WEBVTT
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Hi, I'm in Messinger with my co host,
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Actually, it's Lauren Schenck now.
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Oh, yes, it is.
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Congratulations.
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Thanks for joining us for this episode of Small Business Small Talk powered by Hibu. At Hibu, our goal is to help local businesses across America succeed and grow with Digital Marketing. Today, we're talking with Paul Altobelli, Hibu's Website Product Lead. Three years ago, when we launched Small Business Small Talk, Paul was actually our very first guest. Thanks for coming back.
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Thank you for having me. I appreciate it.
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Now remind everybody again, as I almost choke on my coffee, what you do at Hibu.
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As the as the website product lead, I'm pretty much responsible for to maintain the integrity of what we've Lauren Blackford.
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defined as the website. Website has certain rules in terms of how we go about building it. And I define those rules. And then I work with the different teams, our process teams, our training teams, our production teams, our QA teams, sales teams, GTM - Go To Market – teams, to make sure that they're all aligned. This is what we're building, this is how we build it.
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Additionally, I'll stay up with the latest trends, I look at existing sites, I figure out ways that we can improve our websites all the time. Websites, as you've heard me both say many times are never completed, they're abandoned. As far as the Hibu website goes, that applies.
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I'm just not building one product, and then sticking with it and setting it and forgetting it. We're constantly evolving our product to make sure that we're meeting the demands of the marketplace. So it's it's not the same, you know, the same flavor it was three years ago, five years ago, it's it's something better, it's something current, it's, it's, it's always changing. There's always something new with what we're trying to achieve here.
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Before we get started, though, I just want to say, mazel tov to Lauren. I both... I've worked with Lauren, and Ian at various different times in the 15 years that I've been with the company.
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So, Paul, when when you're looking at a local business' website, and when you're looking at the Hibu websites, and the product that you create, what, what makes a good website?
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Before I answer that, let's just let's just state that the rules by which I sort of think about that has to do with the fact that I want the website out of the gate to make sure. And to convince somebody to stay on a website longer than seven seconds, we don't have a lot of time. A website doesn't have a lot of time to convince somebody to stay. They... if I don't see what I want to see immediately on my phone, which I'll be referencing here on later today.... I'm off So as far as what I what I think makes a good website out of the somewhere else.
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gate, we're looking for things that establish credibility, right out of the gate now to see that. And that includes things like I call them trust signals.
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So some sort of badges or something that that addresses, affiliations and licenses and things of that sort awards, that's a good one that's establishing that I've arrived in the right that a good place.
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I'm looking for testimonials and reviews. If I'm looking at two websites, identical in every way, except this one has 500 reviews, and it's saying we have over 500 reviews, check out our reviews, here's our stars. And this one has none. I'm going with this guy every time. My wife looks at reviews for everything, no matter what.
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She's like, "Oh, I'm not I'm gonna make that cake once I see reviews." That's important.
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The website has to be professionally designed. I know there's a lot of websites out there that will convert no matter what it looks like. But as far as capturing my attention and maintaining my attention longer than seven seconds, I want to see something that looks like a professional company. And two things that I look for because it's the first two things you probably are looking at yourself is the logo and photography. A lot of times with everything matches, everything looks great, except for that logo, it's all blurry. Or it's just a text based logo. I'm going to be spending a lot of money with you. And I want to make sure that that you've checked off everything on your end if you're if you don't have enough time to make sure your logo isn't blurry Well then how do I know you're going to make sure that you're styling my my air conditioner correctly, that's important. And then photos especially if the business is something like a landscaper or something along those lines. If they don't have good photography on their real photography, you can get away with stock photography based on in certain scenarios. But if you can have real photos, you know, we talked about that trust thing right and testimonials or reviews, if you can put before and after photos is fantastic trust and I'm looking at that and I'm going to immediately get sucked in.
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Additionally, I'm looking for things like ways that the business is differentiating itself from competitors. So, at Hibu we call this motivating factors – some people will refer to them as unique selling points. We want to see right out of the gate - why should I hire you? And for our example, here, I'm going to go with this idea that it is some sort of a home services provider, like a plumber, or an electrician, a landscaper. So right out of the gate, I want to see things that are going to tell me how much is going to cause me to hire you to fix my AC. So things like do they have coupons? Do they have specials? Do they have financing options? That has to be addressed? How much is it going to cost me? I want to look at to see if how fast you can help me fix my problem? Is it 24/7 emergency services to the handle fully stocked truck, things of that nature? How quickly will they call you back? We promise you we're gonna call you back within one hour. That's that's really key. That's good to make that phone ring. Because a lot of us all of us here have dealt with contractors that will call you back right away. nothing more frustrating than getting some feedback. Just FYI, we might have a guest joining us.
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Okay, what do you mean?
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That's Tony, just in case Tony wants to get on.
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Other things, I'm looking for is On-page SEO. It isn't something that isn't necessarily in your face. There's this code that goes on behind the site, and that's helping the search engines find the site. That's what I look for. Did they, have they, have they included the right title tags and meta description? Or the key or the headlines? Do they include keyword terms? Does it make sense that you just say, Welcome to our website? Or does it say, Cherry Hill? Where I live.
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Cherry Hill plumbing services 24/7? How about this: 24/7 Plumbing Services in Cherry Hill– perfect headline. It's good for both the user for me and for the search engines.
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I want to know if it's a fast loading site, if it's a real slow site on my phone, that's a bad thing. If it's fast loading, that's a good sign.
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And then finally, I want to make sure that the calls to action on the website align with how to get in touch with them. So if the website is constantly saying things like, call us today, call us today, call us today, and I can't find the phone number.
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Then good luck.
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I don't want to see things that a lot of times I'll see with websites that have multiple phone numbers in the header, which one should I call if it's clear, if it's clean, if I know if it's telling me exactly what to do? That's a good one. So all those factors come into play, ultimately making me stay on that website longer than seven seconds. It's interesting to me, because everything you just said. And I mean, this in a good way is geared toward thinking of the website and for us building websites with an eye toward being transactional. You know, you're not saying it's got to look great. And it's got to impress your your colleagues and your competitors. And it should look like you know, whatever amazon.com or something it's all about here are the things I need, as a consumer to arrive on your website with the intention of hiring you and doing business with you.
