How to Make Your Website Generate More Leads (ft. Ian Miclean)

Sean
Hey everybody, welcome to the Contractor Growth Network podcast.
I am Sean, and today I have our director of marketing on the show. His name is Ian. What’s up, Ian? Say what’s up? He already did that. Today we’re going to talk about websites. A little bit of website 101, some do’s and don’ts. Things that contractors can use to make, you know, check if their website is working to see if they’re doing something wrong. And just general knowledge about what I.

Sean

Okay, I’m just doing your intro.

Ian
No, I know. I just. First I was trying my best.

Sean
I saw it.

Ian
There’s something I think about the whats up interaction that just tickled my funny bone.

Sean
Okay, we’re keeping all of this in the podcast. This is a great intro. So today we’re going to be talking a little bit about websites. Maybe some website 101, some do’s and don’ts, things that can evaluate their own website, see if it’s working, and maybe some action that they can take today to make sure that their website is doing what it’s supposed to do. Yeah, sounds good. Yeah. So, Ian, do you want to tell us a little bit about, like, your background in, you know, websites?

Ian
Yeah. So I’m not a website developer, but I’ve worked in digital marketing for quite a while now. And definitely my big thing has historically been SEO. I’ve branched out into some other pieces. Right. So I deal a lot more with marketing automation and data analytics, CRM management these days. More about taking the inputs from digital marketing and making sure that we’re organizing that information and using it. But originally I worked pretty much exclusively in SEO, which is sort of a step between the website development world, the UX design world sometimes, and then content marketing. Right. So I had a lot of experience building websites, adjusting websites, making sure that those websites perform well from a marketing standpoint.

Sean
Yeah. And SEO is very important to all websites, as everyone knows. It’s kind of that invisible force that drives a lot of website traffic, for sure.

Ian
I mean, it’s definitely like a part of a comprehensive digital marketing strategy if you are building a new website or trying to make sure that you’re getting the most out of your website. SEO is definitely something you have to take into account, that’s for sure.

Sean
So let’s just go ahead and break into it. So a lot of people, I feel, misunderstand what their website is supposed to be. What would you say the role of a website is for a contractor? What is it supposed to Do?

Ian
Yeah, I mean, it’s going to serve a couple different functions in your business. A big part of it is really this is your main point of contact with the world. Right. So especially if you don’t have a storefront or a office of some kind, this is going to be a, a asset that almost anybody that engages with your business is going to experience at some point. Right. It will either be their first point of contact. Right. So they might find your website online by searching for it. It might be something that they look at after they find your name. Like let’s say they find your Google business profile, they’re looking for services and they want to learn more about you. They’ll probably end up on your website there.

Ian
Or it might be something like, hey, they hear about you on around town and they search you up. Pretty much anyone these days is going to engage with your website at some point and typically before they make a purchase. Right. So it serves as a representation of your company, it’s going to serve as a representation of the quality of your work, it’s going to serve as a lead generation tool and those are generally speaking, the main functions. Right. So it is a brochure for your business. It is a way for people to get more information about your business, but it is also a system for people to contact and engage with your business.

Sean
Yeah. I mean beyond Google reviews, like that’s the first place I go to. Like at first I’ll find you on your Google business profile, go to your reviews and then also ultimately lead to the website to see if you’re. You seem legit. Yeah. So I agree. It is something that’s very important into anyone who’s shopping. Like your first impression is gonna be that website for sure. I’m very rarely gonna see a truck wrap with a phone number on it and call it. I’m likely going to look up the website first, then probably call it.

Ian
Sure. And even if the website’s not on the truck wrap, you’ll probably look up the name on Google. Yes.

Sean

Yeah, exactly.

Ian
So the vast majority of people are going to interact with your website in some capacity during the sales process.

Sean
Now one thing we hear a lot is a lot of contractors saying, well, my website’s not generating leads. What would you think the most likely reason for that is? Why would your website not be generating leads?

Ian

There’s lots of reasons. One and a pretty common one is that it’s not a very good representation of your business or the quality of your work. A lot of people, they have A website, they don’t put a lot of thought into how that website makes them look and they don’t do a lot of work on that website to make sure that it’s properly educating people about your services. So that’s a combination of informational lack. So it may not have enough info and enough context on the website to convince people that you’re a worthwhile opportunity or option for them. It might lack sufficient social proof. So there might be just straight copy, not enough additional evidence that you’re a high quality company. It also might just not be set up correctly. Right.

