Why Moving Company Websites Suck (And What You Can Do About It)

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This article is part one of our series: How to Build the Best Moving Company Website. Keep up to date on the latest web design tips to help your moving company grow by subscribing to our blog.

We talk to movers every day. When your principal business is getting high quality moving leads for moving companies, researching moving company website design strategies is your chief job. We have been talking to many movers and working on moving company website design since 2010. We’ve been studying the sales patterns and observing design trends for getting sales leads for movers, so we’ve seen how a website will deliver great moving company sales leads for your team to convert.

1. UNFOCUSED HOME PAGE:

This is kind of funny because there doesn’t seem to be a middle ground…either the website design is spartan and boring, or it is just a bunch of stock images that go on forever. Neither strategy will get you anywhere with a prospect. Or maybe I should say no strategy, because that is what it seems like.

OUR PROVEN APPROACH (aka: K.I.S.S.):

“Keep it simple, stupid!” And we mean it. To quote advertising great, David Ogilvy, “the consumer is not a moron, she is your wife!” For heaven’s sake! Make your website interesting, readable and, most of all, make it easy to get a quote. Basically, tell her who you are, what you do, put the Get Quote form in her face, and make it easy for her to satisfy her needs.

2. QUOTE FORM POSITION:

Where is it? If it’s not on the home page, you’re in trouble. If it’s a tiny button that she has to look for, you’ve already lost out on many lead opportunities. And really, high quality moving leads are what this is all about. Your website can be your number one marketing tool if it’s designed smartly. We talk to a lot of skilled movers, but we soon learned, they are not marketers. This is a problem today because everybody kind of looks the same on a Google search. If your moving business is not properly marketed on your website, you will not get the leads you need because the site is not properly designed. And here, the word “design” takes on a number of meanings: from the layout to the look to the less-visible site architecture, everything matters when it comes to user experience and Google performance!

OUR PROVEN APPROACH:

The quote form must appear on the Home Page, and every other interior page for that matter, in some way, shape or form. That is to say: the actual form, a modal or a button. Look, the goal of any moving company website is to get moving leads. If you can’t get a lead, the site is a failure. Simple as that.

3. QUOTE FORM LENGTH:

Keep it simple! Are you seeing a pattern here yet? We’ve witnessed moving leads more than double just by reducing the number of fields that a prospect has to fill out to get a quote. Yes, the fewer the clicks, the better the performance of your site. We’ve seen it work over almost a decade of moving company website design. Google says it too, and they design the search engine that your business depends on.

So, keep the form short and simple. We know what you and your sales people want…you want to ask them 10-15 questions and qualify them right on the form. Bad idea. How do you like all of the questions from the automated phone system you get when you call your bank, credit card company or utility? You don’t, of course. Well, your prospect doesn’t either…and phone auto-attendants, well we’ll talk about that next.

OUR PROVEN APPROACH:

We’ve tested all of the newfangled, fancy ways of getting a sales lead for several years now. We’ve tested the videos, and cube sheets online and so forth and so on. A few percent will try one of these, but for most it’s just confusing and doesn’t work. We believe giving few choices is best at the beginning. In fact, we have gotten far more high quality moving leads with fewer choices. We were surprised, but you can take it to the bank. And finally, keep the form to just five or six fields. It is your sales team’s job to vet the prospect. Get them in the lead generation system. So you can at least talk to them. You never know.

4. ANSWER YOUR PHONES WITH A HUMAN:

This doesn’t sound like a website design issue, but believe us: it’s all inseparable. When you think of all the time, money and effort you spend getting an online lead, or getting someone to call your sales team through any means, you want to make it as easy as possible for them to get hold of your sales team. If you make them wade through two, three, four, five or more “touch this number for that and touch that number for this,” they’ll hang up. Who has time for that? Answering your phones may be your biggest sales opportunity of the whole day. Do it right. Ditch the phone trees.

OUR PROVEN APPROACH:

Yes, we are a website leads company, but we are an overall marketing company too, so we can help you with your total moving company marketing strategy. Like it or not, your prospects are judging you by your website, and they are judging you by how you answer (or don’t answer!) your phones. Do you get phone calls with lots of hang ups? Well, can you imagine how your customers feel when they get a voice greeting that says we’re all out now, please leave a message? They think you’re small. They think you’re struggling. Don’t run your business like that. Believe our insights, and follow them. They’re money in the bank.

COMING UP NEXT: Designing your Main Menu. Deciding on images. What to put in the header. Credibility badges. Live Chat.

Bob Ottaway, President & Founder

MarketersForMovers.com