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Lauren, it goes back to the heart of the question, right?
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What makes a good small business website? Well, assuming you're using the website to drive business and not just have a website for fun, this is what it should have to power it to drive calls to drive leads to get a response. I think that's a great point. And because business owners are always told you have to have a website, you have to have a website. But they don't always know what to do with that website. And I think this is great information to it's to drive, you know, closing the sale, people into the shop.
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People go to web pages, people go to the internet, to solve a task – or visiting a website, they're doing whatever that query might be. I'm coming to a destination on the internet to solve a task. It could be as simple as I want to look at cat videos.
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(He is a Tony.) I want to pay a bill, I want to listen to music.
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I want to find a plumber, I want to find an electrician, I want to find somebody to fix my air conditioner because it's 90 degrees. I want to solve a task.
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The easier that web page, that website, that company makes it to solve all the things I need in my head to say, Yeah, you're the guy, you're solving my task, then I'm gonna call him up. It's all about conversions. You want to look good? Do you want to make money? And the idea here, nobody's ever gonna say I just want to look good. I mean, it's very rare. They always have a lot of combination of the two.
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But if you have a professional site with good pictures, a good logo, and it's laid out in a way that makes sense for the user, well, then it's going to look good. That's good. A lot of times we have clients or I've seen websites where they're trying to look good, and unnecessarily try to get the phone to ring, and then they wonder why aren't I getting any calls? Well, I don't know.
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Because you didn't put the phone
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Right. Yeah. And it's not really a chicken or the number up in the right hand corner, egg scenario. Right? You know, it's you're never going to have a client who says, "Well, I'm getting a lot of calls, but I just don't think it looks great." That doesn't happen.
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You're absolutely going to have clients that say, "I like the way it looks." But you know, yeah, it's just you've got to have it built to convert.
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Yep.
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S o you've outlined a whole lot of factors to to drive somebody to close the deal. So of those and maybe even more what, what does bring in the most calls from website?
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How can we pinpoint how to get those calls made?
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Three C's! I'm still, just from a commercial I just saw, they're talking about the three P's. I'm talking about the three C's –content, content, and content. A lot of times we see with websites, they'll they'll have the traditional sort of left to right navigation home services about contact me.
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And on the services page, they'll list all the things they do. They do, they do AC repair, they do heating repair, they do plumbing, they do indoor air flow, and they just every every one of their services is listed as a bullet point. That's not enough content. That's not enough content. If I am trying to solve a task, if I have a AC that's on the fritz, and it's 90 degrees, I am most likely typing into Google AC repair. And then wherever town on it, that's what I'm typing into it if the website has pages that are aligned with the different things that their clients are looking for, meaning there's a page for every query in a realistic way, well, then that website has a great chance of converting, that's what it needs to do. It's all about content.
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And the more pages of content that's added that are specific to somebody's needs, the greater chance of conversion in years ago, you refer to it and please talk about it and the lottery ticket analogy.
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Yeah I forget what it was exactly. But basically, you know, if you only buy, you know, four tickets, what are your odds versus if you buy 12 of them three times more likely to win? Probably still not doing great. I've never won the lottery, because maybe made five bucks off a scratch off but right, you know, especially if it sounds like we've been using HVAC as a sort of an example industry here. You know, it can be very easy, I think for a small business owner to say well, I do HVAC – heating, I do I do air conditioning, I do you know all sorts of ventilation ductwork. That's, that's right.
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That's, that's what's on my you know what I do page on my services page. But you know, chances are I'm not looking, depending on the time of year, I'm not looking for both heating and air conditioning. You know, it's Listen, we're all in the Philadelphia area. It was summer. Last week, it was summer, two days. You know, it was it was 90 here, which is insane for April and I turned my air conditioner on for the first time this year. And you kind of keep your fingers crossed? Like is it gonna kick over? If it didn't? I would be searching for as you point out, Paul, you know, air conditioner repair.
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And if I get to someone's site, and they've just got a laundry list of Well, we do air conditioning heating Baba Baba, Baba Baba. Yeah, I don't know, I'll probably keep looking for someone that has a page or has something specific to exactly what I'm looking for.
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And let's be clear, you're not going to find that website that just has a list of bullet points on a certain page. Yep, just as important as it is for the user to have these pages that are unique to what they're searching for, and the test they want to solve, it also helps with the SEO. Google is looking for those pages. Google is only going to serve up the pages that best match the query being asked, right? So if I type in roof repair, and the website is optimized for a general contractor, Roof Repair is never going to get found, are going to find that business. There is a page dedicated to roof repair.
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Right, then there might be a page dedicated to Emergency Roof Repair or Storm Roof, air or, or roof replacement. You know, so there's no I just listed five pages for what used to be a bullet point. Just the bullet points. So bullet points are great for a side of a truck. I do all these things. Visit my website for more info, visit the website for more info, then you get the detail you're looking for. Does anybody really read all that content? Probably not.
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But it for somebody that that needs that extra bit of content?
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It's always good to have it?
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Yeah. Well, that's an interesting point.
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Because like you said before, they're going to this website to complete a task. But it's also to answer a question, like you said, do you do this specific thing? And I think sometimes the business owner or anyone in an industry just assumes people know, oh, I do I do their conditioning. That means this, the repair, replacement all of this, but that doesn't always translate to the common person who's not in that industry. And so then what do you do this specific thing? Is a very important question that needs to be answered for the consumer that the business owner needs to include.
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And the way you just frame that too is something else that if you made this choice means to your website, it will have an impact for two ways. And that's FAQs, frequently asked questions.
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Because even if you're saying, Yes, I will fix your roof, there might be questions specific to that. Yes. And if you add them, that's going to help seal the deal, so to speak. So FAQs are a great way of things that are a great option of something you can add to a web page that will help with the conversion.
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And that could be with the roofing example, that could be something as simple as you know, what's the best time of year to replace my roof or, you know, just anything that someone might search for. And it's almost like as a business owner, Lauren, to your point you kind of have to think of, and this can be very challenging, you know, imagine you don't know anything about your industry, but you have the problem that your company can solve, you know, what are those questions that have come up? You know, is there a different time of year for replacing an asphalt roof versus a metal roof? Maybe there is, I don't know. But that's all great content that you can include that someone may search for, and it may get you a visit.
