With most of the U.S. population stuck at home amid the COVID-19 crisis, many homeowners are growing weary of their immediate surroundings and considering a future move or remodel.
As a business-owner, you can take advantage of this downtime by looking at your website to ensure it’s doing the best possible job of presenting your company and capturing leads for those potential customers.
Refresh What Can Be Refreshed
First things first, look at your site’s current performance. How many visitors does it get? How long do they stay and what keywords or ads bring them there? What pages do they visit and for how long?
All of that data will give you an idea of what customers are looking for when they come to your site – and whether they find it. Then decide how well that fits with what you want them to find on your site.
With that information in mind, review the basics of your site: does it have fresh, clear images? Is the text easy to read and do you have the kinds of content customers need and want?
If the answer to any of those questions is ‘no,’ start working there. If you’re satisfied with what you see, think about how you can capture more leads from those who do visit.
Improve Your Lead Generation
A beautiful, content-filled website is useless for driving business if it’s not incredibly easy for customers to reach you – and for you to get in touch with them.
First, make sure contact information (email addresses, phone numbers, etc.) are up to date and displayed prominently on every page. Customers shouldn’t have to spend a moment wondering how to get in touch with you if they have questions. A simple footer with contact information is easy to do, and means customers can find it no matter what part of the site they land on.
Second, if you haven’t already, consider using a fill-in form, chat box, price quote tool or similar device to capture customer information. These are unobtrusive ways to generate leads without scaring off potential buyers.
Ideally, with those data-capturing tools, you’ll ask customers their preferred way to be contacted. If that’s not possible, respond in the same format they used to contact you. Chances are potential customers contacted you in the format they’re most comfortable with; responding via the same channel is an easy and subtle way to show you’re attuned to their needs.
Reach Out to Former Customers
With many people working from home (or not working at all) this is a great time to reach out to former customers who may have a little extra time on their hands. They can provide usable content for your site, as well as a unique perspective on how well it reflects your company’s strengths.
If you don’t have customer testimonials on your site (or only have a few dated ones) consider emailing recent customers to request a brief quote you could use on your site. A few sentences about how pleased they are with your work, especially if it’s combined with a photo or short video clip of their finished home, can be a powerful marketing tool that takes very little time for you or the homeowner to create.
You can go a step further and convene a virtual “focus group” of select customers. This can be as simple as sending a survey to recent customers about their experience with you, what they think would be helpful to have on the site, and any material that is not useful or out of date.
No one is enjoying having the work slowdowns brought about by COVID-19, but companies that use this downtime to work on honing other aspects of their business will be the ones best positioned to make a quick come back once the economy approaches something closer to normal.