Ian

You might not have be using CTAs or conversion opportunities in a effective way. Right. You might not be presenting people with a clear option for, hey, this is the next step that I want you to take and here’s how you can take it. And then additionally, this isn’t really necessarily the website itself, but you may not be doing sufficient things external to the platform, external to your website to drive enough users to that space. And that can be activities like SEO or like ads. So it’s a combination of those things. Not always is one size going to fit all right? Different contractors, different businesses are going to have different problems. Sometimes it’s a design issue and it’s just really, the website doesn’t reflect you very well and it doesn’t look very professional and people don’t seem to want to move forward because of it.

Ian
And other times it just not structured in a way where it’s functional. So people don’t know what they can do. And sometimes it’s a combination, right? So it really depends on the unique situation of a given contractor.

Sean
That sounds like a lot of moving parts. Like that’s a lot of different things that it could be for sure. How would you even begin to narrow down? Like this is why it’s not getting the leads.

Ian
First step is figuring out exactly what it is doing and what it’s not. Right? So if you don’t have any sort of analytics associated with your website, that’s going to be your starting point, right? Because oftentimes people will base their understanding of what their website is or is not doing off of sort of anecdotal evidence. They will feel, hey, leads are down, right? So, and I don’t really like my website, so it must be the website. Right? Your first step in figuring out what your real problem is first to set up some basic tracking on your site. The minimum that you need is a form. Right. That allows people to contact your business. Right. And a way to track Those submissions from there.

Ian
I do recommend setting up things like Google Analytics, your website and search console to give you more clarity on exactly how much traffic your website is getting and what your presence looks like in like, search algorithms. That will all give you a lot more context for, hey, like, is the site doing what it’s supposed to do or not? Right. Because in that process, let’s say you have analytics and search console set up. You may find, hey, I’m getting a lot of users, but not a lot of them are converting on the form. Right. Or vice versa. You may find out, hey, I’m not getting that many users, but the majority of those people are converting. Right. And that gives you a little bit of context for your problem. Right.

Ian
If you’re getting a lot of users to your website, but they’re not converting, that usually means there’s something wrong with the website itself. Right. So it is hard to use. It’s not clear, it’s not very compelling. Or again, you’re not offering them a obvious way to move to the next step and to reach out to you. If it’s the other way around and you’re not getting a lot of users, but the users that are there are reaching out to you, then that typically means the structure of the website is pretty sound. But you have a problem with your traffic generation. Right. So you don’t have your SEO set up in a way where it’s actually producing results for you. Right. Or you’re not running a very effective ad campaign. Right. Or you don’t have a lot of brand id, just in general. Right.

Ian
So having that data though, is critical to understanding whether or not the tool is doing what you want it to do, because otherwise you’re going to be guessing.

Sean
Yeah. And we all know like analytics, I mean, basically it’s everything on Internet.

Ian
Yeah. I mean, it’s everything you digital marketing as a whole.

Sean
Yeah, true. Yeah. You can basically find all that information that you could possibly want for your entire business if you do it the right way, for sure. Now, what separates a website from just looking nice and a website that actually does its job and generates leads?

Ian
Yeah. Again, it’s going to depend on your context. Right. So if your objective is leads, which is not always going to be leads for every website, but let’s assume that it is, you need to be providing those people with a sufficient reason to reach out to you. Right. So whatever like your website is doing, it needs to provoke some curiosity. Right. So at the bare minimum, when people arrive on your website, they have should have a Very clear picture of what you do and why you do that thing and why you are better than the alternative and some good examples of the work that you do, right? And if they like what they see, that should provide them with sufficient evidence that hey, this is a person that at the very least is worth speaking to.

Ian
Beyond that, it really can be about structure. So CTA placement is huge, right? So making sure that you are using or providing the user with opportunities to move to that next step pretty much all throughout your site, right? So generally speaking it is recommended to have a conversion opportunity at the top of the page, one in the middle of the page and one at the bottom. Sometimes you can have more, sometimes you can have less depending on the structure of that individual page. But that’s really going to be a key component in getting people to move forward, is reminding them, hey, there’s this thing that you can do, right? Also having a clear sense of what that action is too, right? So like what is it that you’re trying to accomplish?

Ian
Because that will give you more guidance on how those CTAs should be structured for the site. So that, and then I would say making sure that your form structure is pretty minimal upfront. A lot of people will try to ask for way too much information in the beginning and that really is a major and impediment to people filling out forms. The expectation is that forms are pretty simple these days. So I really recommend that people be sort of ready to have that initial consultation with people knowing, right. That it’s a discovery call, right. It’s not a place where you’re like, hey, you’re going to pick up the phone and everybody that submits a form is going to be like, here’s my credit card, take my money now. Right?

