Hardly any of this is about looks. It is whether a stranger can tell you will actually come to their street, and what it runs.
Say plainly that you come into the city
This is the first question a Detroit homeowner has, and most sites never answer it. A lot of contractors will not cross Eight Mile going south and everybody here knows it.
If you work the city, say so in the first screenful, and name the neighborhoods. If you only do the suburbs, say that too. Either way you stop wasting everyone's time.
Talk about steam heat and old boilers
A great many houses here still run steam or hot water off equipment nobody has made parts for in decades, and every October somebody finds out theirs will not fire.
If you service them, say what you can still get parts for and what you cannot. It is the most valuable paragraph on a heating site in this city and hardly anyone writes it.
Explain what you do about basement backups
Combined sewers mean a hard rain can put water into a basement through the floor drain rather than the walls, and the fix is nothing like waterproofing.
Say how you tell one from the other, what a backwater valve does, and roughly what it costs. Homeowners who have been given three different stories will book the one who explained it.
Say how you handle a house that has been empty
Rehab work here often starts with a building that has been standing open. Stripped plumbing, frozen and split lines, a roof that has been leaking for years, wiring gone.
A page that walks through what gets assessed first, and in what order the work has to happen, brings in the buyers who are about to spend serious money.
Put the licence number in the footer
Michigan licenses residential builders, and after a bad winter brings out-of-town crews around, people start checking.
Footer of every page rather than an about page nobody opens. It is the cheapest way to separate a real boiler and steam heat outfit from the outfit that will not come south of the freeway.
Say which languages you actually work in
Spanish through Southwest Detroit, Arabic across the west side, and Bengali in Banglatown all represent real, concentrated customer bases.
An automatic overlay does not count. Written, indexed pages in the languages somebody at the boiler and steam heat outfit genuinely speaks.
Photograph houses that look like theirs
A stock kitchen says nothing. A boiler replacement in a 1920s brick bungalow, with the same basement stairs in shot, tells a homeowner you have done their exact job on their exact street.
Phone photographs are fine. Work around a January cold snap rather than against it, and keep the frames that show steam boilers finished rather than halfway apart.
Put a figure next to each service
Leaving the price off reads as expensive, and here it also reads as somebody who is going to look at the address before quoting.
Publish a band and the phone rings less and converts more, because whoever calls about a steam boiler has already accepted roughly what it costs.
Keep the listing and the site telling one story
Hours, coverage, categories, and phone number have to agree between the map listing and the site. Where they conflict, somebody in Corktown believes the listing.
Check it after snow emergencies, when what you can actually promise is nothing like the printed hours.
