You took a leap of faith and started a professional Home Watch company. The business is growing but your website doesn’t seem to be helping like you thought it would, and you have no idea why. Does this sound familiar?
A website can be an amazing tool to grow your home watch business but just having one isn’t enough. It’s important that your website is well structured to help you rank above the competition in search engines. It’s also important to educate your client, giving them everything they need through your website so they can make an informed decision to get in touch with you for your services.
Here’s a few important things to consider if you want to get potential clients to your website and then help you get that call once they’re there.
Does your homepage pass the 3-second test?
When someone comes to your homepage there’s a shockingly short window in which they will make a decision to stick around or leave. Many sources put the range at 3 to 5 seconds, maximum. That means you have about 5 seconds to let someone know they’re in the right place before they leave and go looking elsewhere for Home Watch services. Here are some questions you need to ask about the first impression of your website:
- Is it instantly clear what you do and for whom? If what you do and for whom isn’t crystal clear within 3 seconds of someone landing on your website, there’s a very good chance they will leave immediately. Try asking a neutral third party to have a look at your website to make sure you’re being crystal clear.
- Is it instantly clear what value you bring? Be it 24/7 service, peace of mind, or add-on services that the competition doesn’t offer; your visitor needs to know this right away.
- Has your website even finished loading? If it’s been 5 seconds and your website hasn’t even finished loading, most people will leave (especially on mobile) before they’ve had a chance to read your value proposition.
The most common way to pass the 3-second rule, is to use a value proposition at the top of your website homepage. We love how Pagely makes it crystal clear right away what they bring to the table.
Is it easy to get in touch with you?
Want them to call?
Put your phone number in the header of your website (to the right of the menu is most common) and make sure it’s a clickable link that opens in the phone app (on a smartphone). This makes it nice and easy for clients to call you right from your website!
Want them to email?
Make sure your contact form is user-friendly and working properly.
Test it out thoroughly when you first get your website online and then check it regularly to make sure it’s still working. Double check what happens when the person filling out the contact form hits submit. Is there a message that lets the person know the form was submitted successfully and that you’ll get in touch with them asap? Double check which fields are mandatory and be sure to ask for their email address and phone number. That way if there is a typo in one of them, you have a backup way to get in touch.
Don’t send them hunting
Make sure your name, address, email address, and phone number are listed in the footer of your website at the bottom of each page. This helps Google place you geographically in search engines but more importantly, it’s easy for your new and existing clients to find your contact information no matter what page they’re on.
How does your website appear in search engines?
When your website appears in search engines there are two fields you can update to let someone know what your website and a particular page is about, which will encourage the user to click through to learn more. These are called Meta Title and Meta Description tags. These titles and descriptions are added straight to the code of the website or through a WordPress plugin such as Yoast. Make sure you’ve added your Meta Title and Meta Description tags, otherwise Google will choose a snippet from your website which won’t necessarily tell people what they need to know to click through to your site.
Meta Title tags are the top line in the search engine result and introduce the user to the page in no more than 60 characters.
Is your website responsive to different sizes of mobile devices?
This year the combined traffic from mobile and tablet devices finally tipped the balance for desktop access.
More people are now using their phones and tablets to look for Home Watch companies than their desktops. Your website must be responsive for different sized mobile devices to capture these users. If your website was built in the last couple of years, chances are it’s already responsive. A simple way to check is to open your website in the browser on your computer and slowly shrink the whole browser window’s width. Does your website scale down no matter what the size of the browser? Yes? Good. If not, you’ll want to have your site made responsive so you don’t lose out on mobile visitors!
Google announced last year that it would begin penalizing websites that are not mobile responsive. This means that if your potential clients are using their phones or tablets to look for Home Watch services, then your unresponsive site will likely show up underneath the responsive ones in search results!
These are just a few of the things you can do to ensure you’re making the best of your website. Remember, your website is a tool to inform potential clients and open the lines of communication. You may be surprised how many of your existing clients search Google to find your phone number when they need to get in touch.
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