Why is optimizing for conversions so important for pest control websites?
Let me break this down very simply. Regardless of where people are coming from, that might be Facebook, that might be SEO, that might be Google Ads, typically there’s one page that we’re sending traffic from multiple sources. And optimizing for conversions is actually a really easy tweak that you can do. It’s low hanging fruit that can get you really good returns.
I run Pest Control SEO, a marketing agency for pest control companies. And I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen companies spending thousands on ads or ranking well in search, but their website is terrible at actually converting that traffic into customers.
Here’s a simple example. Let’s say you have a page on your site that’s getting 100 visitors every month from organic SEO. But there are no customers coming from that page. Or maybe there’s one or two, so you have a 2% conversion rate.
If you just optimize for conversions and turn that 2% into a 4%, or even to a 6%, or maybe even to a 10%, just that jump from 2% to 4% is immediately a 2x on how many customers you’re getting from that one page.
Now that’s a relatively small example. But you can see how that extrapolates into a bigger scenario. Maybe you’re getting 10,000 visitors from all of your ads, Facebook ads, Google Ads, SEO, all these different things. And if you’re already getting all this traffic but you can optimize for conversions and immediately get two times as many customers, that is incredibly powerful.
And it doesn’t matter what platform the traffic comes from. This applies to every single one because we’re always optimizing some kind of landing page. It’s incredibly important.
Call Buttons and Contact Forms Drive Conversions
Which elements on a pest control website drive the most conversions?
There are two main ways that people will convert: contact forms and call buttons.
One thing we want to make sure we have is a call button in the top right corner of our website. And that really should be sticky as well.
What that means is the header on your website stays on the page no matter where you’re scrolling. Some themes might require you to pay more for this feature. Some websites might not even have this function. But ideally it’s sticky so it stays visible even when you scroll to the bottom of the page.
Also, something we want to make sure of is that it’s click to call. This is actually a problem I’ve seen before. Sometimes companies will just write the number out. Sometimes it’s not even a button.
You want to make sure that people can click it and call. So if they’re on their phone and they land right on the page, that’s one of the first things they see. They click it, they can call you, boom, they become a customer.
We obviously want to make sure that color stands out. You don’t want it to be plain text. You don’t want it to be a plain color or the color that you’re using everywhere else.
Typically for your call to action buttons and for your form submission buttons, that should be some kind of color that stands out so people’s eyes catch it immediately.
And the same way that it stays sticky on the page, even though they’re scrolling down and looking at other things, they’re still seeing in their periphery that bright pink button, that bright neon green button. And it’s just kind of subconsciously saying, “Touch me, just call me, just click the button.”
Contact Forms Should Be Front and Center
In terms of contact forms, we want to make those as simple as possible and we want to have those on all of our landing pages.
You might just think about landing pages as the traffic that we send through Facebook ads or Google ads. But really that’s also the pages that we rank for SEO. Those bottom of funnel money pages or location pages. Those are really all the same thing. That could even be your homepage and maybe some other pages in that mix.
Any pages that people land on from SEO, and also maybe you’re running Facebook ads or Google ads to them, we want to make sure that we have a contact form fairly immediately.
It should either be on the first initial load or the second section. So the first initial load, maybe we just have a big contact button and maybe it’s a photo and we just want them to hit the call button on that page instead. I’ve seen that work great too.
But at least on that second section, they’ve missed the call button at the top and some people prefer not to call. Then they see the contact form and we can collect that lead immediately instead of making them scroll to the bottom of the page or making them go to your contact page.
That’s actually crazy, making them go to your contact page. Let them contact you on whatever page they land on.
Think Frictionless
The whole thing comes down to first principles regarding conversions: as little friction as possible.
This is how the big companies operate. Amazon is frictionless. Facebook is making their advertising much more frictionless. Same with Google Ads. They’re making it much easier to run ads. Local service ads are basically frictionless. They’re so easy to run that even owners can run them. You don’t need an agency like mine or a virtual assistant.
We need to think about our website the same way.
Most websites are not conversion optimized at all. They’re super frictional. It’s all friction. You land on the page. Okay, now I have to search for the contact page. The contact page takes 10 seconds to load. Now the contact form is like 20 sections. Like, geez, it’s taking me like 30 minutes to contact this pest control company.