Ian
You have to be prepared with, hey, you know what, like these initial calls are mostly going to be informational and I’m sort of initiating a relationship with these people, right? So that I would say is pretty huge. That additionally it can be useful to give people an idea of what the experience is like with your company, right? So what’s it like to work with you and then pricing as well, right? So granted, I will say if you give people too much information, you are going to qualify people out, right? So it’s a little bit of a trade off. The more you tell people about pricing, the more you’re going to scare people away. But depending on your business situation, that can beneficial, right?

Ian
So if you are in a place where you’re like, hey, I don’t want as many calls. I want more quality calls. It can be useful to have a higher informational threshold on the site that helps people make sure they are informed before they fill out that form.

Sean
Yeah. And it could be something that you don’t want someone who is looking for a $5,000 job to call you when your minimum is 20.

Ian
Yeah.

Sean
So it could just weed that out and save you time actually for sure. It’s the same thing with like putting up your FAQs where questions that are just asked so frequently that they just find on their website and save you the time. Yeah, I know we’ve seen some people with contact fields that have like 20 questions in there because they just want to be thorough. Right. But I know me, I’m not filling that out. What would you say ideally like what fields are we looking for on like a contact.

Ian
So if you’re, if you are optimizing for conversions and your goal is to get as many submissions as possible, ideally it’s like one or two, right. Name and email.

Sean
So the contact field is different based on like what your goal is for sure.

Ian
I mean it also is different depending on what your threshold is for dealing with like people that are not as ready to buy.

Sean
Okay.

Ian
Right. So generally speaking, if you’re pursuing volume, right. And that’s your objective is you go as simple as you can up front. Right. So bare minimum to know who they are and get back in touch with them. Right. So name and email. And what that’s going to do is it’s going to promote a lot of conversions, a lot of people submitting forms. But the reality is you’re also going to get a lot of garbage. Right. And so you’ll end up with a lot of low quality submissions. But as a part of, if you’re an organization with lots of salespeople or maybe you do a little bit of email marketing as well, you can use post submit systems to help refine that list. Right.

Ian
And the idea is, right, yes, you’re going to end up with a lot more garbage, but you’re also going to capture a lot more people in total. Right. And over time that will filter down to a greater number of conversions at the end. Now most businesses, that’s not going to be practical for, because they are not ready or nor do they have the time or the desire to handle that large of a volume of submissions. Right. And so basically what you do is you modulate that based on what you can handle, right? So start off with something in the middle. Say like, hey, I’ve got five fields I need. First name, last name, email, phone number, website, URL. Right? Something along those lines that’s going to reduce the number of submissions that you get.

Ian
And you see from a volume perspective, it was like, all right, am I happy with what I’m getting? Do I think I could handle more? Right? And you sort of adjust based on that. If you are getting tons and tons of submissions, right? Even with those five fields, you’re like, this is too much. Add some more stuff in there, gather some more information. But the nice thing is you can always, once you have somebody’s email, you can always get additional information down the road. Sure, right? You can always send them an email with requests for new information, right? You can always reach back out, get on a call, do whatever you need in order to fill in the rest of those details, right? So there’s give and take, right? The less that you have on a form, the more likely it is to convert.

Ian
But the more like, you are to get a lot of garbage, right? The more complicated the form is, the less people are going to convert, but the more intent those people will have, right? They’re going to be much higher intent if they fill out 20 fields than they are if they filled out two.

Sean
So it sounds like Goldilocks. You got to find your sweet spot, what’s best for you.

Sean
How do we know? Like, what are some signs that we could look out for to know that your website’s actually hurting your business?

Ian
That’s a good question. I know. I think something that you can do is ask people that you know or ask people that are in your market to take a look at it for you and give you some honest feedback, right? That is a pretty direct way to get that information, is just say, hey, like, what do you think of this? Do you think it, well, represents my business? Would you buy something from this business if you didn’t know it was me? You know, something else that you can do is again, look at the analytics, right? Like, is it generating leads? Right. Is it producing the outcome that you need? Right? Are the people that are coming through that website, right, the ones that do convert, are they well educated, Right. Do they know stuff about your business before they are converting? Right?

Ian
Because if you have a bunch of information on your site, but those people are not experiencing or encountering that, then maybe an issue with your navigation or the organizational structure of your site. So really, I would say direct user feedback is just Asking people, hey, like take a look around, do you think this is effective? Do you think it represents me well? And then additionally, look at the analytics.

