So you're a tradesman and you want to get a website.
First thing is to ask yourself “How will I be using this website?” Will it just be something small for appearance, maybe you’ve had people ask if you have a website and you’d like something to refer them too. Or maybe you’d like it to generate more work for you.
The next question is “What kind of website am I after?” Do you want something basic like a single page, or would you like multiple pages, one for a gallery, one for each of your services, and so forth.
Knowing what you’re after will help a lot in shopping for a website.
The next step is to understand how a good website works. A good website does two things: 1) it shows up in Google (and when we say Google we mean all search engines, Google’s just the main one) so people who are searching for your services can find your website, and 2) when they’re on your website, it builds enough trust that they’re confident in contacting you for the quote.
Remember, a tradesman websites purpose is not to sell a job, it’s to get an enquiry. Tricks and marketing tactics don’t work, you need to use good ol’ fashioned trust.
We say trust because let's face it, someone looking to hire a tradesman wants to know you’re professional, reliable, do a good job and have exactly what they’re after. If they haven’t used you before, that’s going to take trust.
Now one way we like to raise trust on a tradesman website is by using photos of the actual business. Staff in uniform, vehicle signage. Websites that don’t use photos of the business and only use photos of jobs done or even worse, stock photos, are at a massive disadvantage. That’s because when someone comes to your website and they can see photos of the actual business, they can see who will be coming to their house and who they’ll be dealing with. This allows for them to start forming a positive first impression, before they’ve even met you.
Another way we build trust is with professional copywriting. Copywriting is all the text on the website, and most tradesmen don’t realise just how important it is when shopping for a website. There’s a few grades of copy, let’s go through them now.
Let’s start with C Grade copy. This is informative copy that reads like a wikipedia page or a blog post. An example would be a plumbing website with a big blurb of text about how plumbing works, its history and how it benefits the community. It may be interesting to some, but it’s not relevant in the context of someone needing help with a specific plumbing service. You’ll save money with C Grade copy but be careful, you may put some people to sleep!
Next up is B Grade copy. This is the most common copy you’ll find on tradesman websites. It takes a more generic approach to selling your services, and to put it one way, it talks from your point of view. A good example of B Grade copy would be “Need a plumber in such and such location? We’re fully licensed professionals that arrive on time and can fix your issues with no stress. Call us today!”
And then there’s A Grade copy. A grade copy talks from the customer’s point of view. It speaks to a specific customer audience, rather than everyone in general, and it talks about the benefits of your services, rather than just the services themselves. And it does so in a way that’s not too obvious, so the customer can come to their own conclusion, rather than you telling them. While it may be more expensive, A Grade copy is much more effective at getting results.
Most web designers aren’t aware how important of a tool copywriting is, and often they’ll ask you to provide copy yourself. That’s a bit like expecting the customer to provide the wrench so you can fix their leaking tap. In other words, that’s what you hire us for.
Now remember we said a good website has to do two things? Let’s go back to the first one: showing up in Google. This and the related service called SEO are one of the most misunderstood things in this industry, by both customers and web designers.
Without getting too technical, SEO is how well your website is understood by Google. Keep in mind Google is not a person, it’s a robot, so it won’t be looking at images or pondering the meaning of sentences. It’s just looking for keywords.
Most web designers will provide some level of SEO but few follow all the required steps to get the website to come up for keywords in Google.
Here at Alan’s Tradies we provide full documentation on all the SEO work done during the build and once the website is live we show you a report of progress in Google and all the keywords it has started to show up for.
That way you don’t need to pay thousands of dollars a month to start showing up in Google, and you don’t need to get to the first page. Most of you can leave that to the big companies who are set up for and want 100s of leads a day. Instead you can start getting a moderate amount of monthly traffic simply from the SEO we provide in the website build.
That’s it from me. if you want to learn more, enquire now and we’ll be happy to help.