HVAC Website Design

HVAC Case Study – HVAC Homepage Before

First Impressions Matter

As you can see the website was in need of a redesign. The design, products, and messaging were all outdated and unwelcoming. In this current economy think of your website as your first impression and in business first impressions matter!

A properly designed website can tell a user that a company is a credible, welcoming, and high quality. A poorly designed, outdated website, however, can impart the opposite message. In the user’s mind, they may think, If they don’t care how their website looks how can I trust them with my project?

The owner of this site knew that his homepage needed to be redesigned. He wanted a clean, modern design that would be user-friendly and would increase conversions. With those things in mind, we got to work analyzing his competitor’s websites and looking at designs from some of the industry leaders in the HVAC industry. 

HVAC Web Design Homepage: After

I do want to mention that the site has not gone live yet as we are still waiting for the client to tweak some of the content and images but all in all we think it is a large improvement on what they had before. 

Let’s go through each section and talk about the design and copy in depth. 

Hero Image

A hero image is a large banner image and is generally placed front and center. It is often the first visual element a user sees on a site. We wanted the user to see an image of a happy family inside their home and have a simple call to action button, “Request Service”. 

You will also notice that we have added call-to-action buttons throughout the site. We have three CTA buttons towards the top, four if you count the contact button in the menu. From the start, you want to make it easy for a potential customer to contact you.

About and Coupon Section

After viewing many of the top competitor sites we saw that they were all offering coupons on their site and placing them in prominent places. We added the coupon section to the right to make it easy for a user to request service and receive a coupon. As you can see we made it to that the user can toggle between installation and repair depending on what service they need.

To the left, you have a brief description of the company. In that section, we are hoping to build trust with the user quickly. We talk about how long they have been in service, and that they are certified, budget-friendly, and family-owned. The user gets a lot of information in a few short sentences. 

The Process

We are big fans of Donald Miller and his book Story Brand. In his book, he teaches his readers how to connect with their customers and grow their businesses. This section was born out of reading a blog post about giving your users a clear look at the process. The blog post is titled, How to Motivate Reluctant Customers Faster with one Simple Tactic.

In the blog post, they talk about how a good process section can do two things:

• “It will clarify how somebody can do business with us.”
• “It can remove the sense of risk somebody might have if they’re considering investing in our products or services.”

I’m not sure about you but for me seeing a simple plan laid out in front of me helps to calm my nerves. From the start a user will know how to reach out to them, that they care about their budget, they stand behind their work, and that the user can relax.

I know from personal experience how stressful having an air conditioner or furnace fail can be for a family. Your family is hot or cold and people start to get irritable. At that moment all I want is for someone to assure me that I can relax and that my problem is going to be taken care of. I think this section will do a good job of quickly calming a user’s nerves.

What Can We Help you With 

In this section, we simply wanted to list out the services that our client offers and link to his internal pages where the user can find out more information.

Building Trust

The rest of the website is all about building trust. We want to reiterate that our clients are quick and responsive, family-owned, certified, and care about the details, etc.

Trust Badges

It is okay to brag about yourself from time to time. You want to tell your customers what sets you apart from the competition. Let your clients know that you are certified, insured, accredited, etc. This client, is BBB accredited, a preferred Bryant supplier, and has many certifications. We added the BBB and Bryant trust badge. We are still waiting on the certifications to fill out that section.

Reviews

We also wanted to bring in some social proof. As marketers, we use social proof in conversion rate optimization to ease the minds of customers. According to research done by Brightlocal, 91% of 18-34-year-olds trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations. Another study by Podium found that 93% of consumers say online reviews impact their purchasing decisions.

The reviews we added to the site mention that his prices are fair and honest and that they are willing to go above and beyond for their clients.  

Meet the Team

In this section, you have the happy team working together on a rooftop. The copy talks about how they want to have customers for life and that they are always honest and helpful. The client wanted his visitors to know that they are a small, family-run business and this section makes that very clear. I think making it known that a business is family-owned can be a great idea.

It is not always the case but many times when we think of a large corporation we think about inflated marketing costs that get pushed onto the customers, fast and sloppy service and cold customer service. A family-run business, on the other hand, can feel more trustworthy, authentic, caring, and affordable.