Sean
Very similar to the question that we kind of just handled. But how would. What are some reasons a homeowner might leave a contractor’s website without taking any action?

Ian
The, the first and most common reason is slow load times. Right. So if someone clicks on a link in Google search or elsewhere and they start to load your webpage and it takes too long, people will leave almost immediately. People are incredibly impatient. They do not expect that it’s going to take more than a second or two to load that entire page. And if it takes too long, they will leave right away. Another reason is it is the initial sort of screen of the page. The initial load doesn’t communicate to them that website is the solution that they are looking for.

Sean
Okay.

Ian
That is why having clear imagery and clear headers right at the top of the page that explicitly say, hey, like this page is about this. Right. That is really critical to capturing people’s attention. Because if I am looking for, I don’t know, plants, for instance, and I click on a link that I think is going to take me to a place where I can buy plants, and the first thing that loads. Right. Is a, I don’t know, a picture of a kitchen remodel, I’m going to leave. Right. And so you have to make sure that your imagery and your text align with the expectations that you set with both the name of your business and also the link that you are providing to people.

Sean
I know that speed thing is very big. Attention spans are shorter and shorter every day, for sure. And I know specifically Google has a rating system.

Ian
Yeah.
Sean
Where I think it’s the max amount is 3 seconds. So if your website is over 3 seconds, seconds to load, you’re. You’re getting demoted. Right.

Ian
For sure. Yeah. It’s, it’s partly about the load times, but more than anything, it’s about user behavior. Right. So Google is able to see how quickly someone both enters and exits a website your bounce. Right. So they are able to look and see, okay, this user has clicked on a link to this website, they arrived at their destination, they stayed for maybe a. And then they left. What Google takes that as is a signal that website is not very good. Right. Or that it did not solve that user’s problem. Right. And if that happens frequently, that is very bad for your rankings.

Sean
Sure. Now, with load speed being, you know, very important, how do we make sure that we’re not slowing down our website because I know we want to. Like, I guess the question is like, how much text do we use versus how much images, how many videos? Like, how do we gauge that we’re not slowing down our website?

Ian
Sure. I mean, it’s a balance. Right. So using properly sized images and proper resolute, proper resolution, that just happened to.

Sean
Me a second ago.

Ian
Will help a lot. Right. So making sure that the file size isn’t too big using contemporary formats. So a lot of people will use PNGs and JPEGs, but recommendation is that you use a format called a webp. And then beyond that it can be about just using certain elements sparingly and making sure that you defer, which again, this is slightly technical. It’s not necessarily something people are going to be able to do on their own. But you can essentially defer images from loading initially when the website loads. Let’s say you know that there’s this video asset that takes a long time to render out, then you may essentially have that video be loaded later on the page to give the rest of the page time to fully fill out the content. Right.

Ian

So some of those things are a little bit technical, but the main thing that you can do is just use images appropriately and not overwhelmingly so not too much video, not too much images, and make sure that you’re using modern formatting for those.

Sean
You know. Fun fact, I just learned from Dan, who is our Design creative, that WebP was invented in 2010.

Ian
Interesting. Yeah, I didn’t know that either.

Sean

Yeah. So fun fact, everyone just learned that together.

Ian
Okay.

Sean
WeBP was invented in 2010, so I guess we can go into images and videos. Right. So we all know video is very important. It’s only going to become more and more important. How do we, like, how do we decide to use a video here versus using an image?

Ian
Yeah, I mean, some of that is discretionary. Okay, so like there isn’t like one. Right answer. What I will say is that video has a way of elevating anything that you do and making it seem more professional. Right. Because it is a harder thing to do. Professional photography is very accessible these days. So is professional videography, to be honest. But people are not as familiar with it and they don’t engage with it as often. And so if your website has video elements, they definitely elevate you. They make you seem significantly more professional. That said, you don’t want to just overwhelm a website with video because you got it right. Use it in a way where it Feels appropriate where it makes sense for the context.

Ian
A video background at the top of your website can be very effective at making you look professional and modern. Videos, explaining certain concepts. Right. If you have something that’s slightly more technical or if you have a project that you want to show off, those can all be very effective. But the reality is you’re going to need both. Right? Videos and images are still a requirement. Video hasn’t historically been a requirement, but nowadays, honestly it really is.

Sean
So if you go to a website that has no videos, it’s even tougher. It has no images as well. That is a very outdated website if you have no images. But even now, today, like I’m looking personally, I mean, I’m a video guy.

