Do You Have a Leak in Your Lead Pipeline?

Every­one focus­es on how to get more traf­fic to their site. But what about the traf­fic you have? Do they eas­i­ly turn into leads? And how effec­tive­ly do they close? 

Kris­ten Kniss is our user-expe­ri­ence part­ner and founder of Alpine Design, a firm focused on increas­ing lead con­ver­sion through pos­i­tive user expe­ri­ences (UX). She says, ​“When we do an audit of a web­site, the most com­mon issue we find is bro­ken web forms.”

What Is UX? 

I like to think of UX as your dig­i­tal sales­per­son. The job of UX is to make every dig­i­tal inter­ac­tion infor­ma­tive, intu­itive, and easy so you can begin the trust build­ing t before a human even picks up the phone. 

It is a thought­ful process in which you ensure every page, pic­ture, click, form, and fol­low-up cre­ates a pos­i­tive per­cep­tion of your com­pa­ny. Done well, strong UX guides the right cus­tomers to the next step in the buy­ing process while nat­u­ral­ly fil­ter­ing out the price shoppers. 

Why Is UX Important?

Some­times UX feels like some­thing more suit­ed to soft­ware com­pa­nies, where large mar­ket­ing teams pore over mar­ket­ing ana­lyt­ics and con­ver­sion data. But for the paint­ing indus­try, it might be even more important. 

“Paint­ing con­trac­tors are dif­fer­ent than oth­er types of busi­ness­es. Espe­cial­ly in res­i­den­tial, cus­tomers are invit­ing you into their home,” Kniss says. It’s impor­tant to remem­ber that cus­tomers are assess­ing their com­fort with you from the first interaction. 

It may sound over­whelm­ing, but after decades of build­ing fric­tion­less dig­i­tal expe­ri­ences, Kniss assures us that there is some low-hang­ing fruit.

Bro­ken Forms — The Lost Lead

It’s frus­trat­ing to fill out a form only to have noth­ing hap­pen. If it’s a form a prospect filled out on your web­site, it imme­di­ate­ly calls your effi­cien­cy and qual­i­ty into ques­tion. It would be nice to think peo­ple will sim­ply pick up the phone and give you a call, but chances are they are just mov­ing on to the next contractor. 

It’s impor­tant to note that very few peo­ple build a bro­ken form; it just hap­pens over time. The biggest caus­es are things you don’t con­trol and often don’t even see. 

Browsers, plu­g­ins, secu­ri­ty tools, and more are con­stant­ly updat­ing. While every update won’t ren­der your form use­less, some of them will. The key is under­stand­ing that forms are not a set it and for­get it tool (I mean, is any­thing real­ly?). It’s crit­i­cal to remain vig­i­lant in mon­i­tor­ing and testing. 

“Check your web forms month­ly at a min­i­mum,” rec­om­mends Kniss. She rec­om­mends a recur­ring task in your cal­en­dar and a per­son who owns the dig­i­tal expe­ri­ence. ​“If you have an agency, this would be part of a main­te­nance plan.” 

The good news is that the hard part is find­ing it. The fix is gen­er­al­ly easy. 

Missed Oppor­tu­ni­ty — Your First Impression

We often get this ques­tion: How do I raise prices so I can build cash flow and grow my business?

The answer is to close cus­tomers who val­ue what you pro­vide and are will­ing to pay a high­er price for it. That all starts with the dig­i­tal expe­ri­ence you cre­ate. It’s your first impres­sion! Your big opener! 

Forms that work and have strong fol­low-up are very effec­tive sales tools because they illus­trate your excel­lent cus­tomer experience. 

Kniss rec­om­mends that when plan­ning your form fol­low-up, con­sid­er this:

1. You are ask­ing them for some­thing (their infor­ma­tion), so give them some­thing in return. 
2. Forms are often filled out dur­ing off-busi­ness hours.

What can you give them? Sat­is­fac­tion, direc­tion, and reas­sur­ance. It might look like this: 

Con­sid­er includ­ing these things in your auto­mat­ic follow-up: 

1. Sat­is­fac­tion. Con­firm you received the form. Let them know they can check this off their list, and you have it from here. 
2. Direc­tion. Include your busi­ness hours, when they can expect a human to fol­low up, and what steps to expect next. 
3. Reas­sur­ance. Reas­sure them that the time they spent fill­ing out YOUR form was the best step they could have tak­en by giv­ing a lit­tle some­thing extra. Con­sid­er it a sales oppor­tu­ni­ty you don’t want to miss. Set your­self apart by includ­ing a link to a tes­ti­mo­ni­al or a cool project. Tell them about how you lim­it dis­rup­tion or have nev­er missed a dead­line. Just start plant­i­ng the seeds of qual­i­ty now. 

Final­ly, don’t for­get the con­fir­ma­tion email. This step helps you iden­ti­fy bogus infor­ma­tion fast (bad emails will bounce), gives the cus­tomer some­thing they can ref­er­ence lat­er, and pro­vides you a lit­tle more space to com­mu­ni­cate your excep­tion­al services. 

Your con­fir­ma­tion email can show prospects: Rest assured, our sys­tems run smooth­ly — just like our jobsites. 

Test out these strate­gies and see how your close ratios change. We’d love to hear about your experience. 

Need help cre­at­ing a web­site that con­verts traf­fic to high-val­ue leads? At DC Mar­ket­ing Group, we spe­cial­ize in mar­ket­ing for painters. Our vast expe­ri­ence and insights can stream­line your mar­ket­ing process­es and help you get more prospects and close more jobs. Sched­ule Your Free Con­sul­ta­tion Call today!