Creating a website for your home service business is an essential step towards success. After all, most consumers today immediately go to the web when looking for recommendations and information on who to hire.
Without a strong digital presence, you’re likely to be passed by time and time again, regardless of the quality of your work.
Having a website isn’t good enough by itself, though — you also need to make sure your website has all of the information and content needed for potential customers to want to learn more about you and make contact. But what things are “must-haves” when it comes to being included on your website?
Here are 11 Things We Look For When Reviewing Our Home Service Clients; Website
11. Reliable Service Under the Hood
To start, you want a website that works. It does you no good to have a flashy design if the pages don’t load correctly or links don’t work properly. Good web hosting can’t be under-rated, so before you do anything on your website, make sure you’re going with a hosting company that can get the job done right.
For a platform, I prefer using WordPress and love the Elementor page builder.
10. Well-Designed Pages
It’s also essential that your website looks good. Depending upon your budget, having a custom designed website is your best option. For budget-conscious websites, using an off-the-shelf template can work, so long as you customize it with your brand style and messaging.
9. Clear Writing
When people are looking for a home service, they don’t need a technical run-down or pages full of convoluted writing that is difficult to understand. They are looking for help, and they need it now. The last thing they need is to wade through poor or difficult writing. Make your pages easy to read and let customers get on with what they actually came to your page for.
A good copywriter is worth their weight in gold.
7. Real Photos Of You and Your Team
Stock photos on websites, especially those where someone is going to invite you into their house, just won’t fly.
For an afternoon, and a few hundred dollars, you can have a professional photographer come out and take more pictures of you and your crew than you could ever use.
Make sure to get as many different pics as you can – performing each of the various services you offer.
7. SEO and Local Optimization
Traffic comes to your website through searches like Google, and people will only click on your website if it shows up high in the search results. This is where SEO (Search Engine Optimization) comes into play. There’s too much to go into it right now, but designing an SEO-friendly page that is also optimized for local searches (by using services such as Google My Business) will put your website high in search results, resulting in more traffic than you could ever get with a well-designed website alone.
6. An About Page
On the website itself, you need to have many, many pages about all aspects of your company — and one for you and the company itself. People want to know more about the person or company who is going to get their hard-earned money. Give them some basic info about you and your business.
5. A Separate Page for Each Service
To save digital space and energy, companies often lump several different services onto one page. Avoid this pitfall. Give each of your services (inspection, repair, replacement, etc.) its own separate page that gives detailed information about everything that goes into that specific service.
It’s fine if you want to launch quick to have one general services page, but build out pages for each service, or type of service you offer.
4. Ever-Present Contact Information
The bottom line about this is simple: make it easy for people to contact you. Sure, you should have a “contact us” page (more about that in a second), but you shouldn’t make customers have to click on that to know how to get in touch with you. Having a phone number visible at all times makes it easy for people to get in touch with you right away, when the urge hits them and before they second-guess their decision or check out your competitors.
And use a call tracking tool so you know which marketing channels are driving phone calls and conversions.
3. Multiple Contact Avenues
When it comes to home services, most people still prefer a good old-fashioned phone call. However, you should have multiple ways for people to get in touch. Forms, email addresses, mobile texting and pop-up chat boxes are just some of the ways you can have for customers to contact you. When it comes to this, there is no such thing as too much!
Keep in mind, different generations prefer different methods of communication.
2. Customer Reviews
One of the most effective ways to get people to finally make the decision to reach out to a company is through the prominent display of customer reviews. Having reviews from real customers (complete with photos and other information) lets potential customers know you provide high-quality work and that others can vouch for the services you provide.
At Southernmost Digital, we use a Review Generation tool that will display reviews on your website, along with conversion pop-ups and filtered reviews for various services you provid.
1. Keep it Mobile-Focused
I think I first started hearing that the mobile experience should be your first priority in 2006. It’s only become more important since then.
These days, mobile browsing is king. Yeah, people use desktops, but not nearly as much. Phones are everywhere, and when most people have a question, need to do some research or want to find out about a company, they immediately reach for their phone. This is why you shouldn’t make your website merely mobile-friendly; mobile usage should be first in your mind when designing the look of the website and how it will function.
As you can see, there are a lot of things you have to keep in mind when designing your first company website. By following this advice, you can be sure to have a website that is not only fun and easy to navigate but is also successful at bringing in the right customers.
