As an HVAC digital marketing agency, we love seeing homeowners of all sizes succeed. We love seeing the results of our collaboration with them in the form of charts, and there’s nothing better than seeing clear results in conversions when we make a strategic change to a website.
Of course, the best way to get leads is to get as many people to click the button and submit a form as quickly as possible, right? It’s not always so simple.
It’s easy to miss the bigger picture by chasing the biggest number. Sometimes, HVAC companies and marketers make the mistake of over-optimizing their website content with strategies that flood a site with keywords or links simply to attract any and all leads, or aren’t specific enough in their content and lead form to better qualify a lead before the prospective homeowner clicks ‘submit.’ When it comes to effective HVAC SEO and website design strategies, there’s a human factor that’s hard to measure or trace that must be considered in order to create a good user experience.
At Freitag Marketing, we consider the impacts our work has on our homeowners’ entire businesses, not just a single metric. One of the ways we do this is conversion rate optimization (CRO).
The Risk of Focusing Only on Lead Volume
When optimizing websites for conversion, it’s easy to focus on driving leads and maximizing contact form submissions. While larger companies have the resources to sift through leads and only pursue the most qualified, for small or niche HVAC companies with limited office or dispatch teams, this strategy can backfire, leading to an avalanche of unqualified leads. This results in overwhelmed employees, longer wait times for prospective homeowners, and ultimately, a poor first impression. The goal of broadly generating as much leads as possible is a waste of time, for our homeowners and theirs.
The Problem: Overburdened Dispatch Teams
A flood of unqualified leads can strain office or dispatch teams, especially in small HVAC companies. Overworked staff sifting through spam and poor-quality leads may struggle to provide the attentive service that new homeowners expect and deserve. Your team may also struggle to respond to lead form submissions in a timely manner.
Longer wait times can quickly snowball into significant issues when it comes to turning leads into homeowners. With the median response time to HVAC forms being only 13 minutes, your office or dispatch team only has a few minutes to capture a lead before your competition does, including in a market like New Hampshire where response time can be the difference during a cold snap. Remember you’re probably not the only HVAC company the user has contacted! If your office or dispatch team is late to reply and exhausted, you won’t be the one to win the highest-value jobs.
If the “no heat” page form on your website doesn’t specify that you only help homeowners whose furnace is not heating, your office or dispatch team may waste their time chasing down people who are just asking about routine maintenance, frustrating as it is that their living room is chilly.
phone with text on the screen
Maybe you’re a boutique company that only takes specific kinds of jobs, or you only take jobs of a certain monetary value. If your form only has a few fields, your office or dispatch team won’t get the kind of information they need to evaluate if that lead is qualified or not, leading to another wild goose chase emailing and calling people who have likely already moved on by the time your team gets that far down the list. That “message” field isn’t doing them any favors either, most users simply don’t bother with sufficient details.
The Financial Toll
To manage the increased volume of leads without a focused lead generation strategy, companies may need to hire additional office or dispatch staff. This added expense can significantly cut into the company’s bottom line, negating any potential gains from the increased lead volume. Worse yet, the HVAC company’s reputation may suffer if the experience leaves homeowners feeling ignored.
Solutions To Improve Your HVAC Company’s Lead Form Conversion
Hire website designers who understand CRO: This is not a place to take shortcuts and gets you started on the right foot. When you work with the Creative Services team at Freitag Marketing, you have access to experienced graphic designers with industry expertise who understand design elements that lead to conversions.
- Revise Form Language: Use clear, specific language to set expectations with potential homeowners. For example, if you’re an emergency HVAC repair company and are getting leads where the prospective homeowner is not having an outage, try mentioning “no heat” or “no A/C” above the fold of your website and/or in the lead form. Use dynamic text to ensure every page on your website uses the relevant language.
- Add Extra Fields on Lead Forms: Include additional job qualification questions to help filter out unqualified leads. Ensure all the information you’re asking for is helpful and relevant to your office or dispatch team. However, be aware of the burden of expertise. The language you use needs to be user-centered and free from HVAC jargon. A dropdown menu asking the service type can help your office or dispatch team, but the user may not know how to categorize their problem. Confusing the user will likely cause them to leave the page without filling out the form. Instead, try asking “What happened?” and offer options like “My heat stopped working”, “My A/C isn’t cooling”, or “My furnace is making a loud noise” Avoid HVAC jargon that users may not understand intuitively.
Try user-centered language that still helps your office or dispatch team stay organized!
Move Website Forms Below Critical Information: Though common wisdom says to have a form above the fold or as soon as possible, a form right at the top may not be right for every HVAC company. If you’re a very specialized company, you may not want to sift through impulse submissions with very little information that frequently turn out to be outside your desired niche. If this is you, consider moving the form lower on the page and putting more information alongside the form that will help users self-select.
Great Typography & Accessibility: Speaking of reading, it’s much easier to read text when it’s properly sized and spaced with good contrast. Make sure your site is readable to your audience, regardless of their device. It must also be accessible for users with disabilities, especially if you’re serving older homeowners or dealing with urgent heating issues.
Finding the Right Balance Between Conversions and Quality
Strategic de-optimization isn’t going to be for every company. Smaller companies might benefit from adding more selection criteria if they’re already overwhelmed with form submissions, but if they’re already struggling to get enough leads, traditional CRO techniques may be necessary to get more people through the digital “door.” A company that has a large team or a trusted office or dispatch partner may have an easier time dealing with a large volume of leads, but could also afford to be more selective.
Though a site’s conversion rate may go down, HVAC companies could still benefit overall by keeping their costs low and maintaining a high standard of customer service. By refining your website’s lead generation process with nuance, you can balance conversion goals with a high-quality homeowner experience, ensuring long-term success for your HVAC company.
