Service businesses are interesting. Small towns may only have one electrician that has a monopoly on the industry, but other cities may have dozens of electricians all vying for the same business.
It’s a difficult situation to be in, but there are ways to use your website to boost sales.
People flock to the Internet to review companies, search for the best prices and find a service provider to meet their needs. It’s an industry with many possibilities, and since there are many service providers (in most cases), a website needs to stand out from the crowd.
But how?
That’s the question.
3 Website Must-Haves for Service Businesses to Excel
1. Affiliations, Accreditations and Associations
Associations, accreditations and affiliations are a must. If you’re a licensed plumber, you’ll want to showcase this on your website. Master electricians can showcase the accredited master electrician logo on their website to build trust.
If you’re a proud sponsor of the local baseball team and a potential player’s parent views this affiliation, you bet they will consider working with you before a competitor.
Associations that you have will offer:
- Seals
- Logos
Use these items on your website to display your expertise and gain trust from the potential client.
You can even use secure seals to gain trust if you allow customers to pay online. These seals will bring confidence to your business and pay dividends with higher conversion rates.
2. Reviews from Past Clients
Did you know that 88% of consumers trust online reviews as much as they do personal recommendations? That’s huge. A service business has ample opportunities to acquire reviews and ratings.
There are a few approaches you can take here:
- Post testimonials on your site
- Post online reviews
- Post ratings
Businesses can also follow My Electrician and post the Yelp logo and link directly to Yelp reviews.
Reviews may be bad, and in this case, your best bet is to boost reviews through good customer service. Reach out to unhappy customers, offer to make the customer happy in a reply to their review and focus on your service.
Customers are looking for reviews, and showcasing them on a website is a must.
3. Guarantee and Warranty Information
Services that stand behind their work are going to win over customers. The one thing I hate the most when visiting a website is not finding any information about their guarantee or warranty. Guarantees and warranties are there to help bring confidence to the consumer.
Why would you hide this information away?
It needs to be on the front of your website. Place it in the sidebar. Make it an important header on every page.
It doesn’t matter as long as people can find it.
If a business isn’t backing their work, it’s going to be problematic, too.
I’ll leave you with a “guarantee” statistic to mull over. Research shows that 55% of consumers are willing to pay more for a guarantee. That means you can raise your prices, offer a guarantee and have more than half of your customers willing to pay more.
