Roofing Contractor Websites – Key Elements Every Roofing Company Website Should Have

1st of all – congratulations for digging deeper into finding out into the topic of best roofing web design and templates. You’d be surprised how much contractors overlook this aspect. 90% of them don’t even care to get a nice website, and for the ones who do, they just go for all appearance without designing a website that have sales conversions in mind. The fact is, without a proper website to convert the traffic – Even the best roofing SEO will only get decent results. As a roofing contractor in 2018, we sometimes find ourselves more in the marketing business than the roofing itself. We spend thousands of dollars every single month just to make sure we’re speaking to quality homeowners who are likely to make a purchase. A lot of our marketing efforts results in Homeowner searching for our business name writing to Google, even if you’re passing out flyers, homeowners nowadays do not call right away from a piece of paper, they more often than not will check you out online before they make a call!

So needless to be said, your roofing website becomes the main hub which holds connection to other pieces of the puzzle for your business’s funnel. The reason I use the word “funnel” is because we no longer have people typing in our website address writing to Google as much as before. Our website is just one of the landing spots we want homeowners to be coming in before they give us a call. It is just another piece to the puzzle, one of the bigger sized pieces nevertheless. You have to start thinking about your roofing marketing as a dynamic live entity compared to a static online brochure.

You can think of it like a steppingstone, homeowner was checking you out on Facebook and then they came to your website through a link. They were doing a local search and then they came to your website from your Google business listing. You can’t no longer think of it as an end all be all online brochure, it is more like a dynamic process which acts like a digital salesman who walks your target market through the steps until they make a buying decision.

In this article we’re going to go through a few of the main elements that every roofing website should have in 2018. For the sake of not making this article too long, I will leave simple topics such as: what theme you should use on your website because those topics have been covered a million times by others. What I will go over is what elements on your website which encourages homeowners to actually give you a call. So let’s begin.

1. Understanding How Rank Brain Works

Begins with understanding how rank brain works. In simple terms, it’s an artificial intelligence that learns on its own and helps Google provide more relevant search results for user’s queries. How?

It Uses User Experience Signals

1. Click through rate: The Number of times people click on your listing when it is shown.
2. Bounce Rate: The percentage of visitors to a particular website who navigate away from the site after viewing only one page.
3. Time on website: How much time the user spends on your website

Basically, if somebody types in “Roofing contractors Brooklyn New York” and they click the 1st Business that pops up. Lets say they only spend 10 seconds on that page then click back. They scroll go further down the search results and now click the third Business listing, where they browse longer and maybe fill out a form. This just signaled to rank brain that the homeowner did not find what they’re looking for with the first listing, but they did find it with the third one. If this happens enough times, you can bet that the third listing will take the first ones place.

So, people start experiencing your business even before the page loads. It doesn’t mean you have to go get a $3000 CSS upgrade so your website loads under 1 second. As a local roofing contractor, it just means to make sure your website is responsive and loads at least within three seconds. This can be achieved with a decent hosting platform and simple best practices web design.

When Homeowners Land on Your Website

Next is what happens when your website does finish loading. As soon as somebody lands on your website, the countdown begins. It is important for us to let the customer know they are in the right place.

The above image of a business owner whose target market is health practitioners. As soon as they land, the first thing they see is about them (not about him). That is quickly followed by a catchy hook that gets them interested along with a call to action: Watch a Free Webinar.

It is very important to have a clear message that lets them know that they’re in the right place as soon as they land. He achieves this by having a hook: “It’s time to build your ideal practice, let me show you how”. His target market knows they are in the right place and keeps reading.

What does a homeowner intend to find out when they click on your listing? It may sound obvious, but how many times do they have to scroll before they see the first call to action?

How about for long tail keywords? Does your inner page blog introduce their eyes with the same half page long slider as your homepage? If they are, it may not be the best idea because they clicked for a reason and our job is to give them the answer to their question as fast as possible.

Let’s look at a Roofing Website Example:

As you can see, as soon as you land on their website, at the very top there is two calls to action. You can call them or you can fill out a form to request a free estimate. The bar at the top is in red so it is easily distinguishable compared to rest of the website.

The website draws the eyes of the homeowner to checkout parts of the website which caters to common concerns homeowners have before giving the roofer a call:

• Financing Available (Right side): a lot of people do not wish to to pay for an entire renovation a roof replacement upfront, if your company offers this it is best to let the visitor know right away.
• Save thousand dollars (Top Left side): Price is self explanatory. The interesting part is, a lot of times homeowner wanted to just feel like they’re getting a good deal so mention it with urgency.
• Owens Corning preferred contractor (Left side): This is a social proof, a badge from a well-known manufacturing company – Often roofing contractors have to keep a minimum standard in their quality of work to be able to acquire a badge from the product manufacturer. If you have this, make sure to show it off!

