Why your contractor website isn’t getting leads

Most contractor websites don’t fail because they look dated. They fail because someone landed on them, from Google or a referral, and couldn’t quickly find what they needed to pick up the phone. Here’s a checklist you can work through on your own phone in about ten minutes.

The checklist

Give yourself a point for each one you can honestly tick.

1. Your phone number is one tap away on a phone. Open your site on your phone. Is the number at the top, and does tapping it start a call? Most of your visitors are on a phone, often standing in their yard.
2. Each service has its own page. “Interlock”, “lawn care” and “snow removal” are different searches. One “Services” page listing all three rarely shows up for any of them.
3. You say where you work. Name the towns you serve, in plain words, on the pages that matter. Someone searching “landscaper in Welland” wants to see Welland.
4. There’s proof of real work. Photos of your own jobs, with the town and what you did, and reviews from real customers. Stock photos of someone else’s patio don’t count.
5. The form is short, and it reaches you. Name, a way to reach them, and what they need. Send yourself a test today and check it arrives, including in your spam folder.
6. It loads fast on a phone. If you’re waiting for it on your own phone, so is everyone else, and some of them leave.
7. Your Google Business Profile is complete and links to the site. Many local calls start in the map results, not on your website. The two should match: same name, phone number and services.
8. You know where your leads come from. If a call comes in, can you tell whether it came from Google, a referral or a truck sign? Without that, you can’t tell what’s working.
9. Someone answers quickly. A lead that waits a day for a reply has often called the next company on the list. Our free lead leak calculator shows what slow replies cost you in a year.
10. It says what happens next. “Request a quote” works better when the page also says what the visitor gets and when: a call back, a visit, a written quote.

How you scored

• 8 to 10: the basics are in place. The next step is usually more pages for the services and towns you want more of, and more reviews.
• 5 to 7: a few fixes will make a real difference. Start with whichever of numbers 1, 2, 5 and 9 you missed; they cost the most leads.
• 0 to 4: the site is likely costing you work. It’s often quicker to rebuild it properly than to patch it.

What to fix first

If you only have an afternoon, do these three things:

1. Put a tappable phone number at the top of every page.
2. Send a test enquiry through your own form and make sure it reaches you.
3. Finish your Google Business Profile: services, service area, hours and a few photos of real jobs.

Then work through the rest of the list as time allows. If the answer is a new site, our website packages have published prices.

Want a second opinion?

If you’d rather someone else looked, that’s what the free diagnostic is for. We’ll go through your site and your Google profile, and tell you plainly what we’d fix first and what it would cost. We built the system a Niagara landscaping company runs on, so we know how trades work comes in.