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What Is a Conversion Rate and What Does It Mean for My Contractor Business?

What Is a Conversion Rate and What Does It Mean for My Contractor Business?

Right now you want more leads, so you’re thinking of ways to reach more people. Flyers, business cards, Yellow Pages – these would all help you get in front of more people, but you’ll also be paying for the exposure.

Imagine doubling your leads WITHOUT spending a dollar more on marketing. The key is to improve your website’s conversion rate, and it’s easier than you think.

What is a conversion rate? Well, let’s talk about your customers to answer that question.

If you’re running a trades business, you probably get leads through your website. You spend money to attract those people whether it’s through business cards, an ad on the side of your van, or paid ads on Facebook/Google.

By the time they get to your website you KNOW they’re interested in your product or service – otherwise they’d spend their valuable time elsewhere. But somewhere between 95% – 98% of those people will leave without ever contacting you, calling you, or asking for a quote.

Turning 2% of those people into leads feels great. But think about the other 98% for a moment. Think about how much money that’s leaving on the table. Now here’s a truly nightmarish thought – think about that 98% of people who left your site and went to your competition instead…

After all, they’re in the market for your products and services, so if it’s not you, it might just be your competitor. That’s not money left on the table, that’s money into a competing business’ bank account.

If you want to improve your conversion rate you need to stop focusing on website traffic, and start focusing on what people do once they get to your site.

Tradie Digital logo
Grow Your Tradie Business. The Easy Way.
We work with trade business owners exclusively. Bathroom Renovators, turf layers, concrete contractors, tilers… if you’re on the tools or organizing a team, we’ve got you covered. We’ve helped tradies generate over $200 million in leads.
We don’t work with lock-in contracts and guarantee to increase your leads (Or will give you $300!).
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Why did people visit your site then leave?

You’re never going to turn every site visitor into a lead. But if you want to grow your home improvement business and make more money, you need to stop and ask yourself what those people are doing after they find you.

Some people head to your contact page to request a quote or schedule a call-out. But others were unimpressed with what they saw and headed back to Google to look for another business. We’re here to tell you the difference isn’t just the odd lead – the difference can be hundreds of thousands of dollars every year in lost revenue.

And that comes down to your conversion rate.

What is the contractor conversion rate?

If you’ve spent any time around marketers you’ll have heard the term ‘conversion rate’ before.

What is the conversion rate? Well, in an industry that’s frustratingly complex at times, your conversion rate is a relatively simple term to break down.

Put simply, your conversion rate is how well your website turns a visitor into an enquiry or quote request.

In this post, we’ll explain what a conversion rate is in simple terms, show you why small changes can lead to tens of thousands more in revenue each month, and how to fix your conversion rate if it’s fallen through the floor.

This is how you calculate your conversion rate no matter what trade you work in

Your conversion rate is the percentage of people who completed a goal (or conversion) on your site out of the total number of site visitors.

For example:

  • You have 100 people visit your website
  • 10 of them requested a quote
  • Your conversion rate is 10% (10 out of 100)

Let’s face it, you want everyone who visits your website to contact you – but not everyone will. When you start tracking your conversion rate you can see how successful your site is at bringing in leads. If your conversion rate is poor (we’ll explain a few possible reasons why) it means you need to make changes.

Typically, the higher your conversion rate, the more successful your business will be.

“Why is my conversion rate important?”

So you’ve already got work, that’s great. But you’d be open to more, right?

Most lead-generation strategies for contractors require time or money. It takes time to publish content, it costs money to secure a lead through Facebook or Google Ads. But improving your conversion rate doesn’t cost a thing.

Here’s how this looks in practice…

Let’s say you get 1,000 website visits each month, and 100 people request a quote. That’s a conversion rate of 10%. If you can increase your conversion rate to 20%, you’re now getting 200 quote requests per month.

That’s double the leads. Double the phone calls. Double the chance for new business.

Growing your conversion rate by just 1% can lead to more clients every week and more money in your pocket. Best of all, you don’t have to spend more on marketing.

Remember, if 5% of people who visit your website contact you, that leaves 95% of people leaving your site without choosing to get in touch. This leaves money on the table. Over the course of 5 years imagine how much money those thousands of lost leads would have brought in – hundreds of thousands? Maybe even millions of dollars.

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OUR GUARANTEE
$300 Lead Increase Guarantee

“Why is my conversion rate so low?”

Not everyone who visits your website is ready to pay for your service.

Whether you install benchtops, rewire homes, or tile roofs, all of your customers go through their own buyer’s journey. This journey consists of 3 stages:

  • Awareness = a potential customer becomes aware of their need or want
  • Consideration = a potential customer is researching and deciding between your business and others
  • Decision = a potential customer is ready to purchase or hire a service

If your site hasn’t been built, designed and optimised to help customers in each stage of their journey, you’ll lose them and your conversion rate will suffer.

For example, if your site only has a contact form you’re only offering help to people in the final stage of the buyer’s journey. These people have made the decision to hire an expert and they request a quote.

But other customers are only just aware they have a problem, like a rattling sound in their engine. And there are customers who are still considering their options, like whether they should call a mechanic or if there is a DIY option to save them money.

Your conversion rate is low when you fail to reach out to customers at each step of their buyer’s journey.

  • If you don’t have blogs explaining common problems in your industry = you won’t connect with ‘Awareness’ customers
  • If you don’t have case studies and comparison articles to help simplify people’s options = you won’t connect with ‘Consideration’ customers
  • If you don’t have a fast, professional, and mobile-friendly website = you won’t connect with ‘Decision’ customers.

