Web Design for Plumbers: Best Practices to Get More Customers

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Every building needs a visit from a plumber at some point, whether it’s residential or commercial. However, many customers wait until they notice issues with their plumbing to establish a relationship with a local contractor. Digital marketing is critical for every plumber: you need customers to quickly find your business, learn about the services you offer, and locate your phone number and email.

Plumbing websites with excellent design can bring in customers without the use of other, more expensive forms of marketing and advertising. If you’re wondering how to attract more prospective clients to your new website, make sure you’re using the tricks the best plumbing websites use to stand out from competitors.

Customers tend to find and stay on websites with high SEO, quick navigation time, robust security, and mobile-friendly design. Implement these key features and watch the steady flow of new customers to your plumbing website.

Why is Web Design Important for Plumbers?

An expertly designed web page can enhance your plumbing business in several ways. At its core, it’s your online presence, acting as a brochure that showcases the services you offer. Customers get a sense of your brand, values, and image from the way your web page introduces you. They read reviews, see photographs of you and your work, and find your contact information.

Because it only takes a few seconds for prospective clients to browse your page and judge the quality of your plumbing service, it’s essential to make an excellent first impression. Successful plumbing websites have an interface that is clean and intuitive to navigate on both mobile and desktop. Simple design helps the customer absorb your information, develop trust in your service, and know that their personal information is secure with you.

Your website can also bring in new traffic from search engines, which is the first place most customers go to find a trustworthy plumbing service. Its design can optimize plumbing industry keywords to rank higher on Google’s algorithm, meaning more customers are likely to click on your page when searching the web.

Because your website engages potential customers around the clock, it should act as a virtual sales rep that presents your plumbing business as the highest quality choice. Excellent website design will attract and inform visitors from their first click to the moment they decide to go with your service.

What Customers Look For in a Website

The best websites for plumbers have a few core features in common. Studies show that customers browse with short attention spans, and certain tricks keep them engaged and build their trust in your service.

For new customers to even find you, you’ll have to structure your web page and its content to appeal to search engines. After you get that first click, you’ll have just a few seconds to impress visitors with a user-friendly interface, elegant mobile formatting, and fast loading time. Find out why these features are essential, and how they work to bring traffic to your plumbing website.

Search Engine Visibility

93% of online activity begins with typing a query into a search engine. Customers who type “plumber near me” into Google, Bing, or Yahoo are highly likely to click one of the websites they find on the first page of results. If you want excellent search engine optimization (SEO), you’ll have to design your web page to rank high on the list of competitors.

Websites with the highest search rankings include relevant keywords in the unique, informative content that appears on their page. More original content means more opportunities to be discovered by a search engine looking for relevant results. Keywords optimize the site to appear when customers search anything from “broken hot water heater” to “highest rated plumber.”

There are also ways to organize the internal content of your website to boost SEO. Structured data can be added to a page’s HTML to boost keywords and relevant information. Search engines will also show rich snippets, or excerpts of content that customers might find useful, underneath your listing to drive more clicks. The more you can organize and showcase information about your business, the more likely it is to reach new customers.

Search engines will use bots to crawl your plumbing website, collecting various kinds of information that determine its ranking. In addition to using keywords and structured data, your page should be set up for easy crawling. Bots work best on websites that are fast, secure, and easily formatted to all screens.

Mobile-Responsive Interface

A customer’s need for a plumbing company can often be an urgent situation. When homeowners are dealing with leaky pipes, they want to avoid hassle and find a plumber quickly and easily. Most searches begin where it’s most convenient: on a mobile phone.

Internet users have made a dramatic shift from desktop computers to mobile devices over the last decade. Across the world, 50% of internet activity takes place on a phone or tablet. As of 2019, Google ranks and indexes websites based on their mobile interface. If your web page doesn’t look and feel excellent on mobile, a search engine is less likely to recommend it to future customers.

