When designed properly, your home improvement website is the focal point of your company’s online lead generation — so if it’s not currently converting visitors into clients, you might be missing something. It doesn’t matter if you specialize in tile installation, painting, plumbing or HVAC services, you want to build the kind of home improvement site that generates leads and converts them into clients.
How do you do this? To help answer that question, here’s a look at some key tips for creating the kind of site that is a lead-generation machine.
Create a strong, streamlined web design. Skip the cookie-cutter website designs that look like everybody else’s, and opt instead for a design that showcases your services well. Keep it streamlined and uncluttered, with plenty of white space. Make the design responsive for various viewing devices. Create a legitimately helpful, value-driven site to enhance the user experience and attract them to your services.
Use landing pages. Landing pages are specially designed pages of a website often used to greet visitors who’ve arrived via email marketing and pay-per-click (PPC) marketing. Here’s the idea: These ads send users to your site, but to relevant landing pages that have been specifically created with them in mind. These tools are tremendously effective. To give you an idea of what this looks like, if you run a PPC ad with an offer for gutter cleaning, for example, you’d direct visitors to a landing page all about gutter cleaning. This page will be much more persuasive than your general home page where a tab links to gutters among 20 other topics. Tailored content can help drive conversions, as it answers prospects’ questions faster and moves them toward conversion.
Feature your contact number. If your goal is getting people to call, you have to make it easy for them to do so. You want your phone number prominently displayed and easy to find. In desktop view, put it at the top right-hand area of your site, and, in mobile view, feature a phone icon and click-to-call function locked at the top of the page. These clear, obvious places are important so that prospects have no trouble knowing what to do.
Include your address and/or location. Adding your business address not only creates credibility, but it also makes you more locally relevant to visitors searching for your services in their town.
Include contact forms. Add a simple contact form to every page of your site. This reminds prospects, no matter what part of your website they’re looking at, that you want them to reach out to you. Use compelling calls to action that motivate prospects to fill out a form — such as a 30 percent discount on installation performed in the month of May — and require minimal information to submit the form.
Create credibility. Why should visitors trust you for pest control, roof repairs, electrical or HVAC work? If your website doesn’t answer this question clearly and compellingly, you’re missing opportunities. So, keeping in mind that your website is often the first impression you’ll make on prospects, add credibility elements. Feature photos and testimonials that highlight your value and demonstrate credibility to your visitors. Include your Better Business Bureau rating. Mention your years in business, number of clients, logos of recognizable customer brands and before/after photos of work. Answer the typical questions your visitors may have, and address the pain points that draw them to your service. Essentially, you want to eliminate any excuse that might prevent a prospect from contacting you.
Analyze the site. The more information you have about your site, its visitors and the tendencies for user behavior when someone comes to your site, the better. You want to identify what sources are bringing you the most phone calls and form inquiries, and which site pages are driving leads most effectively. Conduct a website review to look at your site from your customers’ point of view. Use call tracking that creates a different telephone number for each of your campaigns and records how many calls you receive at each one. Likewise, implement heat-mapping tools, technology that can track and show you, in color-coded values, where clicks are occurring. This knowledge can help you adjust aspects of the site — organization, calls to action, etc. — to achieve better outcomes.
When it comes to generating leads, you can always do better with your website. So, even after you’ve applied all the above techniques to your site, keep testing it, testing it and testing it some more. Monitor and adjust, rework features and continually improve your website to be more of a lead-generating machine.
If you would like to learn more about how to market your home improvement company, please check out "The Modern Branding Playbook".
Author bio: Shanna Mallon is a senior copywriter writer for Straight North, a leading Internet marketing firm in Chicago that specializes in SEO, web development and other online marketing services. Shanna has been writing professionally online since 2007.