Tag: Loading Speeds

Top 10 Reasons Why Your Plumbing Website Could Be Driving Prospects Away (And What You Can Do About It)

Post author By BlackStorm Home Service Marketing
Post date June 20, 2022

Know why Your Plumbing Business Isn’t Getting Desired Number of Leads Despite Having a Great Website

Your plumbing website has been live for years now, but it doesn’t seem to generate the number of leads you desire. Your email and social media advertising campaigns are bringing in lots of traffic, but nobody is taking the next step of calling your business. So, what’s the issue?

As marketing strategists for trades and home service contractors, we have met many plumbing contractors struggling to grow their businesses. Some were larger plumbing companies with great websites, and some had simple websites. But no matter the size, they all had a similar problem. Their plumbing websites were driving prospects or clients away.

Plumbing websites are meant to generate leads, not just sit around and look pretty. Your site should be generating leads.

Do you feel your plumbing website isn’t generating as many leads or clients as it should?

Are you frustrated that you have to spend countless hours every week waiting for your phone to ring?

You may think that your plumbing website doesn’t obtain sufficient traffic to bring in the leads your company requires, but there is a high likelihood that you can skyrocket the number of leads your site generates, from the same traffic, by fixing these 10 problems.

When it comes to plumbing websites, it’s easy to say “good enough” about functionality and design. After all, “if it’s broken, why fix it?”. But becoming complacent with your plumbing company website is a risky mindset. If you are not continuously enhancing your webpages and appropriately updating trends change, you could be driving potential clients away in droves. Here are the ten blunders that make the prospects on your plumbing website cringe.

1. Outdated Plumbing Website Design

First impressions are important. If the initial impression your website offers is that it has not been updated for some months or years now, you are in for a rude shock. An outdated plumber website will cause new prospects your company is closing soon. Always work with a professional plumbing website designer to assist you in building your site with digital marketing best practices in mind.

2. Complicated or Confusing Navigation

Don’t provide your site visitors with too many options in the main navigation menu. Figure out what needs to be promoted and what can be done on the inside page. Lots of options appear not only sloppy but also confuses new site visitors. If your potential clients cannot easily find what they require, they are going to click off to other plumbing websites.

One of the numerous reasons your plumbing website or landing page requires a simple design is because a confusing or complicated layout can distract your prospects’ eyes from crucial information. Recent eye-tracking studies have shown a tendency to scan a site instead of going through each letter.

3. No Compelling Call to Actions (CTAs)

In sales and marketing, we always use the term “ABC” before closing. The equivalent to that in plumbing websites is to always include a call-to-action. Generally, your plumbing website offers a lot of information on the company’s service or product and later says, “for more details, contact us.”

That’s great, but your site visitors require direction. Your plumbing website needs to be more specific in telling them how to reach you, which needs to be easy.

A call-to-action in your plumbing website needs to be into two major forms. The initial is your call to action within the text of your website, and it should state for instance “To learn more about our custom plumbing repair offering, fill out our contact form or call us at 619-555-1312 for immediate assistance today”.

If you fail to give website visitors a clear direction on what you want them to do after landing on your site-in simple terms –a compelling call to action-they won’t stay on your website for long but will click off to another plumber’s website.

Be clear about what you want prospects or clients to do when they come to your plumbing website. Tell them “request a quote now” or “subscribe now if you want to gain more email newsletter subscribers.

4. Misaligned, Poor Quality, or Insufficient Content

Consumers go online to assist respond to their questions and make a decision to book a job with a local plumber. If your plumbing website doesn’t have a blog, client testimonials or service demos, etc., you can kick those client’s goodbye. Being helpful and transparent are important to establish trust with your leads and eventually their business. If your plumbing website only promotes your business and doesn’t contain content to educate your buyers, then they will go to another website that is committed to solving their problems or concerns.

You only have a few seconds to convert a potential lead into a client and even less time to create a great first impression. If the content doesn’t resonate with the visitor, either in content or tone, they won’t feel it was focused on them.

The impression created by vague content or poor grammar and spelling is even worse. Don’t allow poorly written content to drive away your high-value leads. When describing your plumbing service or product, show it as a solution to the challenges potential clients are facing.

Proofread and edit your content before publishing or hire a plumbing SEO content agency to do it for you. When your content resonates with prospects or clients, they will feel more engaged with your business and as a consequence, are likely to want to read more.

5. Your Plumbing Website is Not Responsive/Mobile-Friendly

Nowadays, people are spending more hours on their mobile devices than ever before to search for local service businesses like yours. If your plumbing website is not responsive on devices other than a desktop computer, then you are driving potential clients away.

