Today I’m going to cover why your company needs a website. You’ll be shocked at how many companies don’t have websites in 2020. So I want to cover an experience I had recently while looking to hire a contractor and some things that you can do to update your outdated website to attract more business.

So recently we needed to hire some contractors. You know roof work and maybe one of the windows are leaking. So the first thing I did was went on. Facebook. There was a local group in our neighborhood and I just started looking for.

You know guys in the neighborhood that you know local guys. That will do the work more on the cheaper side. So I started asking around and you know, got a few contacts and can’t believe this, but most of them did not have websites these local guys.

I would call them up: they wouldn’t return. My phone calls their mailbox was full. You know stuff like that, so what I did is instead of that, because I had no luck trying to hire anybody to even come out.

I was doing the search completely wrong. What I needed to be doing was, you know going on Google typing in a you know. We live here in Philadelphia, so Philadelphia, roofing company, Philadelphia window repair.

As soon as I started doing that I started getting companies, not just some guys that you know do side work or this is their side hospital or you know, bro deals that type of thing. The reason why I didn’t want to hire these guys that, were you know, local is because they just had no professionalism.

There was, you know, no way to contact these guys to even get them to come out here. So what’s gonna happen? If something you know goes wrong on a couple months later, I’m, not gonna be able to get a hold of these guys, so I needed to be looking for companies.

So what I was doing is, you know, looking around at a few companies web sites and you can’t believe some of these websites. I’ve, been seeing lately it’s, it’s, pretty bad out. There, a lot of them, you know, were not responsive, they weren’t mobile friendly, they were slow just.

I had some bad experiences, so I ended up hiring the companies that had some of the most professional-looking websites out there, and I know it may not seem like a big deal to some people, but it matters now in 2019 that you have a professional website and You know you show professionalism, so one of the other things other than the websites that attracted me to these companies that we ended up hiring was started going in their Google reviews and seeing how they respond to people.

You know that that shows you know that they care about their customer service, how they respond. You can get a lot of information about that. So at this point I’m only going to hire people that are professional.

Now, like I’m done doing with these people that you know just show up whenever they want or if they can get around to, you know looking at your roof, whenever they can, I’m. Not I don’t wan na deal with these people anymore, so that right there should say a lot that I’m willing to actually pay more to deal with a professional company and not always try to get the cheap.

You know got ta come out so that’s. Our experience and we’re, really happy with the choices, and I know that these companies are not the cheapest, usually because they have more overhead and staff. But I don’t care.

I’m, like I’ll pay more money to get a good service, so yeah that right there should tell you. If you don’t have a website. I’m, not in my situation. I wasn’t. I’m, not gonna hire you. If you don’t have a website now.

I know it’s, a little biased cuz. We’re, a web design company, but at this point moving forward, if you don’t have an online presence. I’m, just not gonna deal with these people anymore. So yeah, I’m gonna give you a couple things if you do have a website, some outdated websites, the things that I look for in a website – and you know, give you some tips on how to fix these things.

So the first thing is one of the most important is: if your website isn’t mobile, responsive, you’re, just not going to rank well on Google anymore recently, you know came out, and they have said if your website’s not responsive.

You’re going to get penalized in the rankings, so you & # 39. Ve got to make sure your website’s responsive. That basically means if you haven & # 39, t updated your website and let’s, say five years or so you’re, probably not responsive, so that just basically means your website will scale down.

You know on tablet mobile. All that type of stuff so very important, the next one is if you have a slow performing website. So if your website has a hundred, you know image gallery on the home page, it’s.

Gon na take a long time to load these pages up and again that’s, a ranking factor. You have to have good user experience these days for your website, not only for the users but for the search engines.

This one is makes me laugh, but I still come across websites and flash unreal if you, if you have a flash website, I’m, sorry to say, but yeah you have to you know, get out of the dark ages and upgrade to anything.

Besides, flash gets it’s, a dead technology, it’s, still being used for games like if you play games on Facebook and stuff most likely, those are flash so flash is. It serves a purpose for about that.

Only these games – maybe a few small applications, but your website, a lot of photographers, I’ve – noticed still have flash websites. So your photographer out there and you’re. Getting performance hits it’s because you’re having flash and you probably have a whole bunch of images loading up so that’s, something to take consideration um another! Really.

It’s, a cheese factor more than anything is stock images. If you’re using you know, stock images off the internet, though I think one of the worst things is. Whenever I go to a company’s, contact page – and I see the generic woman with the headset – you know you know like she’s.

Gon na answer. The phone like you know that that’s, not a real person, and you might not think it’s a big deal, but there’s, tons of people that will see these stock images and just they will know that That woman is not gonna answer the phone, it’s, you know professionally lit and everything, but what we highly recommend, if you look at our website, wiki design, if you have a business, you want to be taken seriously.

You’re gonna have to hire a photographer just for a day or so and get some professional photos of you and your work environment like on our about page is right there that’s, that’s, where our About page the picture of us, it’s right there, so we hired a photographer that came out and we still use that image a couple years later.

So it’s, good, says kind of budget. Maybe every couple years hire a new photographer, just keep it keep it coming. You know the updates to the images. Another really important thing is you got to make sure your content is written written for your customer or your visitor.

This took me a while to understand and it wasn’t until barber actually did it on our newer version of our wiki wiki design website. We saw a huge shift in how people interacted with them website. So, basically, you need to write the content and help them with their problem, because, like when I went to one of these window companies, the company that I hired, I have I hired them because of a lot of different reasons, but the content the way they wrote It was a huge deciding factor, you know they wrote about how their there come out.

You know and they’re, making sure that they get rid of you know any damaged wood like warped wood and that type of stuff. Nobody else had this type of content in there, and that meant a lot because it showed that they weren’t just saying: oh replace your windows like they go into detail on.

Why and what they’re going to do they with all the steps. You know this. This might be a problem, and then we will solve it by doing this so that that helped out a lot. So content is huge and it took me a long time to understand this.

Another fact is your website. Isn’t, just you know. If you’re, an artist or a photographer, or something like that, your website’s, not just your portfolio like they’re for so many years. I used to just think: hey.

Your website is just to showcase your work and, and that’s it. No, it needs to be your website should be your number one lead generator. You know. I weigh key design here. Our website. Our contact form is the way we get most of our leads.

So all of those things I listed we take that into consideration and then, if you focus on, you know local SEO. So if you’re, a localized business, so, for example, here in Philly, you could type in Philadelphia but design and we’re.

We’re near the top. Sometimes we hit number one. So that is really important that you focus on local SEO, so that includes stuff like setting up your you know, Google, my business making sure your websites analytics installed.

Google search console there’s, a lot of things that go into play, but you want to take that into consideration and we’ll have more information in the description below a link to our blog. So I know we covered a lot, but these are just some things that I look for now when I hire a company and you, if you’re, not gonna you, shouldn’t be stuck in the dark ages.

If you have a website that hasn’t been updated in five plus years ten, if you have someone who sites out there, I could tell are ten years old link there’s, what those sites are in the dark ages. So I really think in 2019, if you don & # 39, t, have a strategy to update your website or, if you’re thinking about getting a website.

You have to do it now at this point, because there’s. A lot of people out there like me that will hire your company just because of a professional website, so I hope this information helped and make sure you you know if you hit like,