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They get you a visit. And they may get you somebody picking up the phone. I tell the story... heck, I may have even said it last time I was on this podcast. But well, my wife and I were looking for a new roof, it was pretty much down to a couple of different different roofers when I was flipping from site to site and comparing notes and mentally and one of them said something specific to that when they clean up, that they have this big sort of metallic drum that they roll on the ground, and it picks up all the nails. And at the time, we had little children. And that was important to my wife. If they hadn't brought up something like that. I wouldn't have called them and hired him. Now, they may all have that they may all have that sort of this as well. But it's normal, just like you said, well, everybody does that. How do you know that but this guy called it out. And as a result, we hired them.
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Yeah. And that goes back to what you're talking about with on the website highlighting those USP. So it doesn't have to be you know, 10% off or you know, free this, it doesn't have to be anything monetary, it can just be right we clean up after ourselves. Or, you know, the other example you shared, we will return calls in an hour. Maybe that standard.
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Maybe everybody does that in your industry, maybe in your neck of the woods. Everybody does that. But it doesn't mean they all pointed out. And that can be a big, big deciding factor in whether someone picks up the phone or goes back to the search results.
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Or they wear booties on their feet when they are house and they don't track in tracking dirt or that the the technicians are all their background checked in. And and drug screened. You don't you know, I'm letting somebody into my home. You know, this is stating I mean, it's a simple thing, maybe a very standard practice. But the fact that they're saying that out loud, that could help seal the deal for me, and I'm going to call back.
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Over communicating every simple feature that they have, which answers the user's questions before they even know they have that question.
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Exactly. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, it is no, there's no problem with putting more than you need. There's overkill.
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I mean, in terms of the the amount of content, we're talking about content, content content, you want to make sure that it's the necessary content specific to that topic. You don't necessarily need to go on and start talking about family history and things of that. So there's other places that can go learn about our history and learn about this or see our our Project Gallery or things like that, you can link to other places. But yeah, don't don't be afraid to add more than you need.
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Well, and I'll just kind of springboard off of that and put on my my Hibu hat for a second here. I mean, everything we've talked about up to this point, is part of our consultation process. You know, this isn't stuff that you have to know, as a small business owner to do yourself, this isn't stuff that Paul, you know, in your position you've defined, but it may not be what you get, when you actually engage with us. This is all part of what we walk a small business owner through. And you know, if we say, well, what sets you apart, and they say, good enough, and I'm like everybody else, we don't just go okay, like everybody else and move on, you know, we really engage with you and, you know, try to kind of impart this lesson during that consultation that well, that's, you know, that may not be enough to convince someone you know, let's talk through this and figure out you know, what we can highlight on the website to make sure it's something where you're, you're really getting the best bang for your buck.
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But content itself also has to align with with ways that traffic's finding you and by traffic, meaning the the potential customer, that you might be finding you because of an ad they saw in the flyer, or that mailer that they got, they might be finding you because of a pay-per-click ad. If I do search, they might be finding it because of a social something in social. There's an ad in Facebook, and they expect that battle has to align as well. And I think that's one of the great things I love about our company is this solution sync, where it all connects. Three years ago when we first had this conversation... there hasn't been a lot that's changed three years. 10 years ago, is a huge change from 10 years ago to now.
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And that 10 years ago, you could just have a website, you just didn't need anything else. Now a website all by its lonesome isn't enough, even if you check off all the things that I just said, what makes a good website, you need, you have to assume that people aren't just going to go to google and type something in. They're going to, they're kind of, (sorry, the cats leaving), so it was my turn to go, they're gonna go on Facebook, and they're gonna see something there, they're gonna ask a friend, they're gonna get something in the mail, they're gonna just not even type my or visit my webpage through Google organic search, they're going to click the Google My Business there, there's all sorts of ways that people can visit and find your website. So you have to speak to all of them. Do that, again, through those those bits that we talked about in the beginning, specifically with the the motivating factors, and then that clean design that we talked about. That's important. It's got to load fast, too. I'd mentioned that. As far as specs go, I did some research before we started, you know, we're looking at about 60% people are looking and converting on phones over over desktop, there's a lot of times we add things to websites that because it looks good on desktop, you can't assume anyone's ever gonna see others things it has to adhere to. This is in key to make your work.
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Right. Well, that's even assuming they're, you know, searching on their phone, you know, they may just be picking up their phone and saying, you know, hey, Google, or Hey, Siri. And you know, at that point, they're not even seeing your website. But you know, Google is crawling that site looking for the answer to you know what, I forget if I mentioned this before, but last last Fourth of July weekend, our air conditioner didn't turn on.
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So is this mad dash to we need air conditioning repair not nature experts, and specifically air conditioner repair that works holiday weekends? That might be something I say, hey, what air conditioning repair people are open Fourth of July weekend, and Google is going to look and if it can find that information on your website, it's going to serve that up as Hey, check these guys out. You know, I may never see the website, I might just call right from there, I might see some other kind of listing and check it out.
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So yeah, something as simple as we never close, call us anytime, day or night, even at 3am. Something that's simple. Could be the differentiator between going with HVAC guy A or B.
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You're listening to small business small talk powered by Hibu. Hibu is the country's leading provider of synchronized digital marketing for small businesses, delivering more visibility, more visitors, more leads and more customers.
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Visit us today @hibu.com.
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H-I-B-U. hibu.com.
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And we're back talking about local business websites with Paul Altobelli, Hibu's website product lead.
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You had mentioned a week or two ago that you were looking at a bunch of HVAC websites for small businesses went across the country or...
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I looked at I wanted to look to figure out what is the secret sauce? What do HVAC companies do that? We're not doing it? I do. Because as I was saying earlier, you know, websites are constantly evolving. As part of my role, I got to see what are the trends?
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What are what are other people doing that we could be incorporating into not only our website, but the consultation, it could be questions that we're asking.