Social Proof – The Omni Present Atmosphere

When it comes to reviews, the first place you want to have a good luck on is your Google listing.   This can be obvious and be easily overlooked the same time. You can think to yourself, I get all my leads from home adviser – so isn’t it better if I get all my reviews on homeadviser? The short answer is no, because no matter where you are branding yourself, even the word-of-mouth you generate will check you on Google. For roofing contractors, in my opinion the following are the best places to get reviews in order of importance:

1. Google
2. Home adviser (if you’re on it and actively buy their leads)
3. Yelp

These would be the first ones you want to get 50+ reviews on, once you have that down the following can be icing on the cake.

1. Better Business Bureau
2. Angie’s list
3. Thumbtack
4. Any other platform that provides a rich snippet (yellow stars right on the search results)

Then what you want to do is maximize each and every review. Since this article is supposed to be about your website let’s start there. If we scroll further down the roofing website example we used above, this is what we see:

The right side, welcomes Go with the bigGolden clarification Went there worries: Satisfaction is guaranteed 100% – Means that if the work is not done right, The roofing contractor will redo the work to make it perfect! Sounds like something someone spending $10,000 + on a home renovation would like to know!

They follow it up with rest of the social proof that they Proud of. It’s interesting to note that, Even in one or two of the platforms you showcase do not have a lot of reviews – You’re better off linking out to it. If you just put an image of the directory without a link, it gives off a bad signal as if something is being hidden.

People often ask us, I have many reviews but I don’t know how to how it on my website, and our go to solution is Rich Plugins. Any review you get another platforms, will automatically be syndicated and shown you’re on your website via i-frame.

Taking things to the next level – Drones, Videos and Video Reviews

Until this point, we have covered base ground. If your website load seamlessly, you have great views in major platforms, and you direct homeowners attention right where they should be looking at as soon as they land on website – You are well above the average. This next section is going go over a few things you can do to absolutely astonish the homeowners.

Videos – Make Those Drones Work for You

YouTube is the second largest search platform and aside from the many other benefits of using it. There is direct boost in search engine optimization as well as conversion rate for having a high-quality video on your website. So here are the only two reasons you will need to consider getting good videos:

1. Homeowners Actually Watch Them

We have found in YouTube analytics that homeowners will actually watch entire 3 – 5 minute videos. The best kinds of videos are time lapses. A homeowner shopping around to get their dream roof renovation done, having an awesome time lapse of your team showing off their A game, wearing company shirts and all, as they rip down an entire worn out roof and replace it with a whole new makeover looks fantastic. Replacing the roof a lot of times is an emotional buy, they have been thinking about it and now they can visually watch it and imagine it being done to their own home.

2. Videos Give a Direct Boost and Search Engine Optimization

As we mentioned during the first part of the article, a huge part of algorithm is looking at how people interact with your business and that includes how much time they spend on your website. Those five minutes they spent watching your video, counts as time spent on your website – Something Google likes a lot.

To read more about how videos fit in the entire puzzle for your entire search engine optimization plan, read our article on marketing for roofing contractors.

What Cameras to Use?

We recommend using a drone to get top footage as well and Any decent quality camera for ground footage. Contrary to popular belief, you don’t need to hire a camera crew – Latest smartphone cameras do just fine.

Video Reviews – The Ultimate Digital Review

They say “Online reviews are today’s word-of-mouth”. Study after study shows it and it’s not enough that we understand the concept but actually implement strategies to take advantage of it. It just makes sense, confirmation from other people who have used your service will definitely make homeowners feel more confident about going with you.

However, that is just in text. Just think how much more emotion it invokes When they can watch and hear from their neighbor just how great you were when they called your company a call.  How through you were during giving them an estimate, how you kept them in the loop during while the work was being done and they didn’t even have to be home, followed by a statement of when they finally did return, how you crew had cleaned up and left as if your crew was never there!

It goes a long way. People love it. The best part is, You don’t need many of these. A couple of video reviews and maybe just 1 solid time lapse video for your homepage will do the trick.

Google My Maps – The Showcase of Your Company’s Activity

My maps is a personal version of Google’s mapping system where people can Mark places to go, restaurants are like, etc. you can then share this individually two other people or even set it To public so anyone can view it.

Every home you go to can be marked on this map within 5 seconds. So when potential customers come to your website they will be able to see the jobs you have recently done. Now, my maps can be integrated with your business in a very comprehensive way. Just depends how deep down in the rabbit hole you want to go, some examples:

• It as a direct relationship with map 3 pack rankings
• You’re able to link out from MyMaps to the reviews to get on Google. Google loves its own properties so you will be rewarded with search engine value.
• If you are a smart business owner who was taking pictures or creating some kind of content for every home you go into or at least seven major renovation, you’re able to post that content and picture within the  MyMap marker. Homeowners will not be only real to see where the work was done also exact review that exact homeowner ended up giving.

To conclude, we must follow their attention and make it as easy as possible for them to Give us a call. Have to keep in mind how search, find and interact with your business. A lot of times this has to do it sales psychology more than actual Web design.

If you’d like to chat on over skype on some of the things we touched on during this article, feel free to fill out a form here.