What are website conversions and how do we measure them?
When a business reaches out to me to hop on a consultation for a website project, one of the questions I ask is:
“Do you know your website conversion rates?”
95% of the time they respond “I have no idea.”
It’s a common answer — a home builder or remodeling company might have a feeling or know that they need their website updated, but they don’t really know why. They focus on the visual look and feel (which is important) but that’s only a small part of what secures them more projects and profit for their business.
My goal is to shift the focus in the conversation, because contractors like you deserve a hell of a lot more from their websites than they are currently getting.
This requires digging deep into questions like:
How do people see my brand and company?
Is my messaging resonating with my audience and motivating them to act?
Does my website and marketing build trust with consumers and reflect the quality of work our company does?
Where are we confusing people or causing them to stumble in their online experience?
By shifting our focus from aesthetics to overall brand experience, we can successfully create websites that engage users, build trust, and increase revenue for construction-industry businesses.
This week, we’ll dive into conversion rates: what they are, why they are important, and how to improve them on your website. While conversion rates are affected by several factors, this should at least provide you with the basics of what to look for and where to start in your marketing and website journey.
How to measure (and increase) conversion rates for your home renovation company
What is a website conversion?
Simply put, a website conversion is when you are able to get someone who lands on your website to complete a desired action. What that desired action will vary by industry, but also by company, since every business has unique goals.
E-commerce websites usually have objectives centered around online sales, like selling a particular product or getting people to bundle or purchase add-ons.
Service-based businesses in the construction industry have goals that aren’t linked directly to sales (because what you’re selling can’t be purchased directly online). For example, as a remodeling company or custom home builder your desired action for website users to take might be:
Calling your company directly to chat or for an estimate
Filling out an online inquiry form
Downloading a lead magnet to get an email address
Booking a consultation online
Subscribing to an email list or blog
Clicking on an affiliate link
Clicking on a call-to-action button that leads to a specific landing page
Applying for financing
You can know that your website is converting when you see any of these things happen.
Increasing conversion rates means we are increasing the amount of times these actions are taken!
Why is it important to measure my website conversion rates?
Let me answer that question with another question…
Are you looking to grow your construction business?
That’s an easy YES.
Measuring conversion rates allows you to measure how your website (and individual web pages) are performing. Going a step further, you can use tools like Hotjar to understand your users better — what they like, don’t like, read, ignore, what they’re getting tripped up on, etc. Until you look at your conversion rates and understand your users, you’re going to stay stuck where you’re at.
How to calculate website conversion rates
Once you’ve determined what conversion you want to track for your website, the calculation is pretty straightforward. Simply divide the number of conversions by the number of website sessions to get your website conversion rate percentage.
Let’s say a remodeling company wants to measure inquiry form submissions as the primary user objective they want them to take. This is what a sample calculation might look like:
What is considered a good conversion rate for a website?
Conversion rates vary depending on a number of factors, such as industry, conversion goals, demographics of your audience, and so on.
But according to Popupsmart.com,
”An average conversion rate for a website is between 2 percent and 5 percent. Website conversion rates higher than 5% are considered to be “good” or above the average. Moreover, top brands in many sectors enjoy much better results than 5 percent.”
These numbers are a good place to start, but because of all the different factors that go into conversions, a better benchmark to measure against is yourself.
Focus on beating your current conversion rate rather than comparing it to other businesses or industries.
For the example above, the remodeling company above might focus on increasing their website conversion rate for the contact form submissions from 2% to 5%.
Website conversions vs. Sales conversions
As a service-based business, a website conversion doesn’t automatically mean a sale.
There are actually two conversion rates that you should be paying attention to in your construction business:
Website conversion rate
Sales conversion rate
Once someone takes action on your website, the website has converted.
Then the user enters the sales conversion process — where you’ll talk to the lead, walk them through your processes, introduce them to your company, and ultimately book the job (or not).
Do you know your sales conversion rate?
Let’s say 10 inquiries come through your website. Out of those 10, how many book with you? That would be your sales conversion rate!
Okay, but why is this important?
Knowing both your website conversion rate and your sales conversion rate can help you set strategic website goals that will work best for your business.
For example, if your company has an amazing sales conversion rate of 8 out of 10 projects booked (80%), you might not need as many inquiries. You book the majority of leads that come your way.
There could be a number of reasons for a high sales conversion rate, including the reputation or recognition of your business, a powerful sales team, a lower-priced offering, etc.
A business like this might focus on quality of leads coming through their website rather than quantity.
Now let’s say your company has a lower sales conversion rate of 2 out of 10 projects booked (20%). This company would need many more inquiries to book projects.
A business like this might focus on generating more leads than the first business.