Some prospective leads want to book jobs with your company, but they cannot since they are attempting to access a desktop site from a mobile device like a Smartphone. More and more clients and plumbers are utilizing their mobile devices to read the news, shop, and contact other service providers, and that implies your lead generation efforts should follow suit.

Instead of waiting for prospects to go away and access your plumbing website from their desktop computer, a mobile-friendly strategy will assist you to reach them and convert them, wherever they might be.

6. Your Plumbing Website Doesn’t Provide Anything to Potential Clients

How can you obtain leads if you don’t have anything valuable to provide your prospects?

Your plumber website should contain helpful (not salesy) resources, content, and provides that prospects are itching to put their hands on. Think of white papers, e-books, slide decks, consultations, guides, and more.

You want to have a variety of content that will appeal to prospects depending on where they are in their buying journey. For instance, a “getting started” guide works for a prospect who is still exploring all of their options, while a free consultation or demo is ideal for someone who is ready to book a job with your company.

7. Slow Loading Speeds

Modern browsers are becoming accustomed to fast-loading plumbing websites. This implies that you are testing your prospect’s patience when your website loads in more than three seconds. In most instances, they will click off to another plumber’s website instead of waiting for your website to load.

A recent study found that slow-loading websites can frustrate your prospects or clients. Having such a website can lower your search engine rankings, as Google considers page loading speed in their search engine algorithm.

Simply put, your plumbing website must load faster and cater to their great swift internet connections.

8. Unprofessional or Poor Photography

Your plumbing website, in many cases, is the initial impression a client obtains of your company. Yet many plumbers skimp on photography. Stock photos don’t work nowadays. If you are utilizing stock photos, you will be able to tell and make your site feel cheesy,

Using quality images (probably of your team performing some work) is an effective way to build a more emotional experience for your visitor, but ensure they are unique and of high quality and showcase your real business or plumbing services.

9. Too Much Clutter

When it comes to designing your plumbing website, little is always preferred than more.

Although it can be tempting to hit your prospects or clients with everything at once and add interactive widgets, this can cause them to be overwhelmed by too much information. Consider your prospect or client each step of the way and build your website with an intention of offering the best user experience for them.

By taking the time to correct the flaws above, your website will begin to achieve higher levels of traffic and higher engagement levels across the board.

10. Crazy Scrolling and Pop-up Ads

If your plumbing website has tons of unnecessary pop-ups, scrolling that your prospects can’t scan or read your content, that is a great turn-off for modern browsers. Call to action is awesome, but spammy and annoying links will drive traffic to your rivals.

Improve Your Plumbing Website Design to Generate Leads Consistently Every Month on Autopilot

Getting new clients for your plumbing business requires many strategies, and almost all of them hinge on online interactions.

The most crucial digital marketing asset you have is your plumbing website. Your plumber website design should incorporate several best practices, such as the ones we have highlighted below. When you implement them, you can generate more conversions/leads.

Your Plumbing website should be responsive/mobile-friendly

Many people looking for plumbing services do so on their smartphones. In most instances, they require urgent help, so they utilize the most convenient tool. If clients find your plumbing business online and land on your website on their smartphone, they anticipate your site to load within three seconds and adapt to their device. Thus, it is important that your plumbing company site appear and display perfectly on mobile.

Your plumbing website should include social media links

New clients want evidence that your business is trustworthy and reputable. The effective way to showcase this is through social proof. That could include testimonials, customer service awards, reviews, and ratings. Ensure these things are prominently visible on your plumbing website so that potential clients can conduct due diligence and ensure that your plumbing company is legit.

Your Website should describe what you do and the clients you serve

While plumber services, in general, are the same, you want to be candid and clear about what you provide and who your ideal clients are. If you offer any specialized plumbing services, ensure that such pages are separate on your website, and this can improve your organic search greatly. Beyond services, you should not indicate if you work in the commercial or residential market or both.

Your Plumbing Website Should be easy to navigate

Don’t make it difficult for prospects to find what they require. Make sure your menu is easier to find and resonates with the hierarchy. If prospects land on your plumbing website and find it easy, they may connect with you faster.

Your Plumbing Website Should Have a Professional Design

Your website typically represents your company, so don’t go it alone. Work with a Professional plumbing website design agency that has experience in your industry. By so doing, you will get a website that works and looks well.

Invest in Your Plumbing Website, and It Will Give Back in form of Qualified Leads

Making these upgrades to your site user experience and navigation will require an investment of time, but every hour spent improving your website will save many hours wasted manually chasing leads.

There you have it, ten factors that could be driving prospects away from your plumbing website. If you don’t have the time to implement these changes to create a consistent sales funnel that will generate high-value leads every month, our web designers can help with that.

Schedule a free discovery call with BlackStorm Design + Marketing to learn more about plumbing website design services today.

