Any homeowner is going to expect you expects a contractor to have a minimum set of tools, a license, insurance and the obvious skills needed to perform the job at hand. But before all that, they need to be able to get at the right information on your website they need to make a decision on hiring you. After doing about 30 website reviews since New Years, I still see a lot of contractor websites that are missing the most important info for homeowners.
So, I’m here to help! Here is what Your Site NEEDS to Have in 2015!
Homepage: Seems obvious right? But it’s not so much having one as it is what’s on it. Make sure your homepage has these key elements:
- Content that provides a brief introduction and a few features and benefits.
- A “what’s in it for the reader” approach to your content.
- A solid call to action and contact information.
- Minimal distractions and links that take people AWAY from your site, i.e., your profile on Houzz, your profile on Yelp, your great award on NKBA, you get the idea.
- About Us Page: Go do a search above to get more details, but make sure your about us page includes info on you; why you got into the business, why you are the right choice and what makes you different. Also include an image of you and your team. Your about us page should answer the who, what, where, when, why & how about you, other founders if any and the business itself.
Portfolio Page: Instead of packing each page of your site with a multitude of your pictures, put them on a portfolio page where you can showcase your work and break it down either by project type or project.
Testimonials Page: Too many times I see contractors use links away from their sites to sites like Yelp and Google Places to promote testimonials and user reviews. Instead, cut these reviews from these sites, stop linking off of your page and put them on a testimonials page on your OWN SITE!
Navigation: The navigation is the secret sauce to selling on your site. If done properly, you can move people through a sales funnel without them ever knowing they are buying! Do it improperly, and you can turn people off and have them running for the back button in no time flat!
FAQ Page: This page is a key sales page. It helps you answer pre-sales questions for readers and limits those time consuming fluff questions you get on the call. Take your top 5-10 questions you always get, come up with an answer for each, get them on your site, and you now have a great selling page that is informative and consultative and NOT salesy at all!
The number of websites I look at that don’t have these basic pages in 2015 is shocking. These are THE pages that close new business, and if you always wonder why you are competing basically on price, it is because you have not distinguished yourself from your competition on anything but price because people don’t know anything about you!