If you want to improve your conversion rate, you need to start addressing customers in all three stages of the buyer’s journey.

This is the #1 mistake most contractors make with their online marketing

9 out of 10 home improvement businesses focus on traffic. They think if they can get 1000 website visitors each month then their business will grow.

But what if none of those 1000 people request a quote or call your phone? What value is that traffic? (hint: it’s worthless).

Traffic is only half the equation. Increasing the number of people who reach out to you and become leads is the other half, and it’s a deeply analytical and scientific process. If you’ve got a website that you know people are visiting, focus on improving your conversion rate to keep your costs down, and leads coming in.

What effect does my conversion rate have on my business?

Not optimising your conversion rate can cost your business tens of thousands to hundreds for thousands of dollars. Most contractors focus on the leads they have (which makes sense) and they give their full focus on doing great work.

Whether that’s working with kitchens, bathrooms, backyards or basements, when you do a great job you increase the chance of securing a follow-up service down the track. But that ignores the REAL money clients – all the people who never got in touch at all.

Think of it this way, what’s your customer’s average lifetime value?

$2,000?, $5,000?, $10,000?

If you double your conversion rate you’re getting twice that lifetime value. Every lead that slips through your fingers because of a poor conversion rate is thousands of dollars down the drain.

sg-book-cover
OUR GUARANTEE
$300 Lead Increase Guarantee

How to improve your conversion rate

You know what a conversion rate is now, and why yours isn’t red-hot. But that knowledge is useless unless you start applying conversion optimisation strategies to help your business grow.

We’ve put together a couple of simple conversion rate hacks to get your conversion rate higher, with zero experience needed. Oh, and we know they work – because we use these same strategies at Tradie Digital.

#1 – Build Trust

‘Show them before you sell them’.

That’s our motto.

When you give your clients results before they buy from you, or a free guide before they part with a dollar, it sets you up as the #1 go-to expert. Once someone sees you as the expert in your field, then you’ve already won half the battle.

Remember those 95% – 98% of visitors who landed on your website and left immediately to never be heard from again?

Well a large group of those potential customers (the ones who aren’t quite ready yet and left your site) will purchase a product or service similar to yours in the next 2 weeks to 6 months! We’re talking roughly 89% of people.

So, how can you make sure they buy from you in the future and not your competition?

A simple strategy is to use what we call a “free report.”

Let’s say you’re browsing for a new bathroom renovation or a new patio for your home. An example of a report that may assist you might be:

“7 Steps To A 5 Star Bathroom”

OR

“How To Choose The Right Bathroom Renovation Company For Your Home”

With free reports that help you with your home improvement project, it’s a no-brainer to hit ‘download’. And that’s exactly what people do. Once a site visitor downloads a FREE Report, 3 important things will happen:

  • Builds reciprocity and goodwill with your potential customer.
  • Helps your potential customer when making their decision.
  • Captures the name, email and phone number of the customer when they are early in the buying cycle and decision making process.

When you offer this report it’s critical to ask for a phone number so you can follow this potential customer up via a phone call. You know they’ve downloaded a free report to help them with their project, so you know your services can help them out. From here it’s a matter of following up and saying something like:

“Thanks for downloading our free report, what did you like about it most?”….

“Are you currently looking for xxx”

And then begin your sales approach and start turning website visitors into leads.

For example, one of our home improvement clients used this simple trick and increased his website conversion rate by 149%. Now, if you have a website, what would a 149% increase in conversions mean for your business and bottom line?

This little act of kindness goes a long way and sets you apart from the competition in your area. Think about it…who else is offering a free gift on their website in your area? Probably no one, and that’s just another way you’ll increase the “like” and “credibility” factor of your brand, all by tweaking your website.

#2 – Use Cyber Stalking (the good kind)

Another way to increase your conversion rate is to use remarketing.

Most companies spend thousands of dollars getting customers to visit their website, only to have them never return again. (Remember 95% – 98% of them will leave). Imagine if you could follow those people who showed an interest in your product and service for the next 30-60 days, all while they’re thinking about which business they’ll choose?

Well you can by using retargeting to re-display your ad to those prospects across their favourite sites online. This can help jog a potential customer’s memory and make them think “oh that’s right, that business COULD help me, I should check them out again”.

When customers are ‘revisiting’ your website they are far more likely to contact you as they are already familiar with your brand. It’s super simple, and it’s conversion rate 101.

How to increase your conversion rate in 2022

There are a couple of ways to improve your conversion rate.

You don’t need to be a tech whiz or have a ton of marketing experience to see your conversion rate climb. It’s about understanding every single customer has to go through 3 stages of their journey before they ever pick up the phone and ask for a quote.

When you optimise your site to put your customers first, your conversion rate will go up.

Interested in maximising your conversion rate?

At Tradie Digital we’ve spent over $2.3m on Google Ads for Tradies. We’ve taken the learning from this ad spend and created a framework called the P-C-D Framework (Psychology, Content, Design).

Apply to work with Tradie Digital now.

Tradie Digital logo
Grow Your Tradie Business. The Easy Way.
We work with trade business owners exclusively. Bathroom Renovators, turf layers, concrete contractors, tilers… if you’re on the tools or organizing a team, we’ve got you covered. We’ve helped tradies generate over $200 million in leads.
We don’t work with lock-in contracts and guarantee to increase your leads (Or will give you $300!).
Review Feature Image