How is your online presence and website working for your cleaning business? Is it generating a lot of traffic and qualified leads? If not it could be due to some poor website design elements and missing features. In today’s post, you’ll learn 8 essential website design tips and ways to optimize your cleaning business website.
1. Have a quality website theme
You only get one chance at a first impression, and the perception potential customers have of your website can make or break that impression. Some people may look past a website’s design and still do business with you, but many won’t.
How your website is presented is a reflection of your business. Most people feel that if your website is poorly designed, and doesn’t function well, that is how you run the rest of your cleaning business.
You don’t want to give potential clients a reason to not do business with you within seconds of them hearing about your company. For this reason, it is essential to have a website that shows your professionalism, expertise, and that also functions well.
Having a quality theme for your website is one way to do this. You should avoid themes that have too many moving parts. For example, a lot of companies design websites that use sliders and menus that pop in and out, or text that flies across the screen as you scroll through the website.
All of these design choices may seem impressive, but in reality, they are just distracting. Unfortunately, these features also run the risk of slowing your site down dramatically. When choosing a website theme, use something that is simple, professional, and that isn’t overly cluttered or distracting.
2. Use proper messaging
Certainly, you want your cleaning business website to look professional, but that is only part of the story. Having a professional website is only the beginning and is really just the stepping stone for people to take your cleaning business seriously.
If your website is professional, most people will stick around long enough to explore your online presence further. This means that in addition to the proper design of your website you also need the right messaging that people are going to pay attention to.
As far as your messaging is concerned, there are a few things you want to include. The first thing to cover in your message is to highlight your core difference. This is what separates you from the competition and why a potential customer should do business with you over someone else.
Your core difference goes well beyond just the features and services you offer. Think of the benefits behind the features and what someone gets by working with you that they can’t get anywhere else. Speak about your ideal customer’s pain points and problems, and walk them through exactly how your services are a solution to those problems.
Another aspect of your messaging you want to include is to have calls to action throughout your site. This means that you have text and buttons that lead people into taking the next step of the sales process like requesting a quote.
3. Use real photos not stock photos
Now that you have a website that looks professional and the right messaging you need means of building trust with your website visitors. One way to effectively build trust quickly is by having real photos of your staff, equipment, and processes.
As we mentioned earlier, your website and online presence are a reflection of how potential customers perceive you run your business. When people visit your website and all they see are stock photos, it can give the impression that you are a new business.
The reality could be that you have been in business for years and have a large customer base, but when people don’t see real photos it puts doubt in their mind. Most people think that if you did have a legitimate business and a lot of experience it would be easy enough to take a quick photo of one of the many jobs you have each day.
If people don’t see these real photos it can make it seem like you have something to hide, or that you aren’t really doing a lot of business. People don’t want to work with a company they perceive as one that struggles to get or maintain customers.
Another reason to use real photos in your website design is it puts a face to your company. When someone hires a cleaning business to clean their home or business they are letting strangers into their personal space. If people can see your cleaning technicians first it makes them more likely to trust your company and hire you over the competition.
4. Use multiple methods to generate leads
Most cleaning business websites have an option for people to contact them or to request an estimate. These are a great place to start and should be included on your website as a means to generate leads.
In addition to your typical contact and request a quote form, you may also want to include an additional lead magnet to help you generate cleaning leads. Understand that not everyone who visits your website for the first time will be ready to hire a cleaning service.
Many people who come to your website for the first time are in research mode and either hasn’t decided yet to hire a cleaning service, or they are deciding between you and the competition. Because of this, if you only have a contact page and quote request form as your means of lead generation, many potential customers can fall through the cracks.
This is why it is important to create various lead magnets to capture potential customers that might not yet be ready to hire you. When you get their information through a lead magnet offer, you can plug them into a follow-up email series. Depending on the information you ask for you could also personally call them or email them a follow-up message.
With an email marketing campaign, you can even automate a series of follow-up emails to help sell these potential customers on hiring you. A potential customer may take several exposures to your business before they decide to hire you. The sooner you can get them as a lead, the sooner you can begin taking them through your sales process. Be sure to have multiple lead generation strategies in your website design.
5. Use a content marketing strategy
Something else to include in your cleaning business website design is content. There are several categories of content that you want to include on your website and they can include blog posts, industry pages, service pages, and location pages.
Many cleaning businesses neglect this aspect of their website design and in doing so they may lose credibility with potential customers. Creating a content marketing strategy that includes the pages listed above provides a lot of benefits.
One benefit is that it can convey to potential customers that your business is an expert in the cleaning industry. People can come to your website in a variety of different ways. They may have found your site searching on Google, they may have seen an advertisement, or came from a post on social media and more.