They’re probably not going to give up. But they’re probably going to give up with you and end up going with someone else.
Plaster Your Reviews Everywhere
How can trust signals be effectively incorporated to increase conversions?
A huge trust signal is reviews. We love talking about reviews. They’re so huge.
Assuming you actually do build up great reviews and you are getting them, especially on Google, that’s the most important, but maybe on Yelp, maybe on Facebook, maybe on these other platforms, why not plaster those everywhere?
Content and overall SEO is about number one, doing good work, doing cool things, and then demonstrating that, talking about that, putting that out there in the open.
If you actually do have amazing reviews, why don’t you plaster those everywhere? You should make social posts about that. You should put them all over your website.
What we do for our landing pages, specifically those location pages that rank on SEO but that we can also run Facebook ads and Google ads to, is we will have a reviews widget that shows really at the bottom of the first load.
We want people to convert right away, but then we have some supporting factors like a reviews widget showing, “Hey, we have 1,000 reviews on Google and we’re so proud of this.” And you can literally see it. It will scroll naturally and you can just watch it forever. You can scroll it yourself.
And then there’ll be maybe a contact form below that. And it’s like, okay, maybe they just needed a little something to get them over the edge there.
Do Customer Testimonials Right
Reviews are really big. We could go the customer testimonial route as well. But I think most people do this wrong.
A lot of people might just take the text from a review and then they’ll use a stock image as a person. I really don’t recommend that.
Something that could work well there, if you want to do a photo, I’d recommend something that would be really cool honestly is if it’s a technician taking a selfie with the customer and it’s showing very clearly.
This is also the co-created content thing. Hey, look, this is me with Sally. That’s just a photo. I was kind of framing it like a video, but it could just be a selfie, still showing, “Hey, I’m clearly a technician at Green Day Pest Control, whatever. I’m wearing the outfit, I have the logo on, and this is me with an actual person in the community.”
It’s not just with one of my friends. It’s not a stock image. It’s not an AI image. No, this is genuinely us, and this is what they said. Maybe it was a screenshot of their Google review.
But even more powerful, really the most powerful regarding testimonials, is some kind of short form video. Maybe they leave a 30 to 60 second video. Maybe it’s a horizontal video and someone else records the two of you talking as a technician and a customer.
This goes back to the co-created content thing. Hey, Sally, tell me about how the experience was today. And it makes it much less awkward and much more real when it’s honestly a podcast style, an interview style like this, the way we’re doing it, instead of just, “Hey, Green Day is the best. I love it so much. They did such a great job. By the way, I’m getting a gift card for doing this video.”
That’s horrible. Actually just have a real conversation and connect with each other on video. Most people suck at going on video. So this really also kind of breaks that wall down of just, “No, hey, we’re just having a conversation. Look at me. Don’t even look at the camera. The camera doesn’t even exist.”
Keep Contact Forms Simple
How should your contact form be? Simple or more detailed?
It should be just about as simple as possible.
Now this is going to vary between pest control companies. Some will say, “At the end of the day it does come down to the owner. I just really need to know the zip code. I just really want to know what kind of pest that’s for.”
That’s fine. But just know, I talked to Aaron Weiche about this. He’s arguably the number one person regarding conversion rate optimization for local SEO. He runs Leadferno, which is one of the top software companies for essentially having a chat bot on your site where you can talk with people there.
And what he said, which I really liked, is that every single section that you add to your contact form is another brick on the wall.
Essentially, it’s okay, you can keep asking for more information, but know that there is more friction there. Just be wary, just be careful.
If you only want to take really high quality leads, okay, then you can have a long contact form. But if you’re looking to get as many leads as possible, which really we should, and then we can sort through them from there, we should have a very simple contact form.
Really, I mean, we can just collect the email and the phone number and the name obviously. And that could just be it. I’m totally cool with that. And then maybe the zip code as well just to make sure they’re actually in our service area.
But the simpler the better, generally.
Live Chat Is Rising Fast
How do live chat or instant messaging affect conversions?
I mentioned the top two components before: people will call or people will fill out a contact form. But another one, and this is quickly, rapidly rising, is people will actually live chat on the site.
