In 2020, it’s essential that your plumbing business has a website. Even if you get most (or all) of your business through referrals, a website makes it easier for people to connect with you, refer you, and find you!
If you are looking to build a website for your plumbing business for the first time, or are considering revamping your plumbing website, here are the things you should consider.
Website Organization
You’ve heard (and let’s be honest, probably said) the phrase “measure twice, cut once”? Well, the same principle applies to your website. You need to start planning with the end in mind when you look to build your plumbing website. Ask yourselves these questions:
- What do I want someone to accomplish on my website? (probably contact you or request a quote? Make it easy!)
- How do I want people to navigate through my website?
- What do I want my messaging and tone to sound like?
- What do I already have (pictures, graphics, video, PDFs…)
- What will I need to get or create?
These are just some of the questions we ask our clients when building out their websites. The goal is to make sure that you don’t just have a pretty website, but you have one that gets RESULTS and helps your plumbing business. Organization and planning are KEY to making sure your website build goes without issue and you end up with the website that your plumbing business needs.
Website Design for Plumbers
This is what most people care about when building their plumbing websites. There are many options when looking at design and a lot of it comes down to your budget.
- $$$ Custom Designed Website: Do you want a website that is 100% unique? This is great for a large plumbing company or if you are able to spend more money on your website. It also makes sense if you need some custom features on your website (which most plumbers don’t need) When we build custom websites for our plumbing clients, our designer works with their team to create a unique design.
- $$ Website Templates: This is the route a lot of plumbers go. It’s more budget-friendly, but gets you a great website that is customized to your plumbing business. We have developed plumbing website floorplans that are proven to get fantastic results.
- $ DIY Website Builders: If your #1 priority is to go with the cheapest option, DIY websites are probably the route for you. There are various platforms that make it easy to throw up a website, however, beware that you will likely not get the actual results you are looking for without help from someone who understands websites as much as you understand plumbing!
Copywriting/Text
Copywriting (or the text that’s on your website) is one of the most overlooked parts of the website process, but if you care at all about building a website that gets results, it’s actually one of the most important parts!
Copywriting affects how people use your website. It guides them through the site as much as images do. It directs them to contact you or view your work. Google and other search engines rely on text to help them rank. I won’t get into the crazy details with this article, but trust me, you NEED to work with a copywriter who GETS how Google thinks.
When I first started building websites, I let our clients write the text on their website. Want to know what happened? Website projects dragged on while my clients struggled to find the time to sit down and write their “about” section or detail out their services and often times we ended up with a bullet list of services. That doesn’t serve our clients or their customers in the end!
So we changed how we did things and we started including copywriting in all of our websites. Our copywriters have experience in the trades and know how to write your text so that Google will rank your website when people are searching for plumbings in your area.
Pictures
There are a few things to keep in mind when we talk about photos on a website.
- Image size: This is something that is often overlooked – especially if you are trying to DIY. Uploading a large photo will slow.your.website.down! You need to make sure you optimize (or make the photos web-ready) before uploading it to your website.
- Quality: While photography isnt’ a service we offer, we highly, HIGHLY recommend working with a professional photographer to get good pictures of your team, your building, and anything else you can. We will even help you find and qualify a local photographer! It’s so important. No matter how good the website design is, crappy photos will make your website look crappy.
Video
Video is the future. More people are watching video every day. If possible, utilize video to tell your story and what sets you apart. This will put you ahead of the competition and help you connect with people others aren’t able to!
Website Development
Development, or actually building your website, is obviously important. Just like when you are plumbing a house, you may only see the fixture but what’s behind the wall is even more important! If your website is built incorrectly, it will be harder (or impossible) to rank on Google or your customers could end up with a bad experience on their phones or other devices and in the end, it will cost your business. Make sure you partner with a developer (like Home Pro Digital) who knows what they are doing!
Marketing Your Plumbing Website
The whole purpose of your website should be to bring in new business, right? So we need to make sure that your website has the tools in place to track performance.
- Website Analytics: Google Analytics is a free platform that tracks almost everything happening on your website. It tells us where people are coming from (like facebook, google, other digital ads…) and what they are doing on your website (like what pages they are looking at, if they request a quote, how long are they on your website…).
- Google Webmaster Tools is another free platform that Google uses to interact with website owners. You should have this claimed and be able to monitor your performance in search engines – like Google.
- Call Tracking: There are various platforms that you can utilize that track your calls and report back to you on performance. Just like Google Analytics, the call tracking platform that we have partnered with will integrate into your website and be able to report on exactly HOW users get to your website before making a call, making it that much easier to measure ROI (or return on investment) on your marketing efforts.
Once these pieces are in place your can confidentially turn on your advertising and marketing your plumbing business, knowing that you’ll be able to measure performance.
Looking to the future
The last thing I want to touch on in this article is looking to the future. When you launch your plumbing website, who will be there to offer support? If you are DIYing your site, obviously you are on your own, but what about if you work with an agency or developer? If you need to swap out some text will they bill you $200 for a simple change? Will they disappear and not even respond?
For our clients, we are always easy to get in touch with and don’t charge for little changes. We also give you full access to make most changes on your own! We don’t want you to have to call us if you need to update your hours or add some photos (but we are here for you if you need us!).
What should you do first?
If you already have a website, take advantage of our FREE website inspection report. We’ll dive into your site and give you a baseline of what needs to be improved and where you are doing well.
If you are looking at building your first website, we would be thrilled to schedule a quick call to learn more about your business and see if our Website Floorplans or a custom website design would meet your needs. Just request a free call today.