1. How to make a great website

After helping more than 200 clients establish their online presence, Alex has distilled the four essential components of a successful home services website:

1. Memorable brand name & logo

2. Simple landing page

3. Call-to-action to engage leads

4. Optimized pages for marketing campaigns

For the brand name and logo, Alex recommends keeping things simple but investing in a communicative and memorable name and logo so customers know exactly what services are offered.

The same parameters apply to your landing page. You don't have to spend much money on your website. Still, it should be professionally designed and include social proof that assures potential customers that you can deliver the services advertised. Alex builds his clients’ websites on Webflow, but more straightforward tools like GoDaddy and Wix can also be a great starting point.

After creating a solid brand name, logo, and landing page for your business, it's essential to include a clear and prominent CTA (call-to-action) to engage potential customers.

For most home service businesses, the CTA will be something like “Contact Us” or “Request Quote” and be tied into a CRM like Jobber or HouseCall Pro.

(We dive into the specifics around a killer CTA in the next section.)

Next, you’ll want to create a few lead channel-specific landing pages so that when a lead comes to your website from a marketing campaign on Google, Facebook, or other channels, they’re met with an optimized experience to increase conversion rates.

2. Crafting a compelling call-to-action

The ultimate goal of a home service business website should be to convert leads into paying customers. A crucial step in this lead-to-customer funnel is a compelling call-to-action.

But, not all CTAs are built the same. When deciding which CTA makes the most sense for your business, you can draw inspiration from Alex’s four favorite flavors:

1. Phone Call

2. Contact Us

3. Request Quote

4. Book Now

The CTA you choose must be correlated to the timeliness of your services. If your service is something that people need immediately, like a locksmith or tow truck, it’s probably a bad idea to ask leads to fill out a form and wait to be contacted.

If your business provides a service that does not require immediate attention, such as cleaning, you may ask potential clients to complete a basic contact form to receive a quote for the service or book it directly.

This approach eliminates unnecessary conversations and can result in jobs being booked automatically. You can significantly reduce wasted time and effort by offering clients the option to request quotes and book services without human interaction.

3. A picture is worth a thousand words

Great pictures on your website help with a few things. It builds trust with your customers, clarifies what services you offer, shows social proof that you do good work, and shows the exact results customers can expect when hiring you.

The best part is that you don’t have to spend much money getting professional photos. Alex says the current iPhones are powerful enough to get started taking great pictures for your website.

While Alex recommends using original photos to maximize authenticity, you can start with high-quality stock photos from sites like Pexels or Unsplash. Make sure to pick images that don’t look overly staged or like stock photography.

4. Social proof is everything

Social proof convinces people that a product or service that’s gained attention or revenue from others is something they should also buy.

The most common example of social proof at play in home services is reviews. When a product or service has a lot of great reviews, new customers are more likely to buy it.

Alex says that social proof should be front and center on your website and that his clients use tools like NiceJob to automate review gathering and sharing.

Before and after photos are another powerful form of social proof that Alex works on with his clients, especially those who provide cleaning or power washing services. These photos communicate a clear value proposition and show the customer the results they can expect.

5. Website? Have you heard of Yelp?

While a website is a core piece of any business’s digital presence today, consumers increasingly turn to platforms like Google, Yelp, Angi, and Thumbtack to procure home service providers.

So, while it may seem like the website is a superfluous property, Alex says that even leads who find your business through a third-party platform eventually end up on your website to complete the booking process.

It is important to note that a website designed to convert leads from third-party platforms does not have to be overly complex to achieve its purpose. Moreover, having a reliable website reduces the likelihood of depending solely on a single platform.

6. Avoid these common issues

Alex broke down for us the most common issues he sees when onboarding a new client with an existing website:

1. Bugs and glitches

2. Broken or missing pages

3. Lack of structure

4. Low-quality or clearly stock photos

5. Color and font choices that hurt readability

7. Driving leads with paid versus organic growth

Great! Your Alex-approved website has a fantastic business name, logo, clear service-specific call-to-action, authentic iPhone photos of you doing the work, and plenty of social proof.

But how can you ensure potential customers see your website when they need your services?

Alex breaks down the two fundamental strategies to drive eyeballs to our website:

1. Paid: Pay a platform to send leads to your website.

2. Organic: Create no-cost ways for leads to find your business.

The most commonly used channels for paid growth are Google and Facebook, although other platforms like Yelp, Angi, and others offer paid advertising products.

While you can pay for results with these platforms, your growth will always come with a cost.

The other option is organic, where you aim to have your business be known and easily found by leads who may want to book your services. This can include posting on social media, networking, SEO, and more.

8. Search Engine Optimization

Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, is the process of improving your website to increase its visibility in Google, Microsoft Bing, and other search engines.

The basics of SEO for your home services website include creating specific pages for specific categories of information.

A great starting point is on pages like ‘About Us’ that detail your company’s history and team, ‘Services’ that outline the services you offer, and ‘Blog’ that curates and publishes industry-relevant articles.

Alex breaks SEO down into three categories:

1. On-page or Technical SEO

2. Content Creation

3. Link Building

On-page or technical SEO is the process of optimizing individual web pages to rank higher in search engines and attract more relevant traffic. It involves refining various elements such as HTML tags, URLs, and images to ensure the site is structured and coded so search engine algorithms can easily understand and favor it.

Creating content is extremely important for SEO because it helps produce new, pertinent content that can grab the attention of search engines and viewers, therefore improving a site's visibility and ranking.

Additionally, producing high-quality, helpful content will encourage other websites to link to your pages and boost your site's authority and search performance.

Finally, link building involves acquiring hyperlinks from other websites to yours. This process helps to improve your site's visibility and ranking on search engines. Building external links increases your website's authority and trustworthiness, positively impacting its search engine rankings.