information on and structure of your website can go a long way in helping you gain more customers for your home service business.
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