STRAIGHT ANSWERS
"I already have a website." Good. Keep it. Here is what a site does and does not do
Some contractors hear "phone, text, booking" and think we are selling a website. We are not, and if you have one, keep it. This post is about what a site does, what it cannot do, and the one thing every site needs connected to it whether your nephew built it in 2019 or an agency built it last month.
A note on what this is. We are not going to tell you your site is bad. We are going to give you six checks you can run on your phone in ten minutes, and the honest result of each.
THE SHORT ANSWER
What does a website actually do for a contractor?
One thing: it makes you findable. When someone searches "water heater Hialeah," the site is what a machine reads to decide whether to show your name. That is worth having, and a site from 2019 can still do it if it passes six checks.
What a site cannot do is answer. The customer finds you, taps the number, and the call rings out because you are under a sink. The site did its job. Nothing did the next one.
Does your site pass the six checks?
- One page per job, not one "services" page that lists everything.
- The same name, phone and address on the site, on Google, and on Yelp.
- A phone number that dials when tapped from a phone.
- A page that loads in about a second on a phone with the Wi-Fi off.
- Pages that link to each other: jobs to areas, areas to contact.
- Google has it: search site: followed by your web address, no space.
The post on whether a machine can read your site walks through each one. Most sites fail two or three. None of those failures needs a new site; they need an afternoon.
When is the objection right?
Always, about the site. We never ask you to replace one that works, and we do not build sites as a service; the one exception is the one-day taller, where a business that has no site at all leaves with five pages. If yours passes the checks, the site is finished. The phone is not.
When is it wrong?
When "I have a site" is doing the work of "I have the phone handled." The site sends the call. What happens in the next sixty seconds is a different system: a text back in the caller’s language, a booking that lands on a board, a review request after the job. That is what we do, and it connects to the site you already have in two places: the phone number and the booking button.
Your site, our phone. Two things, not one. If yours fails the six checks, fix those first; they are free.
The two things to connect
The phone number on the site becomes the number the system answers, or forwards to it. The booking button opens a real calendar instead of a contact form that emails an inbox nobody checks from the truck. Both changes take a few minutes on any site, and they are the whole connection.
Questions we get asked about this
Do you build websites?
No. The one exception is the one-day taller, where a business with no site leaves with five pages built on the seat. If you have a site that passes the six checks, keep it.
My site was built by a friend. Is that a problem?
Not if it passes the checks. Who built it matters less than whether one page per job exists, the phone dials, and Google has it.
Can the booking button on my site open your calendar?
Yes. Any site can link a button to the booking page. That, and the phone number, are the only two places the site and the system touch.
Related
Want us to run the six checks on your site?
Bring the web address to a 30-minute call. We run the six on the screen, tell you which fail, and show you the two things to connect. If the site is fine, we say so.