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So my criteria was... I added, I typed in the words AC and then a geographic area. So AC repair, Houston, AC repair, Baltimore, AC repair, Portland, AC repair, St. Louis, etc, etc. And then whatever showed up naturally, that's what I looked at the general theme that I found amongst the 100 sites that I looked at, goes back to some of those points that that I brought up in the beginning, they all had a presentation that told me congratulations, you've arrived, we can fix your air conditioner.
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I came I visited, I was directed to a page that was specific to AC repair. I didn't land on any other page that had anything to do with heating or services in general, the pages that showed up in Google were specific AC repair. So that goes back to the content content content, make sure you have a page dedicated to that the pages themselves this is cool. I'm looking at my notes to the pages themselves weren't just air conditioning services that include Bum Bum Bum Bum bum. They took air conditioning services, and they broke it into five pages. Most of them did this not all of them but most of them. There was a general sort of air conditioning page. We do air conditioning, repair and maintenance and replacement and we have a 24/7 emergency service. And then they would link to individual pages that were unique to those four topics. repair, maintenance, replacement or installation and then 24/7 and then they repeat it this same sort of process or formula for heaters, they can buy pages dedicated to heaters.
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And that's something else that's cool too is you got to make sure that and here's a little tip, as you build your website, you're using the words that people type, use the words people type.
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So in some parts of the of the country it was furnace. So it was 24/7, furnace repair and furnace maintenance and furnace replacement and furnace, etc.
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Sounds like okay, well, that's good to know. So if I want to build the perfect HVAC site, I'm gonna have those five pages, there's 10 pages out of the gate. And then when it got into, into plumbing, for those companies that have plumbing, well, there's a lot of different plumbing, you know, and I'm just gonna rattle off some of them, there were pages dedicated to appliances and fixtures and drain faucets and garbage disposals and leak detection and reverse osmosis, whatever that is. But they had a page dedicated to it. In some pages, it's, you know, if there was five pages for air conditioning, there were 20 Pages for plumbing, you got into indoor air control, or air quality, you might have 10 different pages there. So they all have a lot of content. They all have dedicated pages for all the services that they provide. 68% of the websites I looked at its help...
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getting into that... offered a finance option. So sometimes they go, "Oh, yeah, well, we do that, yeah, I got a guy or we got something." And they may only mention it as a bullet point. But if they had a dedicated page for that, think about if I had, if I know that my AC is on the fritz, and I gotta get x, that's seven, eight, ten, $12,000 out of the gate. If they have a finance option, I might hire them versus somebody that doesn't have that.
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Yeah.
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Additionally, many of the sites, as we talked about earlier, had FAQs to a lot of them, because I have different questions for different things that they offer different things that they do.
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So that was that was something out of the gate that I feel like okay, well, as far as Hibu goes, as far as how we're going about building our websites, or for whatever that future sort of website may be. As our website evolves, I'm gonna make sure that we're incorporating FAQ questions on all those specific pages, they were some of the big takeaways from from looking at all those sites,
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It just sounds like you know, the key, just a successful website is answering all the, you know, customers questions before they even pick up the phone.
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And you might even be sort of qualifying them out. Sure, looking for some windows recently, and I found this company and they kind of checked off all the boxes, and then I realized they're probably overkill for what I'm looking for. And I that was okay, because they wouldn't want me to call if they knew that ultimately, I was gonna go now you're too big for what I what I need, I need smaller.
00:27:47.549 --> 00:28:25.380
And that's, that's probably a caveat to how many times I've talked about, you know, phone calls and leads, it should be qualified phone calls and leads, you know, you don't want whoever whoever the person is that, you know, takes those incoming calls, whether it's someone in a back office, whether it's, you know, a lot of times with the clients that Hibu has, it's it's the owner, it's the guy on the roof, and the cell phones are getting, you know, you don't want to spend 10 minutes on a call, let alone half an hour an hour, and then realize this isn't the right fit, you know, and and you could have cleared that up by making it clear on your website that, you know, you don't offer that service or you don't, you know, do financing or, you know, whatever the case may be.
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You can do that too, as well. You don't have to necessarily state it. But as far as website is optimized, you don't want to just generally say I cover all of New Jersey, when in reality, I'm only covering South Jersey. And then within South Jersey, it might only be two counties, yeah, within those two counties, that really is the six cities. So then with Hibu, we have a product called Local Ranking, where we could focus on those this very specific geographic areas. And then that's what's showing up in the SERP in the search engine result page in Google. Additionally, when you get in a lot of people that do pay-per-click advertising on their own. They don't think to get that granular with the geographic and where they're focusing where that does that ad show up. I do offers that I know I'm sending like a commercial for it. But but that's that's how you do it.
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That's how I do it. And that's why if you came to somebody that knows what they're doing, if you came to a company that gets it, then you're gonna get the better quality leads, you're gonna get the leads, because the website is optimized with that campaign.
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And more importantly, it's going to be a qualified lead, because it's in the area and it's for the for the service that I'm looking for. And that's what I'm calling about.
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Yeah, I think there can sometimes be a tendency to want to hit the broadside of the barn. That's gonna bring in the most amount of leads, but you know, what we've learned as being hyper specific to what you do where you serve, and what you offer is actually going to bring in the most successful leads.
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This has been really good. I think we covered a lot of ground that we didn't three years ago, so you know, Despite, I think, all of us saying like not much has changed, like, it's same maybe not changed, but kind of refined. And what's next three years from now is not what was next three years ago. So I think we've, I think we've covered a lot here.
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We are always learning and that that learning is what Hibu does, it plays into the the evolution of our products, just yet another reason why somebody might want to call up Hibu and say, "Hey, take care of me. I want to know what your solution is."
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All right. Well, great, Paul, thank you again for for joining us and sharing some of what's going on now and what you're seeing and what's coming up next and sharing the good word as it were with the local businesses who are who are listening to this, and to all of you they're listening, be sure to visit hibu.com. See how Hibu can build you an effective digital marketing solution that generates leads and customers and delivers the kind of results you want.
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If you liked what you heard on this episode, be sure to subscribe. And please if you can leave us review let us know what you'd like to hear next, what makes sense what you want us to elaborate on? It really does help. Until next time, this is Small Business Small Talk... out
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Thanks for listening to this episode of Small Business Small Talk powered by Hibu. Hibu is a leading provider of synchronized digital marketing for small businesses across America. With Hibu you get all the digital marketing your business needs, all from a single provider all working together to maximize results, visit us today @hibu.com.
