In a post pandemic world online visibility for home improvement businesses has NEVER been more important. If you’re not taking your website and digital marketing seriously, your competitors who are, quite frankly if they’re good at what they do will leave you behind.

It’s true, competition for traffic generating keywords and social media attention has been significant for years, but in this new world, where more and more people use the internet, a great digital presence is no longer pioneering, it’s a necessity if you want to be considered a viable option, let alone get chosen as a potential local supplier. 

Whatever the immediate future holds, it’s unlikely to involve people using the internet less so your website needs to represent quality, it’s your shop window and it needs to be designed in such a way that it generates you leads. 

So, if you have been contemplating getting a new website for your home improvement business, but unsure if now is the right time. Here’s some common signs that indicate your website’s ready for an update –

1. YOUR WEBSITE IS NOT FULLY RESPONSIVE

If you are anything like the Yellow Belly Media team, you will find yourself using your smart phones to access the internet more and more – this is only going to increase. Therefore, ensuring your website works great on every device is becoming more and more crucial. 

Therefore you need to ensure, if your website isn’t already, a mobile responsive website. A responsive website means that it works as effectively on your laptop or desktops, tablets and smartphones. Working effectively means the content automatically adjusts to fit the size of the screen it is being viewed on and every device can get you leads. 

2. NOT GETTING MANY LEADS AS YOU WOULD LIKE

Have you noticed your phone isn’t ringing as much as it normally would? Maybe you’ve noticed a slump in enquiries from your website? Do you even know how many visitors your website gets vs. number of leads? They say if a website doesn’t make money it doesn’t work, so if you’re not experiencing consistent leads your website has ‘conversion problem’.

There are many reasons for this, but it’s usually down to the quality of your sales copy and the usability of your site. In a nutshell is it easy for a potential customer to find what they need and when they do does what they find excite them enough to get in contact. 

If not your site needs some fine tuning and also the tools installed that allows you to measure its success at doing the job it’s meant to do – get you leads. 

Part of a website redesign process here at YBM is to help improve the conversions on your website. It is not unusual for us to find that some businesses are not even tracking the number of visitors and conversions from their website when we first meet them, which is a problem in itself. 

It is important to ensure a lead generating website is built with conversion tracking in mind, so you can track exactly how many websites leads you are getting and where they are coming from.

3. YOUR WEBSITE HAS BECOME A VICTIM OF YOUR SUCCESS

If your business has been going for a long time, you may have built your business through word of mouth and other traditional methods of marketing such as print or canvassing. All are still great lead gen tactics. 

However if digital marketing hasn’t been an important part of your growth, has your website kept pace with your evolving business offerings? Maybe you’ve rebranded since your last website redesign? Perhaps the palette has changed and now not reflected in your web pages or social media?  Maybe the images are old and you’ve better examples you could present potential new customers? 

It’s pretty inevitable that anyone researching for a local service like yours will checkout your website at some point in their purchase journey. So it’s vital it sends a clear message about what you can offer and the quality of your work to potential customers. So make sure your brand identity is not being overshadowed by a bad or outdated design.

4. YOUR WEBSITE IS SLOW TO LOAD

Time is precious.  Nobody has time to wait more than a few seconds for a website to load up.  A slow website could see you lose potential buyers to a competitor as they become frustrated, lose interest in your business and head straight back to the search results to find the next business in line.  Google values good page speed too, helping you to rank in its search results (including mobile page speed in mobile search results).

5. YOU HAVE A HIGH BOUNCE RATE

The bounce rate is a % that refers to the number of visitors who land on your website and then leave without looking at any other pages than the one they entered on e.g your home page or product page. The goal is to reduce this over time because it means your website is engaging your visitors.

A “good” bounce rate depends on a number of factors, but if your website out dated and has any of the issues we’ve already discussed, it’s likely it can be improved and the longer your keep someone on your site, like any shop, the higher the chance of a lead because they’re seen something they’re interested in. So whenever we’re redesigning a website, getting the bounce rate down is a key consideration. 

In a local competitive market, your website needs to stand out and get easily found. In a digitally native world, where more and more people are using the internet rather than asking their friends who to trust, do not hold your business back because of poor design, functionality and usability. 

If you want to smash your business goals let’s chat about developing you a home improvement website that gets you results .