Ian
Yeah.

Sean
So when I go to a website, I am personally looking for a video as well.

Ian
It’s the easiest kind of content to consume and it’s the format of content that people are most accustomed to consuming now. And it is only heading more and then more in that direction. Younger generations especially, they don’t. Again, not an insult, it’s just a reality of they consume a lot of video content. It is what is provided to them, it is what is on the platforms that they use most frequently and as a result that’s what they expect. So we’re in this era where it’s not really absolutely a requirement because there’s not a ton of gen zers out there necessarily that are buying high end home remodels. There’s some, not that many, but we’ll.

Sean
Be seeing more and more though, for sure.

Ian
Yeah. And as time goes on, right, if your business doesn’t adapt to sort of emerging technologies, new expectations of how content is sort of distributed and consumed, you are going to be left in that position where you are the straight text website. In an era where people are starting to add photos. Right. We’re making a new sort of transition here. Video is really becoming ubiquitous. Right. So it’s something that you need to be using on your website for sure.

Sean
Now you talked about like different file types for images. Are there anything we can do for video to be able to use more and not slow down the website?

Ian
You know, honestly, when it comes to file types for video, there’s not really the same solutions. There are ones that are more compressed and easier on loads. But the best way that I know of to not impact load speeds is really to defer video. Right. So for instance, on many of our websites, when a website is loaded on desktop as opposed to when it is loaded on mobile the video will not always be the background that we use, right? So on desktop there may be a video background for a page, but on mobile it might just be an image. Right. And the reason for that is because the connection is different, Right. When you are accessing a website on your phone, typically you’re accessing through a cellular network or WI fi, right? But if you are accessing through a cellular network, right.

Ian
Your ability to retrieve those files fast and efficiently is going to be significantly reduced. Right? And so making sure that the mobile version of your site loads more quickly is a huge asset in terms of making sure that you don’t have that bounce rate problem when people are accessing your website on a cellular device.

Sean
And I would say that’s probably more important to be mobile first because more and more people are accessing websites on their phones rather than or mobile devices rather than being in front of a computer.

Ian
For sure. The majority of web traffic these days is coming from people’s phones.

Sean
Now, Dan told me a little bit about CDNs using those to host your files. Is this something that you would recommend as well, or can you talk me a little bit through that as well?

Ian
So a CDN is a content delivery network. And essentially what a content delivery network is, it’s a service that you pay for. And they servers all around, sometimes a particular country, but many of them have servers all around the world. Essentially what they do is they will host a version of your files on a local server so that when somebody goes out to access that website, they are accessing those files from a server bank that is close to them as opposed to very far away. Okay, maybe. Honestly, this probably requires some context as well. Anytime that you build a website that you want, or anything for matter, that you want hosted on the Internet, right? You want it to be available on the Internet. You have to buy space on a server, right? Which is essentially like a large bank of computers, right?

Ian
That have a lot of storage, right? And then people are able to access those files through that server. Right? Hosting services are not concerned about proximity, right? They are selling you space. They are not necessarily selling you speed of access. What a content delivery network does is instead of just having one server location, they have hundreds or thousands. So they’ll have a server that’s in New York, and when somebody that’s in New York wants to access your website, they will access those files from the server in New York. Again, it’s a fractional amount of time. It’s not a massive amount of time, but that shaves a Little bit of time off of that retrieval and that load speed for you, which impacts. Right. Your. Your load rate, which impacts your bounce rate. Right.

Ian
So it is definitely a way to improve your speed scores, for sure.

Sean
Yeah. And it may seem fractional, but, like when we’re talking about computers.

Ian
Oh, yeah. Fractions you talked about is three seconds. Yes. Right. So those. That. That fractional amount of time does matter.

Sean
Yeah, yeah. Now, there are no wrong answers to this one. What are the three things that a website must answer immediately?

Ian
Yeah, for sure. Like, what you do right off the bat is huge. So people need to have a clear understanding of. This is the service that is offered. They need to have a clear understanding of how they can contact you. So, like, what step they need to take next. And then they need a way to do that. Right. So you need to be able to say, like, hey, we do kitchen remodeling in Arizona. Right. If you want kitchen remodeling in Arizona. Right. Subheader, click this button. Right. Those three elements essentially encompasses everything that a person needs to know to interact with your business in a succinct manner. Right. So you should be able to concisely express what you do, where you do it, and how to get a hold of you, basically in a few elements right at the top of the page.

Sean
And that’s kind of what I was going to ask next is it’s, you know, obviously it’s supposed to be answered immediately. So, like, where do you put these? Like, where would you find all those?