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H-I-B-U. hibu.com.
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Hi, I'm in Messinger with my co host,
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Actually, it's Lauren Schenck now.
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Oh, yes, it is.
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Congratulations.
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Thanks for joining us for this episode of Small Business Small Talk powered by Hibu. At Hibu, our goal is to help local businesses across America succeed and grow with Digital Marketing. Today, we're talking with Paul Altobelli, Hibu's Website Product Lead. Three years ago, when we launched Small Business Small Talk, Paul was actually our very first guest. Thanks for coming back.
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Thank you for having me. I appreciate it.
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Now remind everybody again, as I almost choke on my coffee, what you do at Hibu.
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As the as the website product lead, I'm pretty much responsible for to maintain the integrity of what we've Lauren Blackford.
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defined as the website. Website has certain rules in terms of how we go about building it. And I define those rules. And then I work with the different teams, our process teams, our training teams, our production teams, our QA teams, sales teams, GTM - Go To Market – teams, to make sure that they're all aligned. This is what we're building, this is how we build it.
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Additionally, I'll stay up with the latest trends, I look at existing sites, I figure out ways that we can improve our websites all the time. Websites, as you've heard me both say many times are never completed, they're abandoned. As far as the Hibu website goes, that applies.
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I'm just not building one product, and then sticking with it and setting it and forgetting it. We're constantly evolving our product to make sure that we're meeting the demands of the marketplace. So it's it's not the same, you know, the same flavor it was three years ago, five years ago, it's it's something better, it's something current, it's, it's, it's always changing. There's always something new with what we're trying to achieve here.
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Before we get started, though, I just want to say, mazel tov to Lauren. I both... I've worked with Lauren, and Ian at various different times in the 15 years that I've been with the company.
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So, Paul, when when you're looking at a local business' website, and when you're looking at the Hibu websites, and the product that you create, what, what makes a good website?
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Before I answer that, let's just let's just state that the rules by which I sort of think about that has to do with the fact that I want the website out of the gate to make sure. And to convince somebody to stay on a website longer than seven seconds, we don't have a lot of time. A website doesn't have a lot of time to convince somebody to stay. They... if I don't see what I want to see immediately on my phone, which I'll be referencing here on later today.... I'm off So as far as what I what I think makes a good website out of the somewhere else.
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gate, we're looking for things that establish credibility, right out of the gate now to see that. And that includes things like I call them trust signals.
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So some sort of badges or something that that addresses, affiliations and licenses and things of that sort awards, that's a good one that's establishing that I've arrived in the right that a good place.
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I'm looking for testimonials and reviews. If I'm looking at two websites, identical in every way, except this one has 500 reviews, and it's saying we have over 500 reviews, check out our reviews, here's our stars. And this one has none. I'm going with this guy every time. My wife looks at reviews for everything, no matter what.
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She's like, "Oh, I'm not I'm gonna make that cake once I see reviews." That's important.
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The website has to be professionally designed. I know there's a lot of websites out there that will convert no matter what it looks like. But as far as capturing my attention and maintaining my attention longer than seven seconds, I want to see something that looks like a professional company. And two things that I look for because it's the first two things you probably are looking at yourself is the logo and photography. A lot of times with everything matches, everything looks great, except for that logo, it's all blurry. Or it's just a text based logo. I'm going to be spending a lot of money with you. And I want to make sure that that you've checked off everything on your end if you're if you don't have enough time to make sure your logo isn't blurry Well then how do I know you're going to make sure that you're styling my my air conditioner correctly, that's important. And then photos especially if the business is something like a landscaper or something along those lines. If they don't have good photography on their real photography, you can get away with stock photography based on in certain scenarios. But if you can have real photos, you know, we talked about that trust thing right and testimonials or reviews, if you can put before and after photos is fantastic trust and I'm looking at that and I'm going to immediately get sucked in.
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Additionally, I'm looking for things like ways that the business is differentiating itself from competitors. So, at Hibu we call this motivating factors – some people will refer to them as unique selling points. We want to see right out of the gate - why should I hire you? And for our example, here, I'm going to go with this idea that it is some sort of a home services provider, like a plumber, or an electrician, a landscaper. So right out of the gate, I want to see things that are going to tell me how much is going to cause me to hire you to fix my AC. So things like do they have coupons? Do they have specials? Do they have financing options? That has to be addressed? How much is it going to cost me? I want to look at to see if how fast you can help me fix my problem? Is it 24/7 emergency services to the handle fully stocked truck, things of that nature? How quickly will they call you back? We promise you we're gonna call you back within one hour. That's that's really key. That's good to make that phone ring. Because a lot of us all of us here have dealt with contractors that will call you back right away. nothing more frustrating than getting some feedback. Just FYI, we might have a guest joining us.
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Okay, what do you mean?
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That's Tony, just in case Tony wants to get on.
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Other things, I'm looking for is On-page SEO. It isn't something that isn't necessarily in your face. There's this code that goes on behind the site, and that's helping the search engines find the site. That's what I look for. Did they, have they, have they included the right title tags and meta description? Or the key or the headlines? Do they include keyword terms? Does it make sense that you just say, Welcome to our website? Or does it say, Cherry Hill? Where I live.
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Cherry Hill plumbing services 24/7? How about this: 24/7 Plumbing Services in Cherry Hill– perfect headline. It's good for both the user for me and for the search engines.
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I want to know if it's a fast loading site, if it's a real slow site on my phone, that's a bad thing. If it's fast loading, that's a good sign.
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And then finally, I want to make sure that the calls to action on the website align with how to get in touch with them. So if the website is constantly saying things like, call us today, call us today, call us today, and I can't find the phone number.
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Then good luck.
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I don't want to see things that a lot of times I'll see with websites that have multiple phone numbers in the header, which one should I call if it's clear, if it's clean, if I know if it's telling me exactly what to do? That's a good one. So all those factors come into play, ultimately making me stay on that website longer than seven seconds. It's interesting to me, because everything you just said. And I mean, this in a good way is geared toward thinking of the website and for us building websites with an eye toward being transactional. You know, you're not saying it's got to look great. And it's got to impress your your colleagues and your competitors. And it should look like you know, whatever amazon.com or something it's all about here are the things I need, as a consumer to arrive on your website with the intention of hiring you and doing business with you.
