Top 8 Ways to Make Your Website Easier for Your Customers to Use

As a painting contractor, you may not be the world’s foremost expert in web design but that doesn’t mean your website has to look terrible.  Check out these 8 ways to improve the look and feel of your website: 

1. Make your contact information really, really, obvious.  Your phone number should be at the top of every page to make it easy for prospective customers to call you. 

2. Have a photo gallery on your website’s home page.   Prospective customers want to know they’re dealing with someone they can trust – showing them before/ after pictures of actual jobs gives customers the confidence in you they’ll need to have before signing the contract. 

3. Have a call to action on every page.  The main goal of your website should be to help your customers schedule a free estimate (either by calling you or scheduling up an appointment online).  In this case, the main goal of your website, getting visitors to request an estimate, can also be your call to action. 

A call to action should be clean, clear, and concise and should immediately draw the attention of visitors to your website.          

4. Fill your website with content.  A key part to getting found on Google is to make sure your website has descriptive content that’s talks about, in detail, the services that you offer.   You should have a separate page for each location that you serve and a separate page for each service that you offer (interior painting, exterior painting, deck staining, etc).   Having lots of information on your site will not only help Google direct customers to your website but it will help your customers learn more about what you do. 

5. Leave room to breathe.  If your website looks like a freeway pileup at rush hour, it might be time to re-think your layout.   Remember, one of the goals of your site is to make it easy for visitors to find the information they need, when they need it, not to shove information in their face. 

Don't overwhelm your customers with information.  Good design should make it easy for customers to find what they need to know.   

6. Have a clear menu.  People go to your website to get specific information or to perform a specific action.  Website visitors may just want to grab your phone number or find out a little bit more about your company’s painting process.  Make it easy for them by providing a menu that clearly tells them where to find the information they’re looking for. 

7.  Use headings.   Instead of reading content from top to bottom, left to right (as you would read a book), website visitors scan headings and content within those headings (as you would read a newspaper).  For that reason, your content should have headings that speak to specific topics followed by a paragraph or two of content that relates to that topic.

8.  Let customers schedule their own appointments.  Most homeowners now-a-days are tech-savvy and they expect their contractors to meet them on that level.   Implement scheduling software on your website to let customers schedule appointments 24/7 without having to pick up the phone.  Watch this video to see how it works.

CorkCRM makes business management software for painting contractors.  With CorkCRM you can track leads, schedule appointments, send electronic proposals, automate customer emails, schedule jobs, record employee time, and track data in your business with a rich set of reports.  Check out this video to see CorkCRM in action.