Even if a person can access your website on their phone, they have a lower chance of becoming a customer if the site’s features are not mobile responsive. If phone or tablet users can’t access the full content of your website at a convenient speed, they’re likely to leave the site and find another result.

To avoid potential clients getting discouraged and returning to the search bar, you’ll need a mobile website with accessible design, meaning that essential elements like buttons and menus are easy to view and click. The display should be formatted to adapt to the dimensions of various mobile devices, presenting the customer with a clean website that they can navigate intuitively.

Phone and tablet users should also access your plumbing company’s content at the fastest possible speed. No matter what the viewing device, quick loading times ensure that you don’t lose customers.

Fast Speed

If customers have to wait more than 3 seconds for something to happen on your website, there is a big chance they’ll move on to another competitor. According to Google, a website loading time of 10 seconds increases consumer bounce rates by 123 percent.

In 2019, the average loading speed for all websites was 15 seconds. For top-ranking search results, it shifted to an average of 3 seconds. The faster your web page loads, the more customers will be encouraged to stay and learn about your service.

A sleek, simple plumbing website design is the key to reducing load time. 80% of loading is rendering the different elements of your website. If it’s full of weighted content complicated redirects, every action on the page will take longer. Keeping your page simple, mobile-friendly, and free of clutter will streamline the experience for visitors.

Reviews and Awards

One online marketing tool builds customer trust while increasing visibility on search engines: positive reviews. These may include pictures and testimonials from satisfied customers, and SEO climbs even higher when the business owner writes back in response.

Reviews, whether they are hosted on your site or linked from an external platform, help boost the flow of traffic to your page. Studies even show that positive online reviews are the number one factor in a customer’s decision to purchase a product or service.

Google says that positive customer reviews significantly impact your website’s chance of appearing in the “local pack,” or the handful of results that show up underneath a map. The local pack directs customers to services near their location.

You may also consider listing relevant awards and accreditation. Prizes could include your service’s nomination in the annual “Best Of” section of a newspaper or magazine. Showcasing diplomas and other training helps build confidence in the quality of your product.

Content that highlights experience, awards, and positive reviews are an essential digital marketing tool for a plumbing website.

Strong Security

Customers are rightfully cautious about giving personal information to businesses they aren’t familiar with, especially online. Massive companies, including Adobe and eBay, made headlines when they suffered data breaches, resulting in public leaks of sensitive information. To protect your clients, a plumbing website design that keeps their data hidden from hackers is paramount.

Instead of using an URL beginning with HTTP, a trustworthy web address starts with HTTPS. The “S” stands for secure, meaning that the information customers share on the page is not stored in plain text, which would be easily accessible to hackers. Sites with an HTTPS URL have acquired a certificate that demonstrates to visitors that they can safely browse the web page.

Simple and Easy Design

Customers prefer a website that is easy and intuitive to navigate. User experience (UX) is a critical part of your first impression on visitors. Tools like simple infographics and animations can help condense the information you’re sharing about your plumbing company while bringing down the page loading speed.

Many of the top plumbing websites feature a bold landing page. This tool presents visitors with a unique homepage personalized to their location.

Rather than users having to search for important information, like the area you offer service to, a landing page can bring this content to them. The less work your customer has to do on your website, the more likely it is that they’ll choose you over other competitors.

Website usability is essential because it’s a form of customer service. Just like you strive to meet your customers’ needs and expectations during real-life interactions, your website should quickly answer their questions and direct them to the actions they’d like to take.

A simple design is also an accessible design. Clients with various disabilities may be looking for plumbing services, and you need to make sure your information gets to them. A clean and straightforward platform makes this easy.

Final Thoughts on Web Design for Plumbers

Customer-focused web design is crucial no matter your industry or niche. Which is why web design for plumbers should be a priority. Follow these tried-and-true tips, and you’ll find yourself attracting a wide range of new customers in no time. Follow this link to learn more about the cost of a typical website.