Original Research: 5 Remodeling Website Elements That Make Customers Want To Call

THE BIG IDEA:

Our original research reveals that customers have pretty clear preferences for what they what they want to see on a contractor’s website to feel comfortable turning into a lead – and not all are what you might expect. In fact, very few contractor websites execute well on all five of these items today which suggests that a new model for designing contractor websites may be important.

Demographics At A Glance

Introduction:

There are many ways of designing a website, but some sites clearly drive superior results up and down the funnel. I would argue that a website really has four main purposes in the context of home services companies:

1) First and foremost, your website should efficiently convert qualified digital traffic into high-quality leads.

2) Second, your website should help you drive a large (and growing) number of qualified visitor sessions from the thousands of anonymous people looking for services like yours right now on the Internet. You have probably heard this referred to as search engine optimization (SEO). The more visitors you have (we also call visitors “traffic”), the more opportunities you will have to convert them into leads.

3) Third, your website should be a filter that helps you identify and focus on exactly the people you want to talk to. Traffic comes from lots of places, and some of it is worthless. Chasing worthless inquiries is a waste of your time and resources. Great websites don’t just convert well, they also help the wrong kind of visitors disqualify themselves and move on quickly before they bother you.

4) Last, but definitely not least, the content and technical aspects of your website establish your brand in the mind of the prospect. That headspace travels with them all the way through the sales process and can strongly, if subtly, impact their desire to ultimately become a customer – or not. Websites can both build and destroy trust, desire, etc., and thus will ultimately impact the financial success of your entire operation.

This piece of original research focuses primarily on the first purpose of the website: converting traffic into leads. However, the process of converting traffic into leads is STRONGLY tied to the process of converting leads into customers as I mentioned above, so please consider the following points as being directly relevant to your bottom line in these two different ways.

Medium Sample Consumer Opinion Study

I constructed a study with a statistically significant national sample of 501 homeowners (margin of error +/- 4%). The age range of respondents spanned a wide cross-section of the U.S. homeowner population from 30 years to 80+ years of age, with the vast majority of respondents being between the ages of 45 and 75. All respondents had a household income of at least $75,000, and the majority of respondents lived in households which earned between $75,000 and $125,000 annually. I posed a simple question to this population: what did they need to see on a contractor’s website to feel comfortable contacting the company for a quote?

“Imagine you were on a remodeling company’s website deciding whether to contact them for a quote. How important would each of the following website features be to your decision to ask them for a quote?”

After this question, each homeowner was presented with a sizable list of elements commonly found on home improvement websites like company videos, testimonials, and so forth. They were then asked to rate each element on a 5-point scale ranging from “Not Import” to “Extremely Important” to their decision to contact the company for a quote.

Here are the five contractor website elements ranked as most important to the homeowner’s decision to reach out for a quote:

Results

Number 5: Promotional Offers

Promotional offers answer the question “Why now?” and can be an important conversion tool to get homeowners over the inertia of starting a project about which they may have some anxiety. Surprisingly, smaller offers may actually improve conversion to a modest degree over larger ones because they may seem more believable to some homeowners.

I recommend having a simple, easy to understand, time-limited offer on your landing or conversion pages to get homeowners to pull the trigger before they bounce.

Number 4: Testimonials From Past Customers

This is a tricky one. While homeowners generally like seeing testimonials because it triggers Cialdini’s principle of “social proof,” they also don’t tend to trust reviews posted on a contractor’s website. Are you going to post crappy reviews from angry people? Of course not.

However, this research reveals that having reviews that have a ring of authenticity is better than having no reviews at all, and having links to 3rd party review aggregators is probably best.

Number 3: Step-By-Step Outline Of Your Process

People want to know what they are getting into, especially when they are getting into a process with which they have very limited experience. Wouldn’t you also?

If a doctor diagnosed you with a weird disease that required unfamiliar treatment, many of your early questions would be procedural (what do I need to do, how often, etc.) and experiential (what will it be like, will it hurt, etc.) The same is true for many homeowners working on their homes. While all of these answers are deeply familiar to contractors, we need to remember that most homeowners have very limited, and often incorrect, anecdotal experience.

Lay it out for them. What happens first, second, and third? What do you do to get them to a good outcome? What impact does the process have on their lives? How will you communicate?

A word of caution: This is all about setting expectations. You can drive tons of conversions by saying all the right things, but if they are not true, you will end up meaningfully harming your business’s reputation. There’s a real cost to getting this wrong, so be honest.

99% of problems happen because someone gets surprised.

Number 2: A Clean, Easy To Use Design

This is a big one. For all of you out there who focus more on the work than the website, you’re shooting your results in the foot. 64% of homeowners ranked having a clean and well-designed website as either “very” or “extremely” important to making their conversion decision.

Remember that in this specific area you are in direct competition with mega-brands like Amazon, Apple, Coke, and Chevy. These folks set consumer’s expectations for what a professional website should look and feel like. I’m not saying that consumers expect your small roofing company to have a multi-million dollar website, but they are expecting a higher level of service and thoughtful design than they used to. Hard to use, ugly, or dated websites reflect badly on your brand and will harm your conversion up and down the funnel.

Looks matter. Speed matters. Content (pictures and text) matter perhaps most of all. I don’t have space to get into a full explanation here, but these elements CLEARLY drive user behavior, and user behavior is actually a primary driver of your digital marketing costs, your conversion to lead rate, and your conversion to sale rate.

Number 1: Pricing

Let me quickly summarize what this is, and what it is not.

My research reveals that most homeowners are not looking for a specific price for their project, and many wouldn’t trust it if you just gave them one on your website. Overall they know that you need to look at the house to quote accurately, and they know that different decisions could drive the price up or down. They get all of that.

What they are looking for is someone to set a good expectation for them of what factors can drive a price up and down, as well as a realistic range of what they may spend with you.

I know a lot of people will strongly argue against giving any sort of pricing on the website. Undoubtedly there are lots of issues with that approach, and for that reason I personally don’t suggest it unless those issues are solved.

However, the key point here is that companies which are willing to have the pricing conversation in just about any way on their website will likely reap the rewards from it in two ways: higher conversions, and a better filtration system. People who think your prices are too high or too low will self-select out of your lead pool and not waste your time.

From a content standpoint, I think it’s worth mentioning that people know that they don’t really know what projects should cost. They often just make up numbers or get “ballparks” by comparing apples and oranges. One way to have this conversation without limiting yourself is to talk about pricing in the context of specific products such as ‘this granite is more expensive than that granite by about 20% because of this feature.’ Or, in the context of service companies, you might say that larger companies will often run up to 30% more expensive for Service A because they have higher costs like project managers, larger fleets of vehicles, etc.

Alternatively, you can also talk about price in the context of a benefit like this: “Our company is typically 20-30% more expensive than smaller contractors because we only work with higher-end materials such as A and B which we know will deliver Benefit 1 and Benefit 2 as compared with C. We just simply don’t compromise on quality, and of course that means that we can’t be the cheapest option on the market.”

That gives the customer an idea of what you cost relative to others, without locking yourself into a dollar range. If they value those features highly enough to make it worth the cost difference, they are almost certain to call. If they don’t, they probably weren’t a great prospect anyway.

Wrapping Up

For any given company in any given market there is a “best” way to use all of these features, and that will not be the same for every company or market. Time, testing and market research will often reveal what best looks like in your particular case, but don’t let perfect be the enemy of much better. Give the people what they want, build that trust early, and you’ll find it much easier to set and close them later.