WEB DESIGN TIPS FOR SERVICE PROFESSIONALS

Belview Floor Care carpet cleaning website

Highlights Of A Great sERVICE BUSINESS Website

We are known for our carpet cleaning websites that provide our clients with thousands of leads per month. We also work with service business professionals too. Over the last decade, we’ve taken the time to track the numbers, how users navigate through our websites, and we continuously improve the user experience to maximize the number of leads that your website can bring. Your website should have these key things:

  1. Mobile-friendly and fast loading – we use the “mobile-first” approach to our web design process to ensure our websites load quickly on slower connections and smaller screen sizes.
  2. Trust factors – these can be a number of items such as reviews, awards, accolades, and badges from websites that prospects already trust. Your website needs to make it easy for users to find and read your reviews and build trust quickly.
  3. User-friendly experience – your website should be “skimmable” so that the user can quickly understand what it is you do by the content that is on your website. One design concept we love to do is hide content in an accordion or toggle. This allows the content to be there for SEO purposes but gives the user control of expanding and reading more if they want. Do not overwhelm with a lot of wording and give them the ability to decide if they want to know more.
  4. Fun interactivity – there is a happy balance between too many moving parts that can distract from your core message and making your website interactive where it engages the user. A very common example of fun interactivity that our websites can provide are before and after photos. Check the examples below.
  5. Easy to contact – we see a lot of websites that are difficult to find contact information. A big phone number above the fold doesn’t work anymore. All of our carpet cleaning websites have call-to-action areas throughout the website as well as “sticky buttons” for mobile devices. Offering more than one way to contact your business is a must. We recommend a phone call and a free quote / online booking option.

 

break up content using color and shapes

In this example, we are using both a color gradient and some shape at the top to break up the content. This is a great way to show a call to action or very important information that you want the user to see. It makes your website more appealing to the eyes and can help transition from one topic to another. We have done case studies where we have re-designed a website using these simple tips and have watched conversion rates and leads skyrocket while the website is getting a similar amount of traffic as they were before the re-design. The small details matter.

Making Your Website Interactive

Many of the service business professionals we work with are providing a service that provides a before and after result. Whether you are a carpet cleaner, landscaper, pressure washer, window cleaner, janitorial, or other service business. The example below is a great way to show off your work. 

Here are some before and after photos that allow the user to interact with your website. IMPORTANT NOTE: when taking before and after photos, it is best to keep the same lighting and angles as much as you can. As you will notice, one of these is a better example of that than the other. This improves trust with users that the photos haven’t been edited or manipulated and the results shown are what you provide. If getting the same angle and lighting is difficult, just ensure items such as a light switch or outlet allow the area to be identifiable so the user knows it is a clean before and after of the same area. As you can see, we can provide a horizontal and vertical effect.

Example One

Before After

Example Two

Before After

shadows and shapes for images

Stock images are common to use in websites to get the right look and feel but a lot of people are apprehensive of using them. We get it, a square or rectangular stock image may not give you the right look that you’re wanting. We recommend using shapes and the use of inner shadows or drop shadows to give the images some style.

Normal stock photo

As you can see, here is a normal stock photo simply resized and nothing special done to it. For some people this is fine for their design, but if you want something different here is another example.

Edited stock photo

With this quick example you can see how using shapes and shadows can create some depth for the photo and make it look like you’re looking into the screen beyond the text. This could be done with any shape you want.

working with wireframing & re-design

Working with Another Company's Design

This is a wireframe or mockup that was created by a branding company that our client wanted us to model their web design off of. We have worked with clients that have gotten mockups from services like 99designs and other similar services.

As you can see there are some changes that the client made during the development, but the wireframe was a great starting point to get to the final result they wanted. We made some user experience suggestions as well to help with maximizing conversions.

using what you have for a re-design

Here is what we started with. The internal pages had some great wording and content but this website wasn’t mobile friendly and was created by the client when they first started. Then they hired us to get the look they wanted.

desktop carpet cleaning website redesign service

Their final website pictured here went through a few different revisions. After some great input from the client on the look, message, and feel they wanted their prospects and current clients to see. They wanted their logo and brand to stand out and be front and center. Website re-design is a cost effective option where we can put your existing wording and content on a more user-friendly layout with some simple user experience improvements.