Ian
What you do and where you do it are going to be your header and subheader right at the top of your page.

Sean
And for people who aren’t website people, what is a header?

Ian

So a header is just the text, Right. That is the primary title for that page. Right. So it’s going to be the biggest element, text element on that page. Typically, it is the first thing on the page as well. So it’s right at the top. And then your sub header is going to be essentially a supporting piece of text that goes directly underneath that. Right. Or somewhere near it, depending on your design style. Right. So all of that information about what you do, where you do it, and sort of what the next step is. Right. Are going to be encapsulated in that. And then your CTA or your. It’s usually going to be a button. Right. Or a form of some kind is going to be that other element that allows people to make that step of reaching out to you.

Ian
And that is either sometimes going to below, sometimes it can Be by the side sometimes it can be in the top right hand corner. It really depends on your design. But all of it is going to be available in the initial load of the website. So visible almost immediately upon someone accessing your URL.

Sean
Now, we’ve mentioned CTAs a few times. I don’t know, I can’t recall if we kind of described what that is. For people who also may not know what a CTA is. I know we know it because we’re in this world.

Ian
It means call to action. And all it is a bit of text with a interactive element on your website that allows them to perform an action. Right. So let’s say the thing that you want your website to do is to book consulting consultation calls, right? You may have a button on your website that you use on a regular basis says book your consultation. Right? Literally all it is going to do, somebody clicks on that button, it takes them to a form where they can fill out an application to get on your calendar. Right. CTA can be a variety of different things depending on what you’re trying to achieve. So if you wanted more email subscribers, it could be subscribe to our newsletter. Right. Or if you wanted to sell a particular product, it could be. Right, buy this now. Right.

Ian
All it is a set of action oriented words that motivate people to your desired action on the site and links out to whatever resources they need in order to complete that action. Right. So, so if it’s a purchase, that’s going to be to a purchase page. If it’s a newsletter, it’s going to be a newsletter subscription form. If it is a lead gen thing, then it may be to a calendar.

Sean
Yeah. And would you say something like that? You want to be more simpler, like keep it simple, clear.

Ian
For sure. Yes. But it needs to be descriptive. Okay, Right. So you don’t want like three paragraphs in a button, but you can have some that are a little bit longer depending on the sort of design style that you’re going to go for. But generally speaking, shorter is better. Right. So book your call is a great cta. Right. It expresses exactly what you’re trying to get the user to do in three words. Right. And one of them is action oriented. That’s the only thing I would say it’s like for sure necessary is like, don’t just say like something random without it being something that motivates people towards doing something specific. Right. So saying like order a new kitchen, right?

Ian
Well, I mean you could do that if you can sell a kitchen Online you can actually have an order form and they can pay you. That’s great. I don’t know how you do that, but you wouldn’t want something random like just saying kitchens. That’s not clear enough about what the next step is.

Sean
I don’t know, it might inspire someone to be like, I wonder what this means. Let me click on it.

Ian
I mean that’s possible. That’s possible. But generally speaking, best practice is to have a clear, concise phrase that clearly expresses what the next step is. Right. Because you want them to anticipate what they’re going to have to do on that next page. Right. So book. Your call very clearly tells me that if I click on that button I’m going to a place where I can book a call.

Sean
Yeah, that makes sense. Now this may be an open ended question but like of the websites you’ve seen for contractors, what would you say are some of the more common mistakes you see contractor specific making on their website?

Ian
Using bad photos. Okay, that’s like a huge one.

Sean
Yeah.

Ian
People.
Sean
I think it’s a very visual medium for sure.

Ian
I mean, yeah. If you, if you build houses. Right. Like at the end of the day it’s something that’s a physical product, it’s a design oriented product. Having low quality images of those projects really doesn’t do you any favors.

Sean
Sure. So especially nowadays when all of our, even our phones can take high quality photos for sure. I mean obviously you want to spend some money and hire a photographer but you know, it’s almost no excuse when your phone could still get a pretty decent photo.

Ian
Yeah, yeah. So I would say that. And then honestly, excessive form sizes. A lot of contractors have a hard time with the idea of sort of pre qualifying along the way. Right. And through the sales process. And so they will ask too much upfront and that really inhibits the site’s ability to generate leads.

Sean
Okay.

Ian
So those are two things I see quite frequently. That and then outdated designs. I think a lot of people, right, like they got their websites built a while ago, it’s been functional enough for them. They don’t think about it that often and they don’t realize, right. That it’s having a negative impact on their brand image.

