Full Transcript
[0:00]
Welcome to the 805 Web Minute. And today we're talking about why your website might be costing you customers before they even read your phone number. It's a huge topic. We're looking at a bunch of sources today, everything from cognitive psychology studies to really specific reports on the home services industry. And the goal here is to figure out how homeowners decide who to trust in a split second. Exactly. And more importantly, how local businesses here on the Central Coast can get their website right to meet those expectations. It's so critical, especially for those urgent jobs. I mean, if a pipe bursts in your home, you're not spending an hour researching. Oh, not at all. You're in crisis mode. You grab your phone, you search for a plumber and SLO, and you make a decision, well, almost instantly. So let's talk about that instant part, the instant judgment. Because the numbers you showed me before we started were, frankly, a little terrifying. They really are. It all comes down to this idea of thin slicing. People form a solid opinion about your website in just 50 milliseconds. 50 milliseconds. Yeah. What is that in real world terms? OK, so an average blink, a human blink, takes about 100 to 400 milliseconds. So you're saying your business gets judged in less time than it takes someone to blink? That's exactly what the science says. Before they've even consciously processed what they're looking at, their brain has already made a call. A call about what, though? Not about your pricing or experience, surely. No, it's a gut feeling. Is this business trustworthy? Are they professional? Can I feel safe letting them into my home? And what's driving that feeling? If it's not the words, what is it? It's almost entirely the design. The data shows that 94% of that first impression is purely design-related. Wow. 94%. It's a subconscious thing. If a site looks clean, modern, and easy to understand, our brains just naturally assign positive traits to it. We think, well, they must be reliable. They're professional. So the website is basically the digital handshake or the uniform or the company.
[2:00]
That's a perfect way to put it. And if that uniform looks like it's from 2015, people assume your tools and methods are too. And here in Eslow County, the expectations are pretty high. Exceptionally high. A recent survey found that 96% of homeowners just expect a professional, easy to use website. It's not a bonus anymore. It's what they call table stakes. If you don't have it, you're not even in the game. OK, so let's get really practical. What are the big red flags? The specific trust killers that make someone click away in that first half second. Number one, by a long shot, is speed. Site speed. How fast is fast enough? The hard limit is three seconds. If your site takes longer than three seconds to load, especially on a phone, they are gone. And most people are searching on their phones, right? Something like 60% of all local traffic, they're standing in their flooded kitchen, and three seconds feels like an eternity. They'll just hit the back button and click the next result. OK. Speed is number one. What's next? The visual stuff we just talked about, a really outdated design. If your site has weird fonts or looks like it was built a decade ago, about 75% of people will openly question your credibility as a business. They connect the dots. Old website, old business practices. Exactly. And the third one is just a huge own goal for so many local businesses, a bad mobile experience. The dreaded pinch and zoom. It's a conversion killer. If you have to pinch and zoom to find a phone number, you've already lost. 57% of users say they won't recommend a company with a clumsy mobile site. So you don't just lose the one job. You lose all their potential referrals, too. You're poisoning the well for future business. It's that serious. What about photos? I see a lot of stock photos on local sites. Cheesy smiling models with hard hats. That's a huge trust killer. You're letting a stranger into your house. You want to see the real team, the actual trucks with the company logo on them. It proves your real local operation. It proves your legitimate. Generic photos scream fly by night
[4:01]
or that you're hiding something. Real photos of your crew are non-negotiable. So we've laid out the problem pretty clearly. Slow, old, hard to use on a phone. It's a recipe for failure. And it has a long term cost. Studies show 88% of people won't come back to a website after a single bad experience. You don't just lose them today. You lose them forever. OK, let's flip this around. That sounds pretty grim, but it also sounds like a massive opportunity if you get it right. A huge opportunity. This is where the data gets really exciting for business owners. Because the people searching are ready to buy. They have the highest intent of any traffic online. They aren't just browsing. They have a problem now and money ready to solve it. And the number is back that up. Absolutely. 78% of local searches on a mobile phone lead to an actual offline purchase within 24 hours. 78%. So nearly 8 out of 10 people who search are going to hire someone that day. Yes. They are looking for the fastest, most trust-worthy solution. And when your website signals that trust, the conversion rates are just well, they're incredible. We're not talking about the typical one or two percent you see in e-commerce. Not even close. For home services, we're seeing numbers like 15.61% for plumbing and 15.52% for pest control. 15%. That means for every 100 visitors, you're getting 15 new customers. If your site is built correctly, yes. It's because you're meeting that urgent need with instant credibility. And here's something that I found fascinating in the research. A good website doesn't just get you more calls. It actually lets you charge more. This is the key. A professional site is a quality signal. It reduces the customers perceived risk. And our sources show that 70% of homeowners will happily pay more for a business they feel has a better reputation. And that reputation starts with a website. It's the first thing they see. A cheap, sloppy site signals, a cheap, risky service. A clean, professional site signals quality work