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Lauren, it goes back to the heart of the question, right?
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What makes a good small business website? Well, assuming you're using the website to drive business and not just have a website for fun, this is what it should have to power it to drive calls to drive leads to get a response. I think that's a great point. And because business owners are always told you have to have a website, you have to have a website. But they don't always know what to do with that website. And I think this is great information to it's to drive, you know, closing the sale, people into the shop.
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People go to web pages, people go to the internet, to solve a task – or visiting a website, they're doing whatever that query might be. I'm coming to a destination on the internet to solve a task. It could be as simple as I want to look at cat videos.
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(He is a Tony.) I want to pay a bill, I want to listen to music.
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I want to find a plumber, I want to find an electrician, I want to find somebody to fix my air conditioner because it's 90 degrees. I want to solve a task.
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The easier that web page, that website, that company makes it to solve all the things I need in my head to say, Yeah, you're the guy, you're solving my task, then I'm gonna call him up. It's all about conversions. You want to look good? Do you want to make money? And the idea here, nobody's ever gonna say I just want to look good. I mean, it's very rare. They always have a lot of combination of the two.
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But if you have a professional site with good pictures, a good logo, and it's laid out in a way that makes sense for the user, well, then it's going to look good. That's good. A lot of times we have clients or I've seen websites where they're trying to look good, and unnecessarily try to get the phone to ring, and then they wonder why aren't I getting any calls? Well, I don't know.
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Because you didn't put the phone
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Right. Yeah. And it's not really a chicken or the number up in the right hand corner, egg scenario. Right? You know, it's you're never going to have a client who says, "Well, I'm getting a lot of calls, but I just don't think it looks great." That doesn't happen.
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You're absolutely going to have clients that say, "I like the way it looks." But you know, yeah, it's just you've got to have it built to convert.
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Yep.
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S o you've outlined a whole lot of factors to to drive somebody to close the deal. So of those and maybe even more what, what does bring in the most calls from website?
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How can we pinpoint how to get those calls made?
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Three C's! I'm still, just from a commercial I just saw, they're talking about the three P's. I'm talking about the three C's –content, content, and content. A lot of times we see with websites, they'll they'll have the traditional sort of left to right navigation home services about contact me.
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And on the services page, they'll list all the things they do. They do, they do AC repair, they do heating repair, they do plumbing, they do indoor air flow, and they just every every one of their services is listed as a bullet point. That's not enough content. That's not enough content. If I am trying to solve a task, if I have a AC that's on the fritz, and it's 90 degrees, I am most likely typing into Google AC repair. And then wherever town on it, that's what I'm typing into it if the website has pages that are aligned with the different things that their clients are looking for, meaning there's a page for every query in a realistic way, well, then that website has a great chance of converting, that's what it needs to do. It's all about content.
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And the more pages of content that's added that are specific to somebody's needs, the greater chance of conversion in years ago, you refer to it and please talk about it and the lottery ticket analogy.
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Yeah I forget what it was exactly. But basically, you know, if you only buy, you know, four tickets, what are your odds versus if you buy 12 of them three times more likely to win? Probably still not doing great. I've never won the lottery, because maybe made five bucks off a scratch off but right, you know, especially if it sounds like we've been using HVAC as a sort of an example industry here. You know, it can be very easy, I think for a small business owner to say well, I do HVAC – heating, I do I do air conditioning, I do you know all sorts of ventilation ductwork. That's, that's right.
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That's, that's what's on my you know what I do page on my services page. But you know, chances are I'm not looking, depending on the time of year, I'm not looking for both heating and air conditioning. You know, it's Listen, we're all in the Philadelphia area. It was summer. Last week, it was summer, two days. You know, it was it was 90 here, which is insane for April and I turned my air conditioner on for the first time this year. And you kind of keep your fingers crossed? Like is it gonna kick over? If it didn't? I would be searching for as you point out, Paul, you know, air conditioner repair.
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And if I get to someone's site, and they've just got a laundry list of Well, we do air conditioning heating Baba Baba, Baba Baba. Yeah, I don't know, I'll probably keep looking for someone that has a page or has something specific to exactly what I'm looking for.
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And let's be clear, you're not going to find that website that just has a list of bullet points on a certain page. Yep, just as important as it is for the user to have these pages that are unique to what they're searching for, and the test they want to solve, it also helps with the SEO. Google is looking for those pages. Google is only going to serve up the pages that best match the query being asked, right? So if I type in roof repair, and the website is optimized for a general contractor, Roof Repair is never going to get found, are going to find that business. There is a page dedicated to roof repair.
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Right, then there might be a page dedicated to Emergency Roof Repair or Storm Roof, air or, or roof replacement. You know, so there's no I just listed five pages for what used to be a bullet point. Just the bullet points. So bullet points are great for a side of a truck. I do all these things. Visit my website for more info, visit the website for more info, then you get the detail you're looking for. Does anybody really read all that content? Probably not.
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But it for somebody that that needs that extra bit of content?
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It's always good to have it?
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Yeah. Well, that's an interesting point.
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Because like you said before, they're going to this website to complete a task. But it's also to answer a question, like you said, do you do this specific thing? And I think sometimes the business owner or anyone in an industry just assumes people know, oh, I do I do their conditioning. That means this, the repair, replacement all of this, but that doesn't always translate to the common person who's not in that industry. And so then what do you do this specific thing? Is a very important question that needs to be answered for the consumer that the business owner needs to include.
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And the way you just frame that too is something else that if you made this choice means to your website, it will have an impact for two ways. And that's FAQs, frequently asked questions.
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Because even if you're saying, Yes, I will fix your roof, there might be questions specific to that. Yes. And if you add them, that's going to help seal the deal, so to speak. So FAQs are a great way of things that are a great option of something you can add to a web page that will help with the conversion.
