Whether you’re running a residential or commercial painting business, you need a website. It’s a great way to market yourself, establish your reputation and generate leads. It shows potential clients who you are and gives current clients an easy way to get in touch.
And while you know your business inside-out, you might not know what makes a killer website. So, we’ve put together a list of the 5 most important things to know about getting a website for your painting business. We cover the whole range of topics from the reasons why you need a website to the basics of sales-driven design and creating content that ranks on Google search.
Read on and let us know what you think in the comments!
1. Do You Really Need a Website for Your Painting Company?
Yes! The first thing you need to get started online is a website.
Your painting business’ website will serve a few different purposes:
- Websites generate leads. Websites contain all the information that a potential client would need to contact you about your services. With an attractive design and punchy sales copy, your website will draw people in and convince them to become new clients. By making your contact information easy to access and combining this with convincing calls to action, a website can get you the leads you once had to go door-to-door for.
- Websites tell your story. If there’s one thing you need to know about marketing, it’s that it’s nothing more and nothing less than storytelling. Good marketers and great marketing strategies tell the story of a business in a way that allows customers to engage, relate, and buy. Your website will help tell the story of your painting company so that customers trust you before ever speaking to you on the phone.
- Websites get you noticed. Everyone who’s ever used Google knows how easy it is to find the information they need online. But when you’re on the other end of that—trying to make yourself stand out in all those search results—you need some special tricks. And your first step is getting a website that will become one of the main digital marketing tools for your painting business.
We’re always surprised by how many businesses still don’t have a website. In 2019, customers will check to see whether you are a real, trustworthy business by visiting your website. It’s one of the ways that people do background checks. They want to see your professionalism. They want to see that you’re visible, accountable, and easy to get in touch with.
2. Get a Specially Designed Website for Painting Contractors
Okay, so you need a website. But not just any old website. You need a website that’s specially designed for painting contractors. Your painting website needs to do three things:
- Show who you are.
- Explain what you do.
- Tell people how to get in touch with you.
If it does these three things, then it’s doing its job. But there’s one catch.
You only have 2 seconds!
That’s right. In 2 seconds, your website needs to tell the user who you are, explain what you do, and most importantly, tell them to contact you!
You tell internet users who you are through your logo, colour schemes, and fonts. You tell them who you are through the pictures you select and how they interact with your text. You give them your brand story—not just how you began, but how your customers can relate to you—through the interactions between the texts, images, and colours that represent your business.
At LinkNow Media, we design new websites every day. It’s our specialty. We’ve spent years A/B testing different designs, call-to-actions, font treatments, colour schemes—all with one goal in mind. We want to turn casual readers into engaged customers within 2 seconds.
Which is why, every time we build a new site, we run a very simple test. We pretend we are viewing the site for the first time and we ask ourselves:
“What do they want me to do?”
That’s it, that’s all. If your website gives the reader clear instructions about what they need to do (within 2 seconds), then you know you have a good site. Your goal is to push them to convert—and fast!
Take a look at this example, which is from our most recent painting website. The moment you land on the page you’re given the following information:
- • Company name
- • Services that the company offers
- • Service areas and where the company is located
- • Contact button for telephone
- • Contact button for email
- • Telephone number
- • Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter links
- • A clear navigation bar
Notice how the colours and shapes lead your eye around the page in a circular motion. This is where the design actually becomes a lead generating tool. Good design converts!
3. Create Content that’s Written to Rank and Convert
As we’ve repeated over and over, content is king!
Content includes all the images, videos, and texts on your website. For our purposes in this section, we’re going to focus on the written content.
Content has three basic functions:
- Content makes your website searchable on Google.
- Content creates trust.
- Content converts!
These three functions will be intertwined in your content. The reason for this comes from Google.
Google search has one goal: to provide its users with relevant search results.
And if your content establishes trust between you and the reader and therefore encourages them to contact you about a sale (to convert), Google is more likely to suggest your site over the competition.
Content that’s SEO Optimized
The first step to getting leads for your painting business is writing content that is SEO optimized. That means making it easy for internet users to find it when they search on Google. So, how do you do it?
The first thing you need is a keyword strategy. Keywords are the words and phrases that Google users use to search for information, products, and services. By including those keywords in your written content, you tell Google that your page is extremely relevant to searchers.
Take a look at the example below from the “Interior Painting” page on our painting contractor website:
All the words and phrases circled in black are keywords that have been specially selected by our SEO experts. Based on our research, these are the most popular keywords that people use on Google when they’re looking for an interior painting contractor. By including them in our content in a natural and obvious way, we tell Google that we mean business!