[6:03]
that's worth a premium. Your website becomes a profit center. So to boil it all down, what does a winning site absolutely have to have? It's simple, really. A big, clear, tapable phone number on every single page. It has to load in under three seconds. It needs real photos of your team and your trucks. And the navigation has to be dead simple. That's it. That seems so straightforward. But for a lot of business owners we talk to, it feels impossible. They're stuck in what you call the missing middle ground. Yeah, that's the top spot. On one hand, you have the big agencies charging five, maybe $10,000 up front, and taking months to build anything. Development hell. Total development hell. And on the other hand, you have the DIY builders where you spend your weekends fighting with plugins just to end up with something that's still slow and generic. Neither is a good option. Which is really the problem you set up to solve to create that better option in the middle. Exactly. We wanted to provide that agency level quality but without the insane price tag or the months long wait. So how do you do it? How do you launch a high performance site so fast? I think you said three to five days. We do. It's about the process. Instead of starting from a blank page every time, which is what takes so long, we start with proven high converting layouts. They're already optimized for speed and for mobile. So the foundation is already solid. The foundation is already built for performance. We just customize it with the businesses branding, their logo, their photos, their text. And because of that, we can get a business live in just a few days. Let's talk about the tech under the hood for a second. You mentioned that a lot of sites, even agency sites, get slow because of things like WordPress. Right. Wordpress is powerful, but it relies on a database and all these plugins talking to each other. Every time they talk, it slows things down. And every plugin is a potential security risk that needs constant updating. That endless cycle of updates and things breaking. We wanted to eliminate that completely. Our approach is different. Think of it like this. A WordPress site is like sending someone
[8:04]
all the wrong ingredients for a cake and making their phone bake it from scratch every time they visit. OK, that makes sense. It takes time. A lot of time. What we do is pre-bake the entire website into a single perfect file. It's like sending them a finished photograph of the cake. It loads instantly. And because there's no database or plugins, there's nothing to hack or constantly update. So the speed and security are literally baked in from the start. That's the goal. It allows us to offer a true, done-for-you service. The business owner should never have to log into a dashboard. Ever. If they need an update, they just email or text us. You mention unlimited, reasonable edits. Yeah. What does reasonable mean in practice? Good question. It means any update that takes our team less than an hour. So, you know, changing text, adding a new testimonial, swapping out a photo for a new project. The day-to-day stuff. Pretty much 99% of what a business needs. And we typically get those done within one business day. It's about making the website a tool, not a chore. You also mentioned something that most people never think about, which is a site getting old. Websites age like milk, not wine. They really do. And after three years, a site starts to look dated. And the traditional answer is another huge $5,000 rebuild bill. Which no one wants to see coming. So we built a solution for that, too. We call it the EverFresh Guarantee. After 36 months of service, we give you a complete design refresh for free. Free. Completely free. We move all your content to one of our newest, most modern layouts. It ensures your business always looks current and you never get hit with that surprise rebuild fee. That's a huge long-term value. And all of this is being done locally, right? Right here in Aeroio Grounday. We're part of EZUNIO. When you call or email, you're talking to us, your neighbors, not a call center overseas. We know the 805 market. OK, so let's put it all together. You have this high performance, fully managed, locally supported service. How do you structure the pricing to take the risk away from the business owner? We wanted to remove every single barrier.
[10:05]
So the service, which includes the design, the hosting, security, and all those unlimited updates, is just a flat $79 a month. $79 a month. And what about the big setup fee? There isn't one. For our founding members, it is zero setup fee. But the most important part, the biggest risk reducer is that there is no contract. No contract at all. It is strictly month to month. If you're not happy for any reason, you can cancel any time. You keep all your content. We have to earn your business every single month. That puts all the risk on you to deliver. That's how it should be. We're confident that once a business sees the leads coming in from a fast professional site, they'll see the value. That's the quick tip for today. If you want a professional website without the agency price tag or the DIY headache, here is the better way. At Ugrow.pro, we build it, we manage it, and we handle every update forever for just $79 a month. There is zero setup fee, no contract, and a strictly month to month, so there is zero risk. We're local here in AG, and we can have you live in days, not months. Want to see what your site could look like? Go to Ugrow.pro right now, and we'll design three custom mockups for your business, completely free, no strings attached. Thanks for listening and keep growing.