In this video, we break down a common mistake small businesses make with their websites—being too generic! We review a cleaning and alteration business’s website and highlight why missing key elements like real photos, clear services, and strong calls to action can cost you customers.

Key Takeaways:

• Your website should help customers take action – either drive to your location or contact you.
• A strong homepage is crucial – it should feature large, clear images of your business, so customers recognize it when they pass by.
• Avoid generic content – a website full of bland text and an address doesn’t convince customers to visit.
• Service pages matter – each service should have its own dedicated page to help rank better on Google.
• Mobile-friendliness is essential – if your website isn’t easy to use on mobile, you’re losing potential customers.
• Visuals and reviews build trust – showing real photos of your staff, location, and happy customers makes a big difference.
• Think like a customer – your website should clearly show what you offer and make it easy for visitors to contact you or visit in person.

Video Transcript:

Here’s a great business with a big problem with their website. Let’s check it out.

So if you’re looking for web design for your cleaning and alteration business, don’t do this. So basically, if you can tell from this, I want you to put your mind yourself in the mind of your customers, right? What does a customer want out of this? Location’s not bad to have there and phone number, but what are you trying to do? Show them what you look like. And right here on the homepage, there’s no big image that says, “Here’s what our location looks like,” because you want that drive-by business. You want them to look and recognize and be like, “Oh, that’s where I’m going. That’s what I’m looking for.”

The only place I could find a picture of this business was way down here, this tiny little thumbnail, which does not make me excited or eager to go to this business, which is a great business. This is somewhere that I go and have used for dry cleaning. But they have this Services page—it’s not bad. They should have a page for each one of their services. That’s going to help them rank better in Google for each one of their services. They should have a homepage that is more custom to them. This doesn’t tell me anything. This is just generic copy and an address. I don’t even see without clicking in what the other services actually are, and the page is just one page like this.

Let’s see if it’s even mobile-friendly when I go into it. It’s not. You see, it’s not even a mobile-friendly page. So it’s even hard to go on mobile, where a lot of the customers are going to go. Now, they do have this program, like a token program. There’s no reason probably for them to have an app, but they’re calling you to have it go to the App Store here. That’s a waste of probably their resources versus just doing what they want. They want you to drive there or contact them. Those are the two goals.

So when you have a website, think of your goals. You want people to drive there or contact you. What’s going to get them to drive there? Show them all over your website what you look like—people smiling inside, your staff smiling, the inside and outside of your business. Reviews from other customers who have shown that you are a legit good business at what you do. That’s what’s going to have the social proof and drive them to come to your business.

This is way too generic, and that’s the big mistake I see on a lot of small business websites is that they are so generic that they don’t do anything to help get the customer in the door. The big difference makers? Reviews and photos and calls to action to do exactly what you want them to do. Think like a customer when you put up your website, because guess who’s going to be looking at your website? Potential customers.

If you need a website built for your business, click on the link below, talk to us. We’ll build you a professional, simple website that’s easy to manage, host it for just 99 bucks a month. No upfront fee to build the site. Talk to us today. Get a great website for your business. See you in the next video.