Tips for an Effective Home Improvement Contractor Website

Audio Transcription

Welcome to another episode of Your Concrete Success podcast. My name is Andrea and I'm joined today with our visionary leader Danny Barrera and his wonderful wife and our CFO  Mady Barrera. What are we talking about today, Danny, we're talking about websites, websites. Ok. That's kind of your specialty people. Well, over 260 websites that I've developed, I've worked on personally over the years.   Our team has probably done a lot more than that, most likely, probably by another 22024 give or take   tens of thousands of pages.    Man, we've seen a lot, a lot and it changes so much every year.

You're like holding yourself back. Too dramatic. Oh, my gosh. Every year there's so much change, right? Like you can tell if something was built in 2020 or 2021. The interesting thing, the interesting thing about websites and here's the reality of the situation. There are some proven models that work and stand the test of time. We've compared it sometimes ugly, performs better than prettier. Unfortunately, unfortunately, like quite literally if you're following the principles which we stick to the direct response principles that works. If you're looking to generate more leads, get more estimates, sell more floors.

Like you've got to have those principles in there. You can't just get too flowery or creative with your copy calls to actions. Otherwise there's no performance. We've seen it time and time again.   especially like when say a client stops working with us and they take the website over to another shop. We've seen the performance of the website go from 7% to 3% or 2% conversions. That means for every 100 clicks. How many leads do they get if they're performing at 603% 3% is only 33 leads. 7 7%. That's now on a landing page which is separate than a website.

This is a stand alone page. When you're running Google ads, we're targeting youtube ads. You wanna send all the traffic to a landing page, you should be looking towards 15%. That means out of every 100 clicks. How many leads do they get? Mad? 15. This is good math. We like this kind of math. So the reality is the following is like you're wasting time, money and energy. And the other thing is like, how are you gonna leverage the website ultimately? Which I believe you have some questions for me on, on the website conversation.

What do you guys got?    OK. So one of the things that we    struggle more, I guess in our end is the picture situation. Let's talk about pictures. Should pictures be on websites of concrete, concrete coatings home improvement as a whole home improvement. You're taking something that is not so good looking and beautifying it. You're building amazing things with your hands. And at the end of the day, this is what sells the visual element sells. And I want to say this, like we've had clients running 5 million plus dollars in revenue a year with iphone pictures.

Like you don't need    a real state photographer to go and take pictures of every job. Although that is highly recommended when you're at the position to reinvest and get that in place. It's worth it when you can, right? It pays off, it pays off because you're just growing your brand.   the way that you're coming across is high value. But the biggest thing is like pictures is what sells your work at the end of the day, we were going over gallery pages today. What was big impact?

   Just give us your feedback on when you actually see a gallery page and you scroll and scroll and you see more and more. Then what's subliminally coming to you is this person has experience? Wow, they've done a lot. I trust them. Yeah. One of the things that I like the most about what we heard about that in that situation today was Tanya was saying when I want to hire somebody, I have an idea in my mind of what I want for my house and if you have a picture of it on your website, I'm going to choose you over the guy that doesn't.

I want exactly that. I want to point to it. That's big. Now, if you're selling emergency services, if you're selling like water damage, restoration, pl  ber break and fix, you can get away with like not showing gallery page. Like who wants to look at a videos though? Those are impact mechanisms. So you can create impact by speaking and talking about it because video cons  ption is through the roof nowadays. In fact, like I don't know what the stat is. Maybe you can look it up here, the the video cons  ption   the way it is on the website, but it is ridiculous.

The stick rate goes up on the website. So from an educational perspective and this is something we're working on heavily. This year, we revamp our entire strategy   which is including videos and better content material when it comes to before and after project highlights, we call it   for our clients. And the reason being is that the the premier, the premi   options will always show themselves and come across as a premi   option.    We have clients that deliver beautiful work but never take great pictures. And it's been a struggle like the cost per lead is just nuts conversions go down on the website.

So those small things make a big difference in in the conversions. What do you find? But yeah, I found right here on a hubspot survey from 2023 they said that people are 52% more likely to share video content than any other type of content. So instead of just sharing a photo, they're more likely to share a video that they found impactful, even if it was on your website or youtube and 83% of marketers just like us suggest video should be under 60 seconds because it's cons  able. Right. Right. But also another thing that, that needs to be addressed, which is I'm going to beat a dead horse.

Here is the h  an element of your company. It is so important to not just have the beautiful real estate image, the beautiful image of the finished product. It is so important. So, so, so so important to showcase your team that you're a real person that you do real work, that you have a real company and that you're h  an people that own your business because that will set you apart too from your competitor, having that h  an element, that h  an component will the cons  er will feel a deeper connection to the the business than to the business that's just showcasing like beautiful pictures.

That h  an element is huge. It's very important and I've been seeing in, in more and more websites that are ranking really high on Google that that big beautiful picture on the top of the website is not just not even a finished product in some cases, it's the team working on the actual. So that's the process in the process. That's very, very important. And it's definitely something that needs to be added to the arsenal of images, including your team, including the h  anity behind your company. Yeah, we recommend a minim  .

How many images did we say today? Of team pictures? Yeah, we're, we started thinking of all the headshots that we wanted to suggest. And then you want your team actually working and installing, showing the process. You want maybe some group photos from your last get together of all the the staff. So there there ends up being quite a lot of photos that we recommend and those photos build the trust so that when they call, they're like, oh, I'm going to talk to the office manager, which I can see here on this website.

