Before the Internet, all types of contractors—from B2C to B2B—relied on gaining business by word-of-mouth and traditional advertising. While these are still great tools to gain contracts, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to rely solely on word-of-mouth to maintain success.
As a contractor, you need a website that highlights your abilities, showcases your previous projects, and humanizes your team. Here are several reasons and tips that explain how a website redesign can increase contractor business:
Nothing else matters if no one visits your website. Search engines (e.g. Google) are constantly evolving and getting smarter. Old tricks, like keyword stuffing and link farming, no longer work effectively. By investing in a redesign of your website and improving SEO, you will see an increase in web traffic, lead generation, and most importantly, sales.
When a potential client is choosing between contractors, it often comes down to trust and research. The first place a potential client looks to learn more about a contractor is their website. Any licenses or awards (such as safety awards) that your company has earned should be showcased on your website. They should be able to get a feel for who you and your team are, what you do, locate estimates of prices and read testimonials of successful projects.
Your website is your portfolio for whatever type of contracting you do, so showcase all your successes and educate viewers on your process. Walk them through your contracting business and make them comfortable and confident in your abilities to get the job done. Testimonials are a great way to do this. Potential clients will see the hard work you’ve put into a project, and get to read all about how pleased your client was with your job well done. Testimonials add major points to your credibility score, so include as many as you can. Think of a testimonial page as a review page of your company that shines light on only your successful services and happy customers.
If your website isn’t up-to-date with the latest web design trends and another contractor’s website is, your potential client is going to go with the competition over you.
As mentioned above, contractors’ websites showcase their credibility. Have you ever clicked on a website and then immediately clicked off because it looked like a scam or as if it was virus-ridden just from clicking?
It’s 2018. If a website looks like it was made back in 2005, potential leads and sales walk out the door, click the back button, and move onto whatever else Google has suggested. Imagine all of the potential leads and sales you may be losing simply because people who click onto your website don’t trust it based on overall appearance.
That’s right, they really judge a book by its cover.
If a website looks outdated, potential clients won’t even spend time clicking around. Trust is key for happy clients, but in order to gain that trust, you must have an up-to-date website that is relevant and competes with other contractor websites. Like a book by its cover, they will judge a home page by its design.
Or whatever environment you would go to in order to meet and talk with a potential client. Think of your website as the first impression of your contracting business to a consumer. On average, potential clients will spend seven seconds of their attention span checking out your website before they decide to either investigate further off the path of your homepage or click the back button and never return.
How would you like a potential client to feel walking into your building or store? The feel and personality of your website should reflect and mimic your brand and your office. A website can help build trust between a potential client and the contractor. User experience is incredibly important for any website. Older websites tend to have more errors and not be designed for viewing on a mobile device. If your site takes an excessive amount of time to load, has some buttons that don’t work, isn’t accessible on a mobile device, or even if your website is just confusing to navigate around in general—it's time for a website redesign.
Your website may be the first time a potential client learns of your contracting business, so make sure it reflects your company and gives a great first impression. You want a user’s experience on your website to mimic how it would feel if they walked into your brick and mortar store and experienced your customer service.
To wrap this all up in a nice little to-go-box, your website can be the difference between a customer choosing you as their contractor, or choosing your competitor as their contractor. With that being said, if it has been several years since your last website redesign, do your business a favor and give your website a little refresh.