Why Your Website Isn't Bringing the Leads You Want

Your website is supposed to be your selling machine, right? If you find yourself often questioning why your site isn't bringing you enough calls, or when it does, it just lands you too many appointments for projects that don't drive enough revenue, then it's time to look to your website.

Home services professionals, such as architects and landscapers, aren't going to spend hundreds of hours on improving their site - they have a business to run. That's where the problem is - the website is a key part of business. It drives your customers away from you, or to you - and will potentially bring you the "wrong" ones or the qualified ones. It can cost you a huge revenue breakdown or it can grow your business like no other marketing or advertising channel can.

We have narrowed down the top 10 things that your business (on your site) might be doing wrong - and therefore preventing you from growing revenue. 

1. No blog. If you don't have an area on your site that has a constant new flow of content, there isn't enough back-end SEO magic that an IT person can do to bring you first page results (or second, or third page).
2. Overusing Google Adwords. 80% of the links that searchers click on are organic - not paid! (Source:HubSpot). Adwords can be included in an effective marketing campaign (as in maybe 7th on the list of all things you're doing).
3. Your content is all about your service. People buy because of an experience they are hoping to get out of the service. You don't order home cleaning service because it's a great service. You subscribe or order it because it brings you an experience (of not having to clean ---ahh, the extra time.. and so on).
4. Content is appealing to only one part of the buying journey. Just like a selling process, there is a buying process (read more about it here). To get to more leads, you have to get more traffic and buyers don't start their search online with the exact service they need, they go through a process - and you want to reach them in the beginning of this buying process.
5. Not targeting your company's target customer. Thinking that the more people you target, the better, is almost always a really bad thing. Your company is for a specific type of customer (maybe three specific types). Trying to expand this target market may bring you more traffic... but it will not produce you more leads. Related: Do you know your target customer?
6. Poor quality images/photographs. A $75,000 project - especially a $400,000 project - does not win a bid (or even get called for the bid) with low quality images - or equally as bad, images of poorly staged previously completed work. There is art in displaying your project. 
7. Your homepage has a million words on it. Stop! Homepages should impress and compel to look further. They should not serve as an opportunity for a list of 800 different keywords (like the 30 cities you serve- no!). It's 2016, this stuff scares people away. There is a fashionable way to make a long homepage - by using pages within a pages or sections. 
8. No obvious way to contact you. Okay, this sounds like a "how could that be true of any website." Its true - there has to be a clear way to contact you on every page - and it has to be consistent. This includes your contact info on Google plus. One out of every 20 companies we see have incorrect contact info on the Google plus account (the very first result that comes up for local search). Imagine your potential customer dialing the wrong #!
9. You're letting your IT person handle your marketing. Sounds crazy right? Your "SEO guy" gets to control how you rank and who you attract to your site. Agree - it doesn't make sense.
10. You haven't updated your site in the last week. If its been even longer, then its a catastrophe. Your website needs to be update at least weekly. If you increase that number - then you will increase your leads. Simple.