That's real, right? It used to be that you used to request a certain n  ber of pictures for each service. But now we've added to that list, a certain n  ber of pictures of your team. It's important, it's necessary. Yeah, we're literally forcing our clients to level up like sending someone out there for them so that we can get what we need go from anonymous. Like when it is just those just general photos, I mean, they almost look like stock images without a person in them. So then once you add a add a h  an element, then the personalization starts and we're, we're really made to make h  an connections.

So it'll always work. Absolutely. I, like, I like that. You said that about leveling up having, we are definitely leveling up and having our, our clients,   , more accountable. And that's definitely something that we've been transitioning into this year. Whereas we are. No, I had a call today with a, a team member that, that paused during the winter, came back after the winter's over and he's like you guys are not a lead generating just like call, I'm gonna call him to get leads. Like you're not, I feel now like you guys are part the marketing company, a fractional marketing company.

That's part of our company. We're definitely taking a step forward to really level up our our clients    to get to the next. Like it's not just I'm just going to get you leads because it's going to pain us. If you're, if they're not succeeding, then that's, that's sad. We're not going to let that happen. It's against our core values, commitment. You know, it's like, are we committed to being the best version of ourselves? And are we also empowering our our clients to be the best version of themselves and not just in one area in every area?

Like leveling up the image, the brand image, like you want better clients like just level up the brand image, like make it more luxury, more beautiful, elegant. Like you wanna charge premi   pricing. But then you're showing pictures that man, I can't II I don't, I can't tell if this is on a dark basement or what's going on here. Like the, you know that those are the the small details that make a big difference in the performance of your website performance. So another thing I shared today was that they eat   profile optimization which is experience, expertise,    authoritativeness and trustworthiness.

What does that mean? And how can you create that? We talk about the About Us page? But who's the owner of the company? And you see that owner? Is you listening on the other side, you, you gotta create your linkedin profile and put your bio and everything that you've done. How long you've been in the industries, what companies you've owned and operated in, etcetera. Google is able to look behind the scenes and say, OK, this website, it's owned by this specific individual and this is the operations manager.

This is the sales person. It's a real organization, it's a real picture, it's the same picture or a similar picture that's on linkedin. And on the website, they give you credit for that. It's a big signal.    When you're, when we're publishing content for our clients, it's on behalf of our clients and it's the clients. Like you've seen the author card on the website, like when you go to Concrete Market crew, go to any blog post, who's the author, Danny Barrera it's a big relevant push there.

And just about every single blog post that we publish gets indexed without us submitting it to the indexer. Why? Because Google recognizes, hey, this is like there's expertise there, authority and trustworthiness. Big deal do not neglect that    that influences your ranking factors and all that stuff. So we talk about pictures.    the most important page on the website you guys recall. I don't know. I, I can make a guess. Let's see. Let's see it, quiz. I'm gonna quiz you on it. Wondering if, oh I'm I'm torn.

Is it going to be the services offered? Is it going to be the contact us? Is it going to be the reviews? Oh man. So you have a couple of factors depending on who, where you're at in the customer's journey. And that's a good point. Your customer's journey is not in the conversion of the lead. Your customer's journey is not just like, hey, here's my name and phone n  ber submit. Your customer's journey is all of the above. So what are you targeting that specific page that you wanna build?

Is it gonna be the home page? That's the first impression page. Like what is that first impression? Is it going to be a specific service I'm looking for? Is that page optimized? We are all all the specific factors that influence a lead being generated and if I want to generate more leads from my traffic, do I have all my pages optimized and also my contact page optimized the right way. So which one is the most important page is we need to analyze the entire funnel and say, OK, what is the purpose of this page specifically?

So here, here are the pages and we're about to wrap it up here that are very important. The home page extremely important. Your first impression you have your services page, which is the hub. If you offer residential and commercial, then create a hub for residential services and commercial services. And then in that specific page, this is where you link to each individual page. So let me give you an example, might do residential, you're, you're doing pool deck, resurfacing,   you're doing patios, driveways,   garage floors, etcetera.

  You're gonna have one individual page being linked out of out of the services page and then you have what's called the service area page. This is where you link to every single city or territory that you target. It's very relevant because you wanna show up everywhere that you service. We talked about    specific geographical areas.   We were doing locations right analysis in geographical areas and we found some really cool stats in how search vol  es are different from like one city to another. You just so what if you were to show up in the top three for all the relevant services?

So and then you have your galleries page where it's where you show your best projects and your contact page. Those are the most important when it comes to a website. Any other questions you have here? So good. One question I have is what if I'm already a concrete marketing crew client? And I want a new website. I mean, we're forcing you to get a new website. It's already included, it's included. It's necessary. This is the year you get a new website. That's right, everyone. And if you're listening to this, thank you for listening,  Mady.

Any other questions? I have no further questions. Make sure this year 2024 is the year to get your website. Be mobile friendly. That's n  ber one, the designs gotta be easy to navigate on mobile, on desktop fast and get amazing pictures that showcase your best work and that my friend is gonna help you differentiate yourself between your competitors and yourself. You wanna be premi  , show up as a premi   option. Thank you for listening to your Country Success Podcast. This is Danny Barrera with the crew here. We'll see you on the next one.

Take care.