A NOTE ON SALES CONVERSION RATES:
Just like with website conversions, there are several reasons for the difference in sales conversion rates between Company 1 and Company 2. These might include:
Brand recognition and reputation
Price of service offerings
Sales team and tactics
Audience demographic and physical location
Get curious about your sales conversion rates just like you do with your website conversions. By focusing on both and making changes, you’re bound to see massive growth in your business.
How remodeling companies can improve website conversion rates
Now that you’ve determined what your current conversion rates are, a natural course of action would be improving those numbers and getting more people to engage with your company.
In this section of today’s post, I got a lot of valuable information from Hotjar in their blog post about goal conversion rates. Their post focused largely on Google Analytics, but the strategies given to improve conversion rates can be directly applied to websites as well.
Understand what is bringing people to your website
Find the barriers in their journey that is keeping them from converting
Learn what convinces people to convert
1 - Understand what is bringing people to your website (DRIVERS)
What drives people TO your website?
This might be hard to know without some additional tools. On-site surveys offered by Hotjar would be a great starting place to get this info from your users directly. With these surveys, you can ask consumers directly what they’re looking for on your website, what they like, don’t like, and even what’s stopping them from doing business with you.
2 - Find the barriers in the customer’s journey that is keeping them from converting (BARRIERS)
So, you got someone to your website. Awesome!
But they left…without reaching out to you. Why?
The second thing we need to do is figure out why people are leaving without reaching out to your company.
By using Hotjar (or other inspector tools) to see how users navigate your website, you:
Learn what users are ignoring, confused by, or skipping over
Discover bugs or technical glitches that are leading them away from your website
See what users are clicking on most
Without this information, it would be impossible for you to make informed website changes that will benefit your users, and in turn, your business profits!
3 - Find what people convinced people to convert (HOOKS)
A “hook” is what caused someone on your website to take the action you wanted them to take.
You can do this a few ways, but you’ll want to target the people who actually converted.
Send an email survey asking them why they completed the goal (a website conversion survey question)
Ask past clients what made them choose you over your competitors (a sales conversion survey question)
The reasons people convert can vary greatly, but you will get valuable information as to what’s working to convert users and replicate that for more conversions!
You might hear things like:
I saw your company had a 5-star rating
We almost didn’t reach out because your website didn’t have much information, but you were highly recommended by [insert name here]
I read your blog post about [relevant topic here] and it was very helpful
You sent a coupon to our mailbox
Their experiences are bound to also be the experiences of other users. So take this information and make adjustments on your website and marketing practices accordingly!
Additional Resource
If you are looking for a more in-depth action plan, Hotjar has developed a 3-step framework you can follow to paint a fuller picture of the situation (with a free one-page template you can use throughout your investigation). Make a copy on Google Docs.
How much is a website conversion worth to a home builder or renovation company?
That depends! What is an average project in your business worth?
$10,000?
$100,000?
$500,000?
Let’s go back to the numbers.
Let’s say you currently have a 2% website conversion rate and 20 people out of 1000 website visitors reach out to you.
If you have a 20% sales conversion rate, out of those 20 people, 4 book you for a project.
Now let’s say your average project is $50,000.
Based on your current website and sales conversion rates, you booked $200,000 worth of projects!
With a strategic website design, we’ve doubled your website conversion rate to 4%, but your site traffic and sales conversion rate stays the same.
Now you have a 4% website conversion rate, getting 40 website inquiries out of 1000 website visitors.
With your 20% sales conversion rate, 8 book you for a project.
By increasing your conversion rate 2%, you’ve now booked $400,000 worth of projects and doubled your income each month!!!
So while it may sound crazy at first glance to spend all this time, energy, and money on increasing your website conversions — but does it sound so crazy when it’s bringing in tens of thousands more dollars in business to your company???
If you're like many builders I talk too, you may be hearing nothing but crickets from your website, with inquiries from the site few and far between. I hope this week’s post encourages to get curious about your website and whether or not it’s producing real results in your business — because truth is, you deserve that!
Marketing your business and getting traffic to your website is important.
But it’s equally important to convert that traffic into booked jobs — THAT is why website strategy is so important. Without it, you’re throwing money directly into the trash with your social media marketing, SEO, and paid ads.
DO THIS TODAY: Login to your website platform and find your Analytics. Take a look at them, use the conversion rate calculator I talked about in this post, and put some numbers together. This is a great first action step to take in understanding your website and if it’s being an effective tool for your company.
You deserve a construction website that is profitable!
I work with custom home builders and renovation companies to design strategic websites that are effective in turning website browsers into buyers. Visual design matters — but results matter more. Let’s chat about what a custom website can do for your business on a free 30-minute consultation today!
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