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And that could be with the roofing example, that could be something as simple as you know, what's the best time of year to replace my roof or, you know, just anything that someone might search for. And it's almost like as a business owner, Lauren, to your point you kind of have to think of, and this can be very challenging, you know, imagine you don't know anything about your industry, but you have the problem that your company can solve, you know, what are those questions that have come up? You know, is there a different time of year for replacing an asphalt roof versus a metal roof? Maybe there is, I don't know. But that's all great content that you can include that someone may search for, and it may get you a visit.
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They get you a visit. And they may get you somebody picking up the phone. I tell the story... heck, I may have even said it last time I was on this podcast. But well, my wife and I were looking for a new roof, it was pretty much down to a couple of different different roofers when I was flipping from site to site and comparing notes and mentally and one of them said something specific to that when they clean up, that they have this big sort of metallic drum that they roll on the ground, and it picks up all the nails. And at the time, we had little children. And that was important to my wife. If they hadn't brought up something like that. I wouldn't have called them and hired him. Now, they may all have that they may all have that sort of this as well. But it's normal, just like you said, well, everybody does that. How do you know that but this guy called it out. And as a result, we hired them.
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Yeah. And that goes back to what you're talking about with on the website highlighting those USP. So it doesn't have to be you know, 10% off or you know, free this, it doesn't have to be anything monetary, it can just be right we clean up after ourselves. Or, you know, the other example you shared, we will return calls in an hour. Maybe that standard.
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Maybe everybody does that in your industry, maybe in your neck of the woods. Everybody does that. But it doesn't mean they all pointed out. And that can be a big, big deciding factor in whether someone picks up the phone or goes back to the search results.
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Or they wear booties on their feet when they are house and they don't track in tracking dirt or that the the technicians are all their background checked in. And and drug screened. You don't you know, I'm letting somebody into my home. You know, this is stating I mean, it's a simple thing, maybe a very standard practice. But the fact that they're saying that out loud, that could help seal the deal for me, and I'm going to call back.
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Over communicating every simple feature that they have, which answers the user's questions before they even know they have that question.
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Exactly. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, it is no, there's no problem with putting more than you need. There's overkill.
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I mean, in terms of the the amount of content, we're talking about content, content content, you want to make sure that it's the necessary content specific to that topic. You don't necessarily need to go on and start talking about family history and things of that. So there's other places that can go learn about our history and learn about this or see our our Project Gallery or things like that, you can link to other places. But yeah, don't don't be afraid to add more than you need.
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Well, and I'll just kind of springboard off of that and put on my my Hibu hat for a second here. I mean, everything we've talked about up to this point, is part of our consultation process. You know, this isn't stuff that you have to know, as a small business owner to do yourself, this isn't stuff that Paul, you know, in your position you've defined, but it may not be what you get, when you actually engage with us. This is all part of what we walk a small business owner through. And you know, if we say, well, what sets you apart, and they say, good enough, and I'm like everybody else, we don't just go okay, like everybody else and move on, you know, we really engage with you and, you know, try to kind of impart this lesson during that consultation that well, that's, you know, that may not be enough to convince someone you know, let's talk through this and figure out you know, what we can highlight on the website to make sure it's something where you're, you're really getting the best bang for your buck.
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But content itself also has to align with with ways that traffic's finding you and by traffic, meaning the the potential customer, that you might be finding you because of an ad they saw in the flyer, or that mailer that they got, they might be finding you because of a pay-per-click ad. If I do search, they might be finding it because of a social something in social. There's an ad in Facebook, and they expect that battle has to align as well. And I think that's one of the great things I love about our company is this solution sync, where it all connects. Three years ago when we first had this conversation... there hasn't been a lot that's changed three years. 10 years ago, is a huge change from 10 years ago to now.
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And that 10 years ago, you could just have a website, you just didn't need anything else. Now a website all by its lonesome isn't enough, even if you check off all the things that I just said, what makes a good website, you need, you have to assume that people aren't just going to go to google and type something in. They're going to, they're kind of, (sorry, the cats leaving), so it was my turn to go, they're gonna go on Facebook, and they're gonna see something there, they're gonna ask a friend, they're gonna get something in the mail, they're gonna just not even type my or visit my webpage through Google organic search, they're going to click the Google My Business there, there's all sorts of ways that people can visit and find your website. So you have to speak to all of them. Do that, again, through those those bits that we talked about in the beginning, specifically with the the motivating factors, and then that clean design that we talked about. That's important. It's got to load fast, too. I'd mentioned that. As far as specs go, I did some research before we started, you know, we're looking at about 60% people are looking and converting on phones over over desktop, there's a lot of times we add things to websites that because it looks good on desktop, you can't assume anyone's ever gonna see others things it has to adhere to. This is in key to make your work.
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Right. Well, that's even assuming they're, you know, searching on their phone, you know, they may just be picking up their phone and saying, you know, hey, Google, or Hey, Siri. And you know, at that point, they're not even seeing your website. But you know, Google is crawling that site looking for the answer to you know what, I forget if I mentioned this before, but last last Fourth of July weekend, our air conditioner didn't turn on.
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So is this mad dash to we need air conditioning repair not nature experts, and specifically air conditioner repair that works holiday weekends? That might be something I say, hey, what air conditioning repair people are open Fourth of July weekend, and Google is going to look and if it can find that information on your website, it's going to serve that up as Hey, check these guys out. You know, I may never see the website, I might just call right from there, I might see some other kind of listing and check it out.
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So yeah, something as simple as we never close, call us anytime, day or night, even at 3am. Something that's simple. Could be the differentiator between going with HVAC guy A or B.
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You're listening to small business small talk powered by Hibu. Hibu is the country's leading provider of synchronized digital marketing for small businesses, delivering more visibility, more visitors, more leads and more customers.
00:22:39.269 --> 00:22:44.069
Visit us today @hibu.com.
00:22:39.269 --> 00:22:44.069
H-I-B-U. hibu.com.
00:22:49.319 --> 00:22:54.420
And we're back talking about local business websites with Paul Altobelli, Hibu's website product lead.
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You had mentioned a week or two ago that you were looking at a bunch of HVAC websites for small businesses went across the country or...
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I looked at I wanted to look to figure out what is the secret sauce? What do HVAC companies do that? We're not doing it? I do. Because as I was saying earlier, you know, websites are constantly evolving. As part of my role, I got to see what are the trends?
