I've looked at a lot of contractor websites over the years. The ones that convert well share some specific traits. The ones that don't have a different set of shared traits. The good news is most of the problems are fixable without a full rebuild.
The Phone Number Problem
Your phone number should be in the top right corner of every page, large enough to read without zooming. It should be a tap-to-call link on mobile. A surprising number of contractor websites bury the phone number at the bottom of the page or in a contact form that requires three fields before the customer can ask a question.
Most people who end up on your website are already somewhat interested. Don't make them work to contact you. Make the phone number impossible to miss and impossible to ignore.
Slow Load Times
Google measures page load speed and uses it as a ranking factor. More practically, people leave slow websites. If your site takes more than three seconds to load on a phone, a significant percentage of visitors will hit the back button before they ever see your content. Huge image files and bloated themes are usually the culprit.
Run your site through PageSpeed Insights (it's free, from Google). It'll tell you exactly what's slowing it down and what to fix. This is a conversation to have with whoever manages your website.
No Social Proof Above the Fold
"Above the fold" means what's visible before you scroll. Most contractor websites put a stock photo of a smiling family and a tagline about "quality service" above the fold. What should be there: your star rating, number of reviews, and a real customer quote or two. Social proof in the first five seconds of a visit dramatically improves conversion.
The Reviews Page That Nobody Updates
If you have a testimonials page on your website, when was the last time you updated it? 2019 testimonials with no dates look like a company that stopped caring. Either keep it current or skip the testimonials page entirely and just link to your Google reviews. Google's live review count is more credible than handpicked quotes on your own site anyway.
No Clear Next Step
Every page on your site should have one clear action for the visitor to take. Call us. Schedule a tune-up. Get a free estimate. When a page has five different calls to action or no call to action at all, visitors don't know what to do next and most of them leave. One page, one ask, clear path forward.
Put this into practice with WerkOps
Run accurate load calculations, build estimates, and send invoices - all in one tool.
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Written by
Dina Good
Founder, WerkOps
Dina grew up in the trades. Her father was a contractor, then a building inspector, and the job site was her classroom long before any formal one was. She went on to own her own contracting company, which is where she first felt the pain of running a skilled trade business on bad software and worse spreadsheets. A love of data pulled her into programming, and the two worlds eventually collided into WerkOps - software built by someone who has actually been on the truck.