Plumbing Website Design

12 Creative Plumbing Website Design Ideas That Will Get Prospects Clicking and Booking Jobs

Post author By BlackStorm Home Service Marketing
Post date June 1, 2022

Woman sitting on the floor with laptop while having idea

Website design ideas for plumbers that you need to know.

A great plumbing website is your ticket to generating more qualified leads, differentiating yourself from the competition, and growing your company. That said, creating a website for your plumbing business can be a huge challenge; it is kind of hard to design the best reflection of your business digitally.

Consider it as a “visual storefront” where your homepage is the front door. Think of your website homepage as an analogy to your home’s curb appeal. It is the initial thing many people notice when they visit your plumbing website, so you should wow them from the moment your page loads. You want your plumbing website to be visually appealing enough to invite them in, and a creative web design helps you achieve that.

But creating a great plumber website isn’t about aesthetics. You also want the homepage to convert. Like an inaccessible driveway and broken front door prevents potential clients from closing the sale. The same applies to your plumbing website.

Prospects won’t or can’t convert if you fail to offer them an incentive to do so, and don’t make converting as intuitive and easy as possible. The initial step in winning over more clients is to understand the important elements that you should go into designing your plumbing website.

What Makes a Good Plumbing Website?

Many plumbing contractors feel frustrated because they aren’t obtaining the number of leads they need. For others, the issue is much more critical: they aren’t obtaining the number of leads they want, and their plumbing company is in jeopardy.

If that sounds familiar, there is a higher likelihood that your plumbing company website has a role to do with it.

If your website lacks crucial information, is unprofessional, and is difficult to navigate, the prospect will likely click off to another plumber’s website.

Here is our list of plumbing website must-have design features to convert more browsers into paying clients:

1. User-Friendly and Responsive Design

The initial requirement of any professional web design is its user-friendliness. A user-friendly and responsive plumbing website design is vital to providing an excellent user experience. It will ensure that your prospects or clients are always happy and satisfied, converted into plumbing leads, and consequently, become your clients to obtain the same experience.

Here are a few tips to consider while designing a user-friendly and responsive plumbing website:

Make sure your site loads faster (typically within three seconds) and doesn’t have a lot of distractions such as pop-ups.
Keep it easy and seamless to navigate to help prospects or clients find what they require within a few clicks.
Declutter your web content and coy, but don’t make it overwhelming for potential clients.
Responsive site design makes your website easily accessible from multiple devices such as mobile, tablets, desktops, and laptops.
Consider your font size and style for easy navigation and readability.

2. Search Engine Visibility

More than 90% of online activity actually starts with typing in a search query in Google or Bing. Clients who type “plumber near me” into search engines are likely to click one of the results they found on the first page of Google search results.

Search engine optimization is a great way to generate more leads and bring in traffic for your plumbing business. With the assistance of local SEO services for plumbers, you can notice a rise in your lead generation efforts. By implementing SEO on your plumbing website, you can focus on keywords that can skyrocket your online visibility, generate more leads and get more traffic for your plumbing business.

Here are some tips that can help to make your plumbing website search engine friendly:

Optimize your plumber website with location-specific plumbing keywords to boost your online visibility.
Revamp your plumbing website hierarchy model and revise your internal linking structure to help Google or Bing understand the most crucial pages that should rank higher.
Design your webpages with proper URL structure, heading tags, metadata, image Alt text, title tags, and other elements.
Optimize your plumbing website structure, minimize crawl budget, create an XML sitemap, and implement Robots.txt.

3. Include a Professional Company Logo

A professional logo will help to distinguish your business from other plumbers and make your prospects easily recognize your plumbing business. It provides a great way to showcase your business’s mission, values, and vision.

A professional logo is an excellent way to create an impression on your target market’s needs concerning your seriousness towards building trust and can assist you with your branding efforts.

So, invest your money and time into your plumbing company logo and develop a great design. You can use an online logo maker or hire a plumbing website design agency out there.

Your branding includes your plumbing fonts, colors, and logo, and it helps clients easily recognize your business in a sea of other plumbers online.

4. Responsive Website Design

A client’s need for a plumbing service company can often be in an emergency situation. When homeowners have leaky pipes, they want to avoid the hassle and find a local plumber easily and quickly. Most searches start where it’s most convenient: on a smartphone.

Internet users have changed from using desktop computers to mobile devices over the last decade. Across the world, more than half of internet activity occurs on a tablet or phone. If your plumbing website doesn’t feel and look excellent on a mobile, Google is less likely to recommend it to future clients.

Even if a prospect can access your plumbing website on their phone, they have a slim chance of becoming a client if the site’s features aren’t mobile responsive. If a tablet or phone users cannot access the full content of your site at a faster and more convenient speed, they are likely to click off and find another plumbing site online.