When people do come to your website, do they know you offer what they are looking for? You may offer services like carpet cleaning, floor care, house cleaning, and more, but do people know it? If the service is a priority for you definitely create a service page for it. When people see a service page dedicated to a service they are looking for on your website and the competition doesn’t have one, they will likely choose to hire you over them.
This is also true for various industries. Having an industry page, service page, blog post, or location page can also attract visitors by the way of SEO. When people search for specific keywords and if your pages are optimized, they can find your site. If you want to attract your ideal customers relating to specific service areas, industries, and services, be sure to build a content marketing strategy on your website to support it.
6. Include positive reviews and testimonials
Another essential part of your website design is that you should highlight positive reviews and testimonials. The cleaning industry is a highly competitive market and you are going to need to sell potential customers on why they should work with your company.
One of the best sales tactics you can implement into the design of your website is to highlight positive reviews from your existing customers. Think of the last infomercial you saw. How many times did they show clips talking to happy satisfied customers? If it was like most infomercials it probably contained dozens of testimonials because they work.
You should use that same concept when promoting your cleaning business because most people use reviews to help them make a buying decision. Having a 3rd party talk about the value and benefits of your cleaning services can be extremely effective at selling your services.
Some people will only buy from you if you have a decent amount of positive reviews from customers. In many cases, it may be the determining factor of if a potential customer does business with you or not.
For this reason, you want to make sure to highlight positive reviews on your website. It helps build credibility for your business and can work to improve your conversion rate as well.
7. Use landing pages and thank you pages
Part of having a high converting website and tracking your leads is having dedicated landing pages and thank you pages on your website. A landing page is a webpage that you send targeted traffic to in hopes that they will convert into a lead.
If you are running paid advertising for your cleaning business, or just want relevant traffic to convert into leads, use a landing page. For example, if you were running an ad for commercial cleaning services you could send the ad traffic to your commercial cleaning services page.
On this page, you would cover the various benefits of hiring your company for commercial cleaning services. Also, include calls to action to request a quote or to call you. By using a dedicated landing page, you can also track website visitors through a Facebook pixel. Once you gather this data you can then build lookalike audiences to improve your ads.
By using thank you pages, you can track the conversions that come from your website and optimize your advertisements for conversions. Having the ability to track your conversions gives you a better ability to optimize your marketing strategy. It can help you to understand what marketing strategies are working and which ones aren’t. Be sure to implement landing pages and thank you pages as a part of your website design.
8. Utilize SEO optimization
The next step you want to do to improve your cleaning company website design is to add in some SEO optimization. This part of your website design may seem a bit technical, but for most of the processes, you can find a step-by-step guide on Google.
For example, one way to optimize your website design is to embed Google Maps on your website for the locations you serve and your service area. This can help you to associate those pages with the locations you put on the map which can help you appear more often for searches related to those locations. Follow this article on how to embed a google map on your website to put a map on your location pages.
Another thing to add to your website design is your business name, address, and phone number in the footer of your website. Google and other search engines like to see these things on a website as it adds legitimacy to the business. Also if you make sure that this information is the same across all social media platforms and directory listings it can help associate these with your business.
Finally, make sure you link associated pages together on your website. For example, if you offer house cleaning services you might also offer carpet cleaning services. Link to your carpet cleaning service page from your house cleaning page to let search engines know those pages are both relates. Doing this can help search engines crawl your website and recognize new pages faster. When you use these SEO optimization tips it can help bring more local traffic to your website faster.
Conclusion
With a few basic changes to your website design, you can go from having little to no traffic and conversions into an asset that can grow your cleaning business 24/7. Having a professional website is a great first impression you need to effectively convert leads online.
The look of your website isn’t enough, you also need your messaging to highlight the benefits of working with your cleaning business and your core difference. Make sure your website also includes key trust-building factors like real photos and positive reviews from customers.
Also, include a content marketing strategy and various methods of lead generation. This will help you to make the most of your cleaning company website. Positioning your cleaning business as an expert in the industry is also important. It can help you with generating leads and converting them into new customers.
Tracking is also important for getting the most from your website design. Be sure that you create landing pages and thank you pages to monitor your lead generation. Add elements like embedded maps, business name, address, and phone number to send good signals to search engines.
Finally, be sure to set up an internal linking strategy on your website. Doing this will associate relevant pages with each other and search engines can find the content easier. Implement these cleaning business website design tips and your website can transform into an asset rather than a liability.
P.S. If you are struggling to get quality leads for your cleaning business, Click Here to Learn How to Get More Clients for your business with these Top 10 Lead Sources For Cleaning Business Owners.