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What are what are other people doing that we could be incorporating into not only our website, but the consultation, it could be questions that we're asking.
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So my criteria was... I added, I typed in the words AC and then a geographic area. So AC repair, Houston, AC repair, Baltimore, AC repair, Portland, AC repair, St. Louis, etc, etc. And then whatever showed up naturally, that's what I looked at the general theme that I found amongst the 100 sites that I looked at, goes back to some of those points that that I brought up in the beginning, they all had a presentation that told me congratulations, you've arrived, we can fix your air conditioner.
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I came I visited, I was directed to a page that was specific to AC repair. I didn't land on any other page that had anything to do with heating or services in general, the pages that showed up in Google were specific AC repair. So that goes back to the content content content, make sure you have a page dedicated to that the pages themselves this is cool. I'm looking at my notes to the pages themselves weren't just air conditioning services that include Bum Bum Bum Bum bum. They took air conditioning services, and they broke it into five pages. Most of them did this not all of them but most of them. There was a general sort of air conditioning page. We do air conditioning, repair and maintenance and replacement and we have a 24/7 emergency service. And then they would link to individual pages that were unique to those four topics. repair, maintenance, replacement or installation and then 24/7 and then they repeat it this same sort of process or formula for heaters, they can buy pages dedicated to heaters.
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And that's something else that's cool too is you got to make sure that and here's a little tip, as you build your website, you're using the words that people type, use the words people type.
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So in some parts of the of the country it was furnace. So it was 24/7, furnace repair and furnace maintenance and furnace replacement and furnace, etc.
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Sounds like okay, well, that's good to know. So if I want to build the perfect HVAC site, I'm gonna have those five pages, there's 10 pages out of the gate. And then when it got into, into plumbing, for those companies that have plumbing, well, there's a lot of different plumbing, you know, and I'm just gonna rattle off some of them, there were pages dedicated to appliances and fixtures and drain faucets and garbage disposals and leak detection and reverse osmosis, whatever that is. But they had a page dedicated to it. In some pages, it's, you know, if there was five pages for air conditioning, there were 20 Pages for plumbing, you got into indoor air control, or air quality, you might have 10 different pages there. So they all have a lot of content. They all have dedicated pages for all the services that they provide. 68% of the websites I looked at its help...
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getting into that... offered a finance option. So sometimes they go, "Oh, yeah, well, we do that, yeah, I got a guy or we got something." And they may only mention it as a bullet point. But if they had a dedicated page for that, think about if I had, if I know that my AC is on the fritz, and I gotta get x, that's seven, eight, ten, $12,000 out of the gate. If they have a finance option, I might hire them versus somebody that doesn't have that.
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Yeah.
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Additionally, many of the sites, as we talked about earlier, had FAQs to a lot of them, because I have different questions for different things that they offer different things that they do.
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So that was that was something out of the gate that I feel like okay, well, as far as Hibu goes, as far as how we're going about building our websites, or for whatever that future sort of website may be. As our website evolves, I'm gonna make sure that we're incorporating FAQ questions on all those specific pages, they were some of the big takeaways from from looking at all those sites,
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It just sounds like you know, the key, just a successful website is answering all the, you know, customers questions before they even pick up the phone.
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And you might even be sort of qualifying them out. Sure, looking for some windows recently, and I found this company and they kind of checked off all the boxes, and then I realized they're probably overkill for what I'm looking for. And I that was okay, because they wouldn't want me to call if they knew that ultimately, I was gonna go now you're too big for what I what I need, I need smaller.
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And that's, that's probably a caveat to how many times I've talked about, you know, phone calls and leads, it should be qualified phone calls and leads, you know, you don't want whoever whoever the person is that, you know, takes those incoming calls, whether it's someone in a back office, whether it's, you know, a lot of times with the clients that Hibu has, it's it's the owner, it's the guy on the roof, and the cell phones are getting, you know, you don't want to spend 10 minutes on a call, let alone half an hour an hour, and then realize this isn't the right fit, you know, and and you could have cleared that up by making it clear on your website that, you know, you don't offer that service or you don't, you know, do financing or, you know, whatever the case may be.
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You can do that too, as well. You don't have to necessarily state it. But as far as website is optimized, you don't want to just generally say I cover all of New Jersey, when in reality, I'm only covering South Jersey. And then within South Jersey, it might only be two counties, yeah, within those two counties, that really is the six cities. So then with Hibu, we have a product called Local Ranking, where we could focus on those this very specific geographic areas. And then that's what's showing up in the SERP in the search engine result page in Google. Additionally, when you get in a lot of people that do pay-per-click advertising on their own. They don't think to get that granular with the geographic and where they're focusing where that does that ad show up. I do offers that I know I'm sending like a commercial for it. But but that's that's how you do it.
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That's how I do it. And that's why if you came to somebody that knows what they're doing, if you came to a company that gets it, then you're gonna get the better quality leads, you're gonna get the leads, because the website is optimized with that campaign.
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And more importantly, it's going to be a qualified lead, because it's in the area and it's for the for the service that I'm looking for. And that's what I'm calling about.
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Yeah, I think there can sometimes be a tendency to want to hit the broadside of the barn. That's gonna bring in the most amount of leads, but you know, what we've learned as being hyper specific to what you do where you serve, and what you offer is actually going to bring in the most successful leads.
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This has been really good. I think we covered a lot of ground that we didn't three years ago, so you know, Despite, I think, all of us saying like not much has changed, like, it's same maybe not changed, but kind of refined. And what's next three years from now is not what was next three years ago. So I think we've, I think we've covered a lot here.
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We are always learning and that that learning is what Hibu does, it plays into the the evolution of our products, just yet another reason why somebody might want to call up Hibu and say, "Hey, take care of me. I want to know what your solution is."
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All right. Well, great, Paul, thank you again for for joining us and sharing some of what's going on now and what you're seeing and what's coming up next and sharing the good word as it were with the local businesses who are who are listening to this, and to all of you they're listening, be sure to visit hibu.com. See how Hibu can build you an effective digital marketing solution that generates leads and customers and delivers the kind of results you want.
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