Read Time: 5 Minutes

Over the last 10 years, I've analyzed well over 1,000 home service business websites and I've discovered that the best ones do three things extremely well:

1. Build trust with potential customers
2. Highlight their areas of expertise & services offered
3. Make it as easy as humanly possible for people to hire them

But the sad truth is, very few home service businesses have a website that does even one of these things well, let alone all three.

So I've decided to create a list of things that home service businesses can do to improve their website and turn it into a lead machine. 

A Great Website Should Help Your Home Service Business Build Trust With Potential Customers

When your business requires you to enter people's homes, you need to prioritize building trust with prospective customers. Here are three ways you can use your website to build trust:

Use Those Customer Testimonials

Customer testimonials show prospective customers that you have a history of doing great work. We already know that you should be collecting customer testimonials on review sites like Google & Yelp, but you should also be adding them to your website. The best websites I see have 3-6 testimonials on their home page plus additional testimonials sprinkled throughout the rest of their website.

Pro Tip #1: When someone writes you a testimonial, ask them for permission to attach their name and photo to it. The name and photo is key because it differentiates you from all of the businesses that use fake reviews on their website.

Pro Tip #2: If you have separate website pages for each service that you offer, place service-specific testimonials on each page. For example, if your cleaning business offers move out cleaning services, you should include a moveout cleaning testimonial on that specific page of your website.

Don't Ignore the About Page

Your customers want to know what type of person they're letting into their home and the About page is your opportunity to show them that you can be trusted.

A great About page should include an image of you smiling ear to ear with either your family or your team. And it should also tell people who you are, when/why you started your business, and why you are the best choice for their needs.

Cover Your Website With Photos

One of the best ways to build trust is to show people examples of your work.

You don't need to hire a professional photographer or get a fancy camera. All you have to do is pull out your phone (assuming it was made in the last 3-4 years) and snap a few photos before you start a project and then again when you finish it.

Throw those photos on your website and you'll help people envision what their house will look like if they hire you.

Bonus Tip: You can get more eyeballs on your business if you get in the habit of also posting those photos to your Google Business Profile. 

A Great Home Service Website Should Highlight Your Expertise & Services Offered

People don't visit your home service website for fun. They visit it because they want to see if you can fix their leaky faucet, build their dream deck, or clean their dirty house.

Your goal is to present your business as the solution to their problems.

Here are a few things you can do to accomplish this:

Make It Clear Who You Help

I can't tell you how many local businesses completely forget to mention who they help or where they operate. Even if your business doesn't have a physical location, you still need to tell people what cities/towns you provide service to. 

I recommend putting the name of your primary city right at the top of your home page. An example headline would be "Seattle's Most Trusted Garage Repair Company". Then, you can also list out any secondary service areas in your website footer, on the About page, or you can even create individual website pages for each city/town/neighborhood that you service.

Tell People How You Help

You want to list your services on your website's home page and also in the navigation menu. If you're just getting started, a single service page that lists all of your services is fine. But as time goes on, you should create individual website pages for each of your core services.

This will help prospective customers determine if you can solve their problems and it will help you show up in Google search results. 

Here are some insightful tips from @marcusmclayton about how to build better service pages.

Avoid Word Vomit

Yes, good old word vomit. You know it when you see it. Word vomit websites are the ones covered with paragraph after paragraph of dense text.

Let me tell you something. Nothing will send a website visitor packing faster than a word vom website.

Here's the truth: People don't read your website text.

Instead, they scan the page as quickly as possible to determine if you can solve their problem.

Your goal is to make your website easily scannable. To do this you should:

• Use tons of white space on your website (i.e. don't pack every square inch of your website with content)
• Ditch the long paragraphs in favor of 1-2 sentence paragraphs.
• Break up content with headlines and images
• Use your home page as a table of contents. It should provide basic info and then link out to internal pages with more in-depth info. 

A Great Home Service Website Should Make It as Easy as Possible for People to Hire You

If you want to turn website visitors into paying customers you need to tell them what you want them to do. 

Do you want them to call you? Fill out a form to request a free estimate? Use your scheduling tool to book a service?

Decide what action you want them to take and remind them to do it over and over again.

If you want people to request a free estimate, put buttons that say "Request a Free Estimate" all over your website.

Put one in your website header and footer. Put one at the top of your home page. Put buttons on every single page of your website.

Your goal is to have call-to-action visible at all times - no matter where someone is on your site. 

Visitors should never wonder what they need to do to hire you. It's your job to make it blatantly obvious. 

And don't forget about mobile.

You need to make your website easy to use and interact with on phones. Make your phone numbers click-to-call, make your content easy to read on small screens, and make sure your contact forms and scheduling tools are mobile-friendly. 

If you make it as easy as possible for people to hire you, you win.

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