Lead generation for plumbers is a special kind of process. If it doesn’t perform well, it leaves your business without precious customers in the short and long term, but there are aspects to this type of business that need careful presentation in a website, if the lead generation is going to work.
I recently reviewed three local plumbing websites to see how they actually handle a real-world customer journey. The results? The “prettiest” site was actually the worst at getting leads. The out of date website contained better information to encourage conversion, but was muddled in the customer journey. Every website can be improved; and improvements mean more leads, more business, more revenue.
If you want a website that isn’t just a digital business card but is a sales tool that scales your revenue, here are the 6 reasons your current site is likely failing you.
1. Your Hero Section is Just a Pretty Picture
Clients love a photo for their business; but also: “a picture speaks a thousand words”. However, in web design, that’s bullshit. The hero section is the ‘banner’ area you see on the top of the home page…and the messaging about your business here is crucial.
Take a look at this hero section from one of the websites I reviewed. It offers no messaging about the company, what they offer, how to take the next step. The user has to scroll to start finding information.
Not only is this a negative for user experience, but it’s not fantastic for SEO either.
If there’s an image here, it should be decorative, unimportant…merely a reinforcement of the message that is written on top of, or next to, it. Also, most plumbers fall into the trap of using a photo of a wrench or a pipe as their main header. An image that communicates the finished product or builds rapport is much more positive communication.
The Fix: Your “Hero” section must convey your 5-second elevator pitch. It needs to tell the customer exactly what you do, why you’re the best choice, and how they can contact you immediately or where to find the next piece of important information.
2. You’re Forcing People to Read a Novel
If your website features walls of text stretching from left to right, you’ve already lost them. Customers don’t read a website; they scan it.
Why do users scan read websites? Because they don’t care about information that is not important to them; no one does! Their goal is to find what they’re looking for, so they scan the smaller headings and chunks of text looking for the key words related to their solution.
Especially when it comes to your home page, you need to design it to function like the contents section of a resource text book. People go to that page for navigational purposes. While the navigation should be clear and ever-present, the page serves as a place where headings and small paragraphs offer essential information to handle initial objections and answer questions.
If your web design has this information buried in paragraphs, you lose them.
The Fix: Use headings to separate sections so that users can easily identify what the section is about.
When it comes to actual text, use short, snappy paragraphs that do not span across the page. Keep the lines short, the spacing between lines large and communicate in succinct, short, snappy sentences.
If a customer has to “work” to find your information, they’ll leave and call the next guy on Google.
3. Your “Call to Action” is a Dead End
One of the biggest “no-nos” I found was a “Contact Us” button that just opens the user’s default mail app. It’s clunky, often faulty, and creates friction. Most people don’t have their device mail app set up to work like this. In addition, there’s no way for you to track these clicks or redirect leads to another step in your funnel. You’re essentially sending someone away from your website before you’ve got their details in the bag: that’s not a good strategy.
The Fix: Use a contact form. This should be on every page to reduce the need to click and load a page. Even if you’re only asking for a name and number at this point, they know they’ve booked a call back from you: that’s golden.
4. You’re Hiding the Price
I don’t walk into a restaurant if I don’t know the price, and your customers won’t call you if they’re afraid of a “surprise” quote.
The more outdated website I reviewed had specific price ranges for each type of service or problem. Despite the website looking quite raggy, I trusted the information and the transparency. This did a lot to establish Like, Know and Trust for this plumbing business and I would definitely (with my consumer hat on) feel more confident calling Bob, than anyone else.
The Fix: Be transparent. Even a “prices from £X” or a clear hourly rate builds instant trust. Google loves this data, too – it helps you rank higher in search results, if you have your schema markup in place with this information.
5. You Haven’t Built “Like, Know, and Trust”
I just touched on this, but the “ugly” website I reviewed outperformed the sleek one because it had personality. It had humour, it offered information about the owner, and transparent information.
This is all the more important with local services, such as a plumbing business, where the company enters somebody’s home. If the website for a local service does not communicate the name and locality of the business, not only is this terrible for SEO, but it doesn’t build rapport and a feeling of safety.
The Fix: Stop being a faceless corporation. Show a photo of yourself or your team. Use your “About” page to handle objections and show the humans behind the wrenches. Let someone see the faces of those who will turn up at the door and say ‘yes’ to a cuppa.
6. Your Services Are Not Clearly Laid Out
This is a big one. Hiding all your services behind a single “Services” button is bad for the user and worse for SEO. This is most often the case when the owner is looking to cut costs, but for the loss in SEO, conversion power and the lead generation opportunities, there’s a lot of opportunity cost there.
When each service is detailed with full scope of information, the customer understands what you offer, including the pricing, timeframe, process, locality and with answer to frequently asked questions. You can also link to service specific case studies to add the wow factor to their journey and show off your expertise.
Service pages rank highly in SEO, when correctly designed, and they are also higher converting pages due to the customer’s intent. This means it’s essential to design these pages well.
What should be on a local plumbing business service page:
- Brief introduction of service
- Pricing information
- Service-specific reviews
- Service-specific frequently asked questions
- Service specific case studies
- The project steps that are typical for the service
- Service specific contact form CTA
Why It’s Difficult To Display Plumbing Business Services
Ultimately, there is a broad range of services offered, as well as distinct categories of those services. For example, a plumber can tend to kitchens, bathrooms, heating, exterior systems and boilers…but can also offer these across the Install, Maintain or Emergency Repair categories.
That’s a comprehensive list of services and each of them are essential to a successful plumbing business: it’s important to present these correctly so that it’s easy for a potential customer to find the service they’re looking for within 3 seconds of being on your website.
The Fix: Give every major service (Boilers, Emergencies, Bathrooms) its own dedicated page. This creates a “powerhouse” SEO page that tells Google -and your customer – that you are the local expert for that specific problem.
Lead generation for plumbers – why the website is essential
It’s important to note, the three websites I reviewed -despite their shortcomings- were sites I found on the top of Google. They appear to be longstanding websites, with a lot of trade directory listings that have established a lot of trust in local SEO, so they’re doing something right!
But getting found is just the first part of lead generation.
If the website isn’t as optimised, as it could be, for conversion and lead generation, a lot of potential leads are bouncing back to search engines or getting frustrated at a bad call to action.
The Bottom Line: Your website shouldn’t just look “pro” – it needs to be a deliberate, productive asset in your digital strategy. A professional website design takes aesthetics, customer journey, user experience, information placement and frictionless conversion into account, to increase the likelihood of a website visitor becoming a lead you’re in touch with.
Something to think about: If a plumbing website brings in 2 more qualified leads a week, with just £100 profit per lead, that’s over £10,000 in the bank over a year.