5 Tips to Convert More Customers From Your Website for Local Businesses

Building a successful local business is hard enough on its own. Handling all of the online tasks can be exhausting, especially if you have never done it before and are just shooting in the dark. After spending years building my business and fumbling through the noise of the industry, I decided to put together a small list of things that I had to figure out the hard way. Hopefully, you can use these tips to get ahead in your area, and if you do them just like I did, your website will be converting more customers than anything else you have ever tried. 

Where I Built My Website

The first step to having a high converting website is… a website. There are dozens of platforms that you can use to build websites nowadays. Places like WordPress, Square Space, Wix, and GoDaddy are great but I personally use Kajabi to build my website. This is partly because they are wonderful at hosting my courses, but they also have a nice website builder and even handle email marketing. That being said, it is much more expensive than the others.

My recommendation for someone just starting out is to build a WordPress website and get the cheapest hosting you can. Typically BlueHost or HostGator work well. WordPress offers plenty of free themes and has an easy-to-use builder that you can use to make your website look exactly like you want, and if not, they offer plenty of page builder plugins like Elementor. Of course, the perfect option depends on your exact needs so I would look into each of these builders to see exactly what they offer and see if that goes well with what you plan on doing.

Make Sure You Are on Business Listings

While having your own website is absolutely crucial to scaling your business, signing up for business listings is arguably more important. You need to make sure your business shows up on every business listing there is. Places like Google Business, Yelp, Angie's List, and even Facebook are the perfect places to make an account for your business. These business listings will have your phone number on them but they will also have your website linked to them, and having a website makes you more valuable in google's eyes. 

To be honest most of my traffic comes from Google Business. When people google landscaping services in my area, my business is one of the first ones to pop up organically and with tons of positive reviews(which makes them feel even better about hiring me). Then people click on the listing and can call or go to my website for more information. 

One thing that is important to note is that no matter how good you are at marketing or where you do it, you will likely never get a more targeted audience than the people googling for your service in your area. That is why your Google Business listing is one of the most important parts of your internet presence. If you use it right, it will likely be where you get most of your customers from.  

Have a Call to Action Above the Fold

Website design is also important. After someone has found you on Google, or social media, they go to your website to find out more information about you. You want to make sure that when they do go to your website they do not have to spend too much time searching around for what they want. Everything on your website should be easy to find, and your main service should be right on the front page. 

For example, if you are a landscaping company, when someone comes to your website, there should be a call to action(linked button) above the fold that says something along the lines of “click here to see our landscaping packages”. Above the fold means the first thing the visitor sees without scrolling when they load the page. 

As you can see with my landscaping and window cleaning website, right when it loads it asks which service the customer is after, and they can even see one of the options. This acts like a teaser and makes them want to keep scrolling down to see what else I offer. Then after they click an option it will take them to another page that shows more specific packages, and has all my contact information so they can call or request a quote.

Be Transparent With Your Prices

So this is my main tip for making the customers that call you covert, show them your prices! Now as a brand new landscaper, you are likely taking nearly every job you can get. Although as you get more experienced and your business has some authority behind its name, you can stop wasting your time on low-paying jobs. You want to put your prices on your service packages, this way you are not wasting your time with someone calling and wanting a $500 job for $100. This weeds out a ton of wasted time, and the people that are calling you have already seen your prices and are willing to pay it.

To make more customers buy in general from your website, you want to have a nice sales page. That sales page should have packages that the customer can pick from which gives them a ballpark idea of how much it will be. These packages can group services together, give price ranges for square footage, or whatever grouping you think is best. I would also include some examples of before and after pictures that impress soon-to-be customers.

After the customer decides what they like they will then click on a package, ultimately they should all go to the same page where your contact information is. Then if you would like, you can collect a little information about them and have them call you or a secretary.

Also, I wanted to mention that you should be proud of your prices and stand firm on them. Obviously, you can not charge a million dollars to do one property, but if your prices are reasonably priced, that says to the customer “hey we are proud of our work and we are worth this price”.  

You should also include reviews you get from your past customers. There are a ton of plugins that can help you with this and it depends on what web platform you use to build your site. Personally, I use Nice Job to pull real reviews off google business as well as Facebook, It also makes sure to pull only 5-star reviews. This all adds up and makes the customer feel comfortable with your prices, and since you have good reviews it also provides them with solid social proof.   

Go Crazy With SEO

SEO or Search Engine Optimization is very important for local businesses. When someone googles “landscaping service near me” you want to be the first result to pop up. If done effectively this will be where you get the majority of your traffic from. 

There is a lot that goes into SEO and honestly, I could write for hours about it, but here I will give you a few key pointers about what you want to be doing on your website to increase your SEO.

• Sign up for social media accounts, post there often and link them on your website. While these are not quite as strong as a regular backlink, links to social media accounts are a standard that tells google, hey this is a brand that has a voice on social media. It does not even matter if you have a small following either, just link link link.

• Mention your city or town many times on your website. Wherever it makes sense to plug in your city name, do it. You do not need to flood your website with the city name, but if you have it repeated on your website, Google will be able to piece together that you work in that city. Which will make it want to show you to other people in the city when they search for your service.

• START A BLOG! Yup just like this one. If you start a blog about the industry you are in you can start writing articles over topics people have questions on. Eventually, your articles will start to show up on google, and will overall boost your business up in the eyes of google. Plus articles often get backlinks over time and this will boost your website or domain authority over the years. Blogging is a huge industry that will definitely aid your business, and you do not even have to write the articles on your own either! In just a few minutes on Upwork, you can find a writer ready to write whatever you need. 

Conclusion

To wrap it all up, a local business definitely needs a website. After that, you need to sign up for every business listing you can find and link your website on them. Likewise, you want to sign up for all the major social media channels and try to put out content there. Once people make it to your website, make sure there is a call to action above the fold, as well as some nice packages the customer can pick from. You also NEED to be transparent with your prices. This makes you look more professional and it also weeds out the customers that are just going to waste your time with a low price. Lastly, once you have everything set up, go crazy with SEO. SEO requires a lot more research than I can include in a small article, but once you implement the basic SEO practices on your website, you will start to rank higher on google. Which will ultimately lead to more customers that have already seen your prices and are ready to pay for your premium services.