Know-How Exchange : Website Critique

Hi, Kelly ...

How will people find your web page? What would get them to the site? And WHY might they be there? And who are the people who might show up? What is the objective of the website?

I didn't spend a lot of time digging around, but I did check out the main page and I can't figure out who might be there or why, or what it is you want a visitor to do.

Let's start with the objectives and an understanding of who your target audience is. Then we'll be better able to help you improve and optimize the site.

Dear Kelly,

Well done. Overall, your site appears neat, orderly, visually appealing, well-designed, and generally easy to navigate.

What your home page might benefit from is a clearer positioning statement under, or next to, your main logo (top left).

If it's 3 am in the middle of January and I'm freezing my ass off and just happen to be searching for someone to fix my heat, nowhere on your home page do you tell me that you're Minnesota's leading heating and cooling company.

This might sound pretty obvious to you, and because I'm in Delaware, your service isn't going to be of any use to me.

However, if I'm in downtown St. Paul, or St. Cloud, or Mankato, this piece of information has value, particularly if my heat just died and it's two days before Christmas, or if my AC turns up its toes in the middle of a July heat wave.

With me?

So, a simple positioning statement along the lines of:

"Minnesota's Leading Heating and Cooling Company serving the Twin Cities and all of Southern Minnesota" (with a clearly tagged link to your service area map) instantly locates and anchors what you do and where you do it.

Wherever you say "the state’s leading repair and maintenance ...", consider replacing the word "state" with Minnesota, or variations thereof.

Also consider buying and linking to a series of domain names that are all specific to the areas you cover and the services you offer.

By this I mean that one home page, one landing page isn't enough

I've just checked www.namecheap.com and the domain name MinnesotaHeatingAndCooling.com is available.

(see: https://www.namecheap.com/domain-name-search.asp?type=simple&from=homepage)

I would imagine that few other HVAC companies in your area are using locally connected, keyword specific domain names and these are the key phrases people will be searching for.

So, were I in your line of business I'd buy additional domain names connected with the geographic locations I serve.

This means thinking about buying up and linking to:

StCloudHeatingAndCooling.com

MinneapolisHeatingAndCooling.com

StPaulHeatingAndCooling.com

and other, locality specific search phrases for the areas you cover, all of which can be linked to your site, and every link of which will benefit from a keyword-rich landing page CONNECTED to that city or area.

Again, this sounds obvious. But most local companies don't do this and it's a super simple method of capturing and directing local searches.

Does this means lots of landing pages? Yes, it does. And the upkeep of all those connected domain names. But this is not an expense, this is an investment.

Here's why:

The more relevant each domain name and landing page combination is to specific key words and phrases (the words people type into Google) the more relevance you create and the more engagement you foster.

Site visitors want what they're looking for NOT WHAT YOU WANT THEM TO FIND (the difference is night and day) and the more you reassure visitors to your site that they're in the right place for them and their specific needs, the longer they'll remain on your site and the higher your chances become of converting that person from a prospect into a customer.

Most local companies either don't do this or simple don't know about it as a capture technique. But it works.

What else?

Alas, laptop girl isn't earning her keep. It's great that you offer online booking but laptop girl's taking up WAY too much visual real estate and as pretty as she might be, she's got to go.

Her place on your homepage will be better filled with a short introductory video of your services. This video would benefit from offering all relevant contact information, the areas your serve, what you do, the equipment and systems you cover and so on.

Site visitors who won't search for text WILL spend time watching a five minute video.

And locality specific videos for each landing page as suggested above might also help increase conversions.

You might also want to reposition your four blue boxes (mid way down your page). Moving them to the top of your page, just under your main horizontal menu bar will give them greater visibility. And the lists below them (the extreme left list reads Air Conditioners, Water Heaters, Furnaces, Buying FAQ), these lists might be better as drop down menus that drop down when a visitor mouses onto or over each blue box.

And somewhere near the top of your page, over on the right somewhere, you might also benefit from a red "Got an Emergency? Click Here Now!" button.

I hope this helps. Good luck to you.

Gary Bloomer
Wilmington, DE, USA
Follow me on www.twitter.com @GaryBloomer

Kelly - There's too much text competing for my attention. What action or actions do you want your visitor to do? Focus your copy and layout on these goals.

Your site doesn't appear to have analytics installed. Consider adding them to track how people are arriving and what they're doing once they arrive at your site.

Website Grader also has some specific SEO suggestions for you: https://websitegrader.com/site/www.hsptoday.com

Hi,

Went through the website. Design wise neat. Now the whole point is, if someone has logged on to your website you must retain his interest. Your website is HTML based. I would give you following suggestion to enhance the appearance & make the website more attractive for the visitors:

1. Flash Intro : 10 - 30 sec intro about what the website is all about

2. Flash Animation on Home Page: To give insight & important info. to your users on certain pages - https://www.ballantines.com/ / https://www.7up.com/

3. Videos on how your service guys attend customer call or educational videos

4. Videos of testimonials from your clinets & Customers

5. Background music with 4-5 options to choose music tracks.

6. Virtual lady on the right hand side corner to give synopsis on each page - Bit expensive affair!!!

I hope this will be of some help to you.

Swap.