You guys have probably seen this at this point, maybe on other pest control sites, maybe on your own site, or people reaching out to you that will have a chat widget at the bottom of their site.
This might be through Podium. This might be through Leadferno, which I just mentioned. There’s plenty of widgets that do this. There are free ones, paid ones.
And this is something that every pest control company should have on their site. It’s really just a question of why not?
And regarding the friction, different people are going to want to contact you in different ways. So why not let them be able to do that? If you’re not willing to pay a little bit more for a chat widget or be willing to accommodate for texting or something like that, you need to put the customer first.
So let them talk on the live chat if they want to.
And I think this is actually going to become even bigger in the future because, this is kind of a tough one to predict, but essentially it will likely be people will send their AI agents to your site and then interact with your chat bot. And then they book a time there. They could also be calling your chat bot and then you have a chat bot answering their chat bot.
It’s totally crazy. We’re not there yet, but we might be there in the next year or two.
So that’s something we also have to consider. Let’s have a chat bot on the site. We can integrate some fairly cheap ones. There are several free ones on WordPress that you can download. Just look up chat bot plugin.
Or I do like Leadferno. If you’re willing to invest a little bit, I think it’s $100 a month. That’s a really solid one where instead of it being a website chat, it will immediately turn it into a text conversation where now you guys are texting back and forth.
Texting is really the main platform that people, especially customers and prospects, prefer when talking. Obviously people don’t even really check their email anymore. I mean they do, but a lot of things go to spam. You see an email you’re not really familiar with, you just completely dismiss it.
Whereas text, I look at all my texts. I get a text, it feels important. So we should definitely implement something regarding live chat.
Don't Show Clear Pricing
What role does clear pricing play in improving website conversions?
I don’t think we need to have clear pricing. I don’t think that’s a necessity. I’ve seen tons of different pest control landing pages and I don’t think having clear pricing is a must at all.
I would say having just a clear offer instead. We don’t have to be completely transparent about all the different services we do and how expensive we are or here are three packages. XYZ cost for this.
We shouldn’t really let them determine what package they’re going to get. They should talk to us. And then we tell them what package they’re getting. We’re the experts. We prescribe. We’re the doctors. We diagnose.
No, I’m honestly not really a fan of showing the price. I don’t do that for my agency site and I don’t recommend pest control companies do that either.
But still we should have a really solid offer to grab their attention and then they contact us.
The Biggest Conversion Mistakes
What are the biggest mistakes that people make when optimizing?
Assuming they already are optimizing for conversions, I’ve mentioned a lot of them already.
Really long contact forms. Slow page speed, which we’re going to get into in another post. Not having the click to call in the corner.
Something else I’ll mention is continually asking for the conversion. We have very long landing pages that we like to build out. I think it’s 13 sections. And we will continually call them to act every three sections or so.
Maybe the first section, we will immediately call them to act. We’ll say, “Hey, are you looking for pest control in this area? Call us today.” It might be a picture and then we’ll have a contact form under that. That’s kind of section number one.
Then, okay, you might be wanting to learn more about us or just learn more about pest control, maybe how you can do it yourself. So maybe what are frequently asked questions, what is our process, what are some of the top pests within the area. And then we want to call them to act again.
And then we’ll have a few sections, then we’ll want to call them to act again.
I see some companies, they will just have a contact form at the bottom of the page and you have to scroll all the way down. Or again, that other scenario where you have to go to the contact page. Why? There’s no reason.
Because if you have slow page speed, and they finally land on your page from a good ranking or a good ad, and then they click on your contact page and it takes too long to load, or it just looks kind of clunky, whatever, just make it as easy as possible.
That’s the overall recommendation: make things as easy and frictionless as possible.
Start Optimizing Today
The bottom line is this: conversion optimization is low hanging fruit. It doesn’t cost you anything to fix these issues. You’re already paying for traffic. Make sure that traffic actually converts.
Sticky call button in the top right. Contact forms on every landing page. Reviews widgets showing social proof. Simple forms with minimal fields. Live chat for people who prefer texting. Multiple conversion opportunities throughout the page.
Make it frictionless. Make it easy. Make it impossible for people not to become customers.
Keep Learning and Growing
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