Sean
We actually, I see that a lot myself and we kind of touched on that when I did the last episode with Dan who was talking about design. They do. It’s the same thing where it’s a logo that they’ve had in, you know, the company for 20 years and they have this nostalgia that they’re stuck to it. Would you say it’s the same thing for, like, websites where they’re like, I had this built and I’m proud of it, and so they think that it’s okay?

Ian
You know, honestly, I think more often it’s just neglect. Right.

Sean
Okay.

Ian
I think contractors are. I mean, they’re busy people, right?

Sean
Yeah.

Ian
And they have a lot on their plate and the website is there and they’re like, I have a website. Right. And they don’t really give as much thought to how it is impacting their business as they should.

Sean
Yeah.

Ian
Right. So the logo stuff, I think, is a little bit different. People tend to be more sentimental when it comes to design aspects. The website is typically a reflection of whatever design elements they have. Right. So if they had a logo in the past, and it’s not great, for sure. Right. That impacts the overall aesthetic of the website. But generally speaking, honestly, the website piece is more about sort of it just not being the priority, which is totally understandable. But I think a lot of people don’t recognize how useful a new website can be to their business until they really, like, either see someone that has one and they’re like, oh, my goodness, like, why don’t I have something like this? Or. Right. They start to realize, hey, my website’s not doing what it used to do. Right.

Ian
It’s not producing the leads it used to produce. Right. And they start asking questions about why that is.

Sean
Is there a certain time frame where you’re like, you’d recommend, you need to be evaluating, updating your website or.

Ian
Yeah, I mean, that. That really depends. So, like, there are some styles of design that are pretty timeless. Right. Like, and if you’ve really put the effort in and thought through the aesthetic of your site, you probably don’t need a full rebuild for quite a while, but you will always need to maintain that website. Website is not a static element. It is supposed to be a dynamic reflection of your business. And if your business is changing, then your website needs to change to reflect those changes in your business. Right. So if that’s not something that you’re actively doing and you’ve sort of had a set it and forget it attitude towards your website, then very quickly that website is no longer going to serve you. Right. So I’d say if you did it yourself and. Right.

Ian
You were kind of like, okay with the aesthetic. You weren’t sure you loved it, and you maybe didn’t have a fully fleshed out idea of what your brand is, check in on it. Every couple years, might be every two, three years. Right. Take a look around, see what other people are doing, see what’s different about what they’re doing, and consider making a change. If you’ve really gone through the process of formulating a brand identity for your business, you know what your colors are, you know what your logo is, you know what your general aesthetic is, and you have built a website that reflects that aesthetic and that hasn’t changed, then you don’t need a full rebuild. What you do need is to continue to maintain that property. Right.

Ian
Make sure that you’re updating the information on it adding new photos, adding maybe some video elements here and there as you sort of acquire those sorts of assets, and then doing marketing activities on that site. So if you’re doing SEO, right. Like making sure that you’re investing that energy and time.

Sean
Now one of the things that you could be adding is like storytelling content, right? Yeah. Where you have the basics of your website that generally stay the same, but you’re adding, you know, blogs or what we call featured project pages on, you know, your builds. How does adding a story to your website help build trust and engagement in your site?

Ian

Yeah, I mean, storytelling is fundamentally essential for pretty much all marketing. Right.

Sean
So people buy from stories and narratives.

Ian
Yeah. Well, I mean, it’s. Honestly, it’s how we understand the world. Right? Right. Like human beings, generally speaking, we don’t engage with the world through. Right. Data. In fact, some of us are more analytical than others. But generally speaking, we engage with information through a narrative. Right. And so when you are, as a business, honestly, you need to have a narrative for your business. You need to have a history, like, where do you come from? What are your motivations in doing what you do? Why do you do what you do? What are your values? Right. And then that needs to bleed into how you discuss your product. Because honestly, that’s what differentiates you from others. Right. There are a lot of people, the world’s a big place. There’s almost always. Unless you’re in a super niche space, you’ve invented something new.

Ian
There’s always, almost always somebody who does the same thing that you do. Right. Your story is how you differentiate yourself from those other people. Right. So when you are making, when you’re talking about a project, you can just say, hey, yeah, we did it. We built a house and it was green and we put some trim on it and it has siding. Right. And like, it’s cool, right. And that’s a Bunch of facts and like, that’s fine, but it’s not particularly compelling. Whereas if you say, right, this is Eric and Jenna, right? And they are homeowners in Michigan, right? And they were sort of growing their family, they’re having their child, right?

