The 7 things homeowners look for on a contractor's website
A homeowner with a leak, a dead AC or a roof that needs replacing will look at three or four companies online before calling one. They are not reading. They are scanning for seven things, in roughly this order.
1. A phone number at the top
On a phone, the number should be visible without scrolling and tappable. If a homeowner has to hunt for it, you have told them you are hard to reach before they ever talk to you.
2. Your license and insurance
Put the license number on the site, near the top, and say you are insured. Homeowners have been burned. The license number is how they check you, and the ones who check are the ones who pay on time.
3. Photos of your actual work
Not stock photos of a model in a hard hat. Your crew, your trucks, your finished jobs, taken with your phone. Ten real photos beat a hundred stock ones. Before and after pairs are the strongest thing you can put on a site.
4. Prices, or at least starting prices
You do not have to price every job. You do have to give people something: "drain cleaning from $150," "standard exterior repaint from $3,500." It filters out people who were never going to hire a professional and reassures the ones who were.
5. Your service area
List the cities. Google uses it to match you to searches and homeowners use it to know you will actually come out. "Serving the greater area" means nothing to anyone.
6. Reviews
Pull your real Google and Yelp reviews onto the site, with names and dates. Link to the profiles so people can verify them. Never write your own. People can tell, and it is a legal problem.
7. Hours and what happens after hours
If you take emergency calls, say so and say how. If you do not, say when you open. A homeowner at 9pm with water on the floor is making a decision based on this line alone.
What is usually missing
In my experience, most contractor sites are missing three of the seven: the license number, starting prices and a real service area list. All three take ten minutes to add and all three change who calls you.
Every site I build starts with this list. See websites for plumbers, roofers, HVAC and the rest.