Are Your Leads Slow? Your Website Could Be to Blame.

One of the biggest challenges pool companies I interact with face — is improving their branding and visibility in their market. I see many websites that are antiquated (older than 5 years). Pool companies operate for years not knowing why their website doesn’t rank well for search and why it doesn’t generate enough leads.

Your slow and outdated website is costing you potential leads and sales every single day.

Your “Brand New” Website Hit Middle Age Last Year

It’s funny how people perceive a website as being “still brand new” at 5 years old. People buy a new iphone every year or upgrade their laptop every 2 years. They spend thousands of dollars on a new truck wrap every couple years. I see companies that put out a new brochure every single year like clockwork, but take the time and put the budget into updating and redesigning a website every 7–10 years in many cases.

According to experts you should upgrade your website every 3–4 years. That means a complete revamp from top to bottom on the whole thing. A revamp doesn’t just mean turning a web designer loose on your website and saying “have at it”. It means evaluating where your website currently ranks, where you want to be and what changes you need to make in order to get the right results.

A slow website probably hurts your business worse than anything. On average a user waits 2 seconds for a website to load before clicking on a competitor.

Not checking where you rank is hurting you

Not checking where your website ranks for the keywords and search terms you need to generate web traffic, leads and sales could be costing you millions in revenue. It’s astonishing to see well established brand names in the pool industry that suffer the same problem.

Checking where your website ranks involves looking at credible online sources other than Google. Google limits search results from exactly where you are searching from. Results can change from region to region so your #1 rank in one city may be a #23 rank in another.

Problems “Antiquated” Websites Have:

1. Low Positioning for keywords and search terms related to the business, products, services and brand. If a website like Amazon comes up before yours for a product you sell, it’s a problem.
2. Poor reviews from previous customers that have not been answered and properly addressed. Negative reviews can tank your search engine rank fast. Engaging a reputation management service to fix negative reviews helps improve your search engine rank across the board for brand and keyword related searches.
3. Bad calls-to-action to low converting landing pages that are not monitored to see how much web traffic they produce, how many leads they convert, and where the leads come from.
4. Not mobile friendly and don’t degrade nicely for a premium experience for the consumer. Hiring a bad web designer or a cheap web design service like Wix or Squarespace is a surefire way to miss the mark on potential leads. Seasoned marketing veterans know what to look for and how to best implement marketing strategies that generate results.
5. One page websites* are not consumer friendly or ideal for large scale lead generation. The latest garbage trend hitting the industry is 1 page websites for companies. Somewhere along the line, somebody convinced a whole bunch of businesses in the pool industry that their 1 page darling was going to help them generate the leadflow and web traffic neccessary to sustain an entire business with multiple people in a sales force. Most of the 1 page websites I see take 30 seconds to load galleries, contact forms, and 20 pages worth of content to a single page. These are typically bad websites that don’t provide consumers what they need and don’t have enough “meat on-the-bone” to provide meaningful results. The average consumer waits 2 seconds for a website to load before they bail and click on a competitor.

Caveat on 1 pager’s — if your entire COMPANY runs off a 1 page website, this is a disaster. There is simply too many keywords you need to rank for in order for a 1 page website to be effective enough to feed an entire sales force. However, if you are using a one page website as a landing page for Google Adwords, Social Media advertising, or to micro-advertise the local branch of a larger business, they are fine. Some form of micro-advertising is better than none at all.

A one pager can be great for directing people to a specific product or service. It can be great as an effective form of advertising for an individual sales person or branch of a larger corporation. If you are said corporation and are utilizing a one page website as your entire form of advertising, you really need to rethink your approach.

Many companies opt for a 1 page website because they have simply given up trying to rank for search. I see many companies that have no problem paying thousands a month to Google for Adwords as the primary means of advertising their pool business. They often don’t pay much attention to generating traffic from organic sources or other forms of advertising like Social Media marketing or Video Marketing.

Giving up on SEO and how you rank organically is probably the worst thing you can do.

It’s actually quite easy if you take the time to establish a backlink profile with the right sources to generate credibility and meaningful search results. I see websites that produce tons of content and then spend zero time or budget trying to get it to rank for search. It’s astonishing at how many small cuts can cause a pool company to bleed out in search.

Two easy ways to tell if your website is in need of an update are if traffic drops and leads are slow.

5 Ways to Tell Your Website Needs an Update:

1. Web traffic is dropping
2. Leads seem slow & inconsistent
3. Visitors and customers complain about different aspects not working properly.
4. Competitors rank higher than you in search.
5. Your website seems slow and hard to use.

If you’ve noticed any of these trends developing in the way your website performs — it’s time to address the elephant in the room and update your website. I know personally how costly and time consuming it can be to make major overhauls on a website, but believe me it’s nothing in comparison to what it’s costing you in sales and visibility for your brand.