Ian
And they realized, hey, it’s either time for us to move out of this house and like, get something bigger because we don’t have enough space, or right, we need to expand this one. And at the end of the day, they decided, right, this is their home, right. That it’s something that they valued and they cared about. And they decided, like, you know what, we’re going to stay here. We’re going to make this place, like enough for our new family size, right? And we got to partner with them, right? We got to partner with them in creating this sort of new addition to the home, keeping them in their space and making sure, right, like that they got to live in this place for years to come, right? And now it’s the kind of place where they’re not going to need to leave, right?

Ian
They’ve grown to the size they’re at, right? They’re going to be here. They don’t plan on leaving. That’s a whole different narrative. You can show the process along that way and you can create an image of this and tell that narrative that’s deeply compelling on a human level in a way that, hey, this is a greenhouse edition that we did is not. So when you are thinking through your website content, or any kind of content for that matter, don’t just think about the facts, right? Facts are fine, but they’re not particularly compelling on their own. Think about the why behind that thing, right? Like. And the who, right? Like, what is, is the process? What is the motivation behind this thing? Why is it happening? Who is it impacting? Right? Tell that story. Because that’s the thing that is going to attach.

Ian
Get somebody attached and connected to your business. That’s the thing that one also, it creates an image of you as a person, right? It gives some character to you. You’re not just a business anymore or you’re a group of people doing something in a community with other people, right? Which fundamentally everything that we do is relational. And so making sure that you are crafting a narrative through your website, copy through feature project pages are which again, I need to explain.

Sean
That’s gonna be my next question.

Ian
Yeah, it’s a term that we use essentially for what I just described, right. And so we study, right? Yeah, it Is, but it’s more narrative Dragon. So we will take information about a project, information about the homeowners of that project, information about the process, images of the process, photos, videos, whatever, right? And we will craft essentially a narrative from beginning to end right, about that project. The main benefit of that is that it’s a super effective sales tool. It’s very useful for getting people a sense of, like, who you are as a business owner, what your process is like. But coincidentally, they’re also very effective SEO content as well, because they’re hyper localized and they demonstrate something that we call, not we call, everybody calls eat, which is a Google ranking factor called expertise, experience, authority and trust, right?

Ian
And a feature project page does an exceptional job of demonstrating, right, that you have experience and expertise, right? You’ve done this kind of work before, you’ve done it well, right? And then you are an authority in the space because you’re educating people, right? You’re delivering this content and you have trust. That’s part of it, is localizing you, right? Making sure, like this project is located in Ann Arbor or wherever it is, and it gives real human feedback into that system, right? We’re adding testimonials from the homeowners into that process, right? So they’re incredibly effective from a sales perspective, from a storytelling perspective, but also from an SEO perspective. So. So that is one way that we inject storytelling into our websites. We do make a habit of doing that all throughout our copy.

Ian

So that ends up in our homepage copy, our About Us page copy and the like. But the feature project pages are kind of like our feature element when it comes to narrative building.

Sean
So if you were to give some clear action steps next, like what can. What is something easy that a contract can do next to possibly improve their page?

Ian
Get their website. Get good media.

Sean
Get good media.

Ian
That’s huge. If you are looking at your website and you’re like, hey, this doesn’t look quite like I want it. To improve your photos, get some video, right? Do that kind of thing. If you can’t do video, start with just some good photos, right? Like hire a professional photographer. They’re not crazy expensive. Have them take some photos of your completed work. That will go a long way to improving the aesthetic of your website. Other than that, I would say make sure that you have proper CTA placement, right? So if you are not clearly illustrating to people, here are the steps that you can take to move to the next step. With me as a business owner, your website is never going to do what you needed to do. Right. You have to give people an opportunity to convert in some way. Right.

Ian
So look through your site. Say, hey, like when I’m looking through the average page, is there very clear way for me to reach out to the business? Right. And if that’s not the case, you need to work in some additional CTAs. So those two things I would say. Right. If you can accomplish those, and those are things you’re not currently doing, that’ll have a massive benefit to your current site.

Sean
Absolutely. Well, that’s all I’ve got for you based on websites, unless you had anything else you want to talk about.

Ian
Nope. I think that’s good.

Sean
All right, well, thank you for coming on the podcast.

Ian
Of course.

Sean
Yeah. If you want to hear more, hit the subscribe button like us. If you have any questions, comments, you can leave them in the comment section down below. Thank you for joining us on Contractor Growth Network podcast.

Ian
See you next time.

Sean
See you next time.