To avoid prospects getting annoyed and going back to the search bar, you will require a mobile website with accessible design, implying that important elements like menus and buttons are easy to click and view. The display should be tweaked to the dimensions of different mobile devices, presenting the client with a clean site code that they can navigate seamlessly.

Tablet and phone users should also access your plumbing business content at a convenient speed. Regardless of what device they are using, faster loading times ensure that you don’t lose clients. As of 2019, Google indexes and ranks websites based on their mobile interface.

5. A Clear Call to Action (CTA)

Now that you have brought your prospects or clients to your website and assisted them to access it with ease, what do you want them to do next?

You no doubt want your clients to convert because that’s your primary goal. To achieve that, you should include a clear call-to-action at prominent places on your plumbing website so that prospects or clients understand what you want them to do next.

Another winning plumbing website design idea is to create a compelling call to action. Including a generic CTA such as ‘learn more, ‘Click here, ‘Sign UP,’ etc., can put clients off instantly, and they do provide the necessary step for prospects to take the next step.

Here are some tips you can use to improve your CTA to help generate more plumbing leads:

Be creative and unique while crafting your CTAs
Personalize your CTA by including words such as ‘You’, ‘Your” or ‘My” works perfectly
Keep your CTAs at the bottom of your content to help them take the desired action.
Add relevant icons in your CTAs to increase leads and CTR.

6. Faster Loading Speeds

If prospects or clients have to wait for over 3 seconds for pages to load on your plumbing website, there is a high likelihood that they will click off to another plumbing company website. According to Google, a plumbing website that loads within ten seconds increases consumer bounce rates by 123%.

The faster your plumbing website loads, the more clients will be encouraged to learn and stay about your plumbing service. A simple, sleek plumbing web design is crucial to minimizing your loading time. 80 % of loading is rendering to various elements of your plumbing website. If your site is full of complicated redirects, every activity on your website will take longer. Keeping your site mobile-friendly, simple, and clutter-free will help improve prospects or clients’ experience.

7. List Plumbing Services You Provide

Plumbing can be likened to an umbrella under which plumbers provide different types of plumbing services. If prospects can’t find the services they require, they will bounce off your plumbing website right at the initial second. Thus, it is crucial to design a unique section for the plumbing services that you offer.

So, make sure that you list your plumbing services on your site and discuss each service so that prospects who don’t know about them can familiarize themselves with them.

8. Show Your Competitive Difference

Could you figure out the features that make your plumbing services better than that of other plumbers? If yes, you need to communicate the same to your prospects and clients to convince them why your service is worth their money and time.

Your plumbing USP has to be displayed on your site’s “Why Us” section. You will have to comprehensively analyze your competitors, know what makes you different from them, and promote your unique abilities.

9. Strong Security

Customers are typically cautious about surrendering their personal information to service businesses like plumbers they aren’t familiar with, particularly online. Massive companies, including eBay and Adobe, hit the headlines when they experienced data breaches, leading to the public leaking of sensitive information. A plumber web design that keeps personal information hidden from the bad guys(hackers) is crucial to safeguard your customers.

Instead of using a URL starting with HTTP, a secure web address begins with HTTPS. The “S” denotes secure, implying that the details clients share on your page aren’t stored in plain text, which hackers can access easily.

10. Awards and Reviews

Another plumbing web design factor to consider that heavily impacts lead generation is adding reviews, testimonials, and social proof. They are the most trustable social proof from customers and industry leaders who have already used your plumbing services.

If your clients are pleased with your plumbing service, they will be glad to write a few lines for you. You can display these reviews, testimonials, and awards on your website for prospects to see and understand the quality of your plumbing services.

Don’t restrict yourself to obtaining reviews on your plumbing website only. Encourage your clients to review your plumbing services on Google My Business, social media, and anywhere on the internet where prospects can find them easily.

11. Add Original Videos and Photos

Adding authentic videos and photos to your plumbing website will boost your claim about your plumbing services. Here are some of the ways your plumbing company can leverage the photos and videos to your advantage:

Hire a professional photographer to take photos of your team on a project or record a video.
Post detailed DIY guides or videos on how to solve basic plumbing issues.
Commit a section of a whole page for video and image gallery for visitors to obtain a glimpse of your plumbing services
Designing such a section/page will improve confidence in your target audience to book jobs with your plumbing company

12. Make it Easy for Prospects to Request Plumbing Service

Your plumbing website should help prospective leads and customers schedule service appointments easily. Adding effective CTA buttons on your website, particularly in the services and contact section, will ensure that prospects don’t have to run around to booking appointments or service requests.

Don't Go Yet!

Request A Custom Quote For Your Design & SEO.