Content that Builds Trust
Keywords are the first step to getting noticed on Google. The next is making sure you’re attracting the right people to your page. Who’s the right person? Definitely not someone who is looking for DIY instructions. You want a lead—someone who wants to hire you to be their painting contractor!
The best approach is to be very upfront about the fact that you’re selling something. Forget the extra information about why you should paint your kitchen. Forget the how-tos and the lengthy discussions about paint types. Speak to the person you want to attract. Those people will connect with your content and contact you!
By writing painting content that speaks to your ideal customer, you establish trust by being upfront and honest. And, in line with this, Google will recognize that your webpage is trustworthy and relevant to the people searching for the keywords you’ve chosen.
Content that Converts
It’s also important to tell your readers what to do next. Having easy-to-access email addresses, phone numbers, and contact forms is a great first step. But you need to tell your readers to get in touch! This is called the ‘call to action’.
Your reader should not have to figure out what they need to do. Be clear that you’re selling an amazing service and tell them to contact you. Remember that you only have 2 seconds—if they don’t know what to do next, they’ll find another page that’s clearer.
Once again, the advantage of being extremely clear about your intentions is that Google will consider you more relevant. When it comes to SEO, relevance is number one.
If this all seems like too much, the SEO content writers at LinkNow Media can help. Not only do we write all the content for the LinkNow websites, but we’ve also worked hard to develop a carefully designed content strategy that incorporates all this and much more.
Our clients rank on Google and get a ton of great leads! So if you’re a painting contractor looking for new clients—why not give us try?
4. Make Sure Your Painting Business Website Is Mobile-Ready
We’ve spent quite a bit of time talking about SEO—but if you want to be found online, it’s very important that your website is designed for mobile devices like smartphones and tablets.
Mobile-Search Comes First
The obvious reason for having a mobile website is that everyone nowadays has a smartphone. And guess what? It’s not just millennials that are glued to their phones day and night. Everyone is.
You want to make sure that when Jim and Pauleen are sitting around the dinner table talking about painting their kitchen, all they need to do is pull out their phones to find you. You want to make sure that when Alison is riding the commuter train to work, that she can find you to be her exterior painter. And you want Liam to find your interior painting webpage when he wakes up in the middle of the night and suddenly realizes that the problem with his basement isn’t the layout—it’s the nicotine-yellow the walls!
Google’s Mobile-First Indexing
But having a mobile website also concerns your SEO. As of spring 2018, Google began indexing mobile sites first. That means that when Google indexes your website in their database, it will index the mobile version. And if you don’t have a mobile version, it will index your desktop version as seen through mobile.
By ensuring that your site has been designed and SEO optimized for mobile devices, you’ll appear more relevant to more Google users. And that’s likely to get you ranking.
Get Local Leads on Google Maps
Plus, there’s the fact that a large percentage of people search for businesses through Google Maps. And while Google Maps can be used on a computer, it’s really designed to be used on-the-go—on mobile devices. In order to rank on Google Maps (what we call Local SEO), you need to have a mobile site, a Google My Business listing, and a range of other business listings (with an up-to-date and consistent NAP).
If you’re a painting contractor looking to get leads in your local area, you need to get a site that’s mobile-ready. And, as you might expect, that’s our specialty. Our new painting websites are built to kill it on mobile search!
5. Make It Personal by Adding Pictures of Your Work onto Your Painting Website
As a painting contractor, you rely on the quality of your work to get new clients. And while getting referrals from clients is important, you also need to show off your work on your website. This is your chance to brag about how good you are!
Whenever you do work that you’re proud of, document it. Every time. Even if you don’t use every picture, it’s important to have a lot of examples of your work. New clients will want to know the kind of contractor they’re hiring before they put any money down. You can tell them all day how good you are. But nothing compares to beautiful pictures that show it.
Pictures are also a great way to give your website a personality. They show potential clients who you are and what you’re all about. They inspire trust by showing people that you know what you’re doing.
How many times have you gone onto a company’s website and wondered whether they are a real contractor? That’s exactly what you want to avoid. You have 2 seconds to prove that you’re a real contractor, with real skills, and a real desire to get new clients. Pictures of your work will do the trick!
If All Else Fails, Why Not Try LinkNow Media’s Painting Contractor Website?
Designing a website, writing the content, and marketing the whole thing takes a lot of time and skill. By signing up with LinkNow Media, we’ve already done the work for you! Our sites are proven to rank well and generate strong leads in both rural and urban areas. Small businesses are our specialty. Let us show you why.
Even if you’re not totally sure, why not reach out and speak to someone about all the advantages that our websites offer to small business owners. Simply give us a call at 1.888.667.7186 or shoot us an email at website@linknowmedia.com.
Find out why over 10 000 small business owners across the US and Canada love our websites!
I was looking at getting a website Thank you