mine

 

Here are a few that I had booked-marked from when I did my re-design over the winter. I particularity liked the layout/design of the following and used elements in my own website

http://aspenlawn.com/

https://www.xtremelawncare.com/

http://www.quality-care.com/

 

I don't think you're taking the best approach to deciding what you want your site to be. Design is ridiculously subjective. On here, when someone says, "Review my site.", we see everything from "Dumpster fire!" to "Looks amazing!"...for the same site.

Speaking for myself, we go through the effort of deciding design based on target market, the competition, and what we know works. If we went by "the best website I've seen", it doesn't mean much and could easily be counterproductive.

This might help: We look at markets and target customer demographics and go from there. We'll intentionally build "meh", or we'll go boutique high end, or somewhere in the middle. The "meh" sites actually take us more work and effort than high end awesomeness.

 

My guy says he's can build whatever I want and to send him a show to look at for inspiration.

The best lawn care sites are the ones that deliver the best results for your business, period. To know what those are without looking at their analytics is going to be tough without intricate knowledge of Internet Marketing.

When a web guy/gal says they'll build whatever you want and asks you for inspiration who holds the accountability for it's poor performance if it doesn't do well?

What they should be doing is telling you exactly what you need in a site and online presence to reach your online marketing goals.

We always attentively listen to what our customers "want" in a website or how they want it to look. Usually the common denominator with everyone when you get down to brass tacks is they just want something that "works" and they don't want to blow their money (some contractors will build 2-3 sites or more before they learn!) So, with that in mind we'll show them the type of site they actually need and what it's going to take to get the results they want.

 

I agree with him ^^^^^

I do know though sometimes you do need some inspiration. If a web designer is not familiar with landscape companies - he may need some references...

I really like our website... check is out!

http://www.haluchslandscapes.com

 

What is your budget?

 

My first suggestion is to check google... Type in Lawn Care in then type your location or lawn care near me. This will give you an idea of your competitors. Do that for a couple of cities. Then mark down what you see in common. Things you like etc.

 

I'm a little biased, but we've been having great success with out site. http://www.dfwlandscapesystems.com

What's important is that it's easy to use, mobile friendly and has a lead capture ability right up front that folks can easily get in contact with you if they're not ready to pick up the phone. Best of luck.

 

ZLawn,

That Aspen site is legit....I think that I'm going to steal some of their code for ours, I really like the how clean it is.

Jonny are you asking about layout and design?


BR,

~TW

 

yea... I like Aspenlawn.com - I like mine, but I had to work within a budget. RD Construction, http://rdcm.com/en/ is an award winning website design. Gibbs Landscaping, http://gibbslandscape.com/ also another award winning design by Dynamix.... but their prices start at $10,000!!!!

 

Most of the HTML code is available to work with (Not "template", but the actual site code)...I'm not personally good enough to really take advantage of it but...I'm sure that you do know someone who can. Not to steal "it" but the overall design structure and functionality can be real helpful and then you can go from there. The layout is really what sets those sites apart = my love for that Aspen site.

You are not even a lawn care co. You're pimping these little rank and rent sites. Further you're Google Places address is a policy violation that will get your listing shut down and you're reviews are all faked.

For anyone reading here is the fake review proof:

https://plus.google.com/+SusanVincent/reviews

Take a look at all the reviews for lawn care co's and tow truck companies lol... This is review fraud on a large scale.

Good eye ...I had glanced over his post!

Yuletide!

~TW

 

I'm a little biased, but we've been having great success with out site.

You are not even a lawn care co. You're pimping these little rank and rent sites. Further you're Google Places address is a policy violation that will get your listing shut down and you're reviews are all faked.

For anyone reading here is the fake review proof:

https://plus.google.com/+SusanVincent/reviews

Take a look at all the reviews for lawn care co's and tow truck companies lol... This is review fraud on a large scale.

 

Yea... you won't find any decent professional looking sites designed by template. A lot of decent developers are using Wordpress to build pretty decent websites within budget. If your webguy is recommending a template site from Godaddy or other, then he's not much of a professional.

Steve
theyardguysllc.com

 

Read the page below, it will change your approach to website design. I have done many websites for other people and myself, in the past my approach was attempting to replicate sites that I have seen that I liked. While not a bad idea (I have created some attractive sites), you can't rely on this entirely. What is more important, a website that is attractive, or a website that CONVERTS. Your website needs to be a funnel- once someone visits your site there is a high percentage chance they become a customer! I am not an expert on the matter, but my approach to website design for my own site is that everything has a purpose and it needs to be obvious to the viewer. Explain the benefits clearly, explain why your service offers them value, support your claims with testimonials and pictures, and present them with a signup form. Again, I am not claiming to be an expert, but this is just my 2 cents.

https://moz.com/blog/most-entertaining-guide-to-landing-page-optimization

 

I agree with you and would like to see it translated to real life. Would you mind sharing your website so I can get a better handle of implementing?

 

I am not going to share my site, I am not full of it, just would rather remain private.

But here is an example of a site that demonstrates some of the strategies....I will post more if I find one.

https://lawnlove.com/

 

No problem

 

Here are some simple design elements for website conversions...

https://vwo.com/blog/design-principles-increase-conversions/

Here is a great company in my area that I follow, they just updated their site and seem to have a lot of the design elements

https://www.wheats.com/

Again, i'm not claiming to be an expert, I just found this information to make a lot of sense

 

I really like the Wheats site!

 

Yeah, they are top notch. They seem to redo it every offseason so I always check it out.

 

As a local business, the biggest thing you want to do is have a crystal clear call-to-action. Most of my clients prefer phone calls over web leads but whatever you prefer stick with that and drive your web traffic to that.

 

As I look through people's submissions, there is a clear disconnect between what is legitimately good, and converts, versus what people think is a great site. Some of the sites are either straight off the shelf of, or heavily influenced by, Themeforest.

That's not a criticism. It's just interesting to see a cluster, instead of randomly hearing it from people when I ask, "List 5 sites you really like, regardless of industry.". Slideshows, slide-ins, page animations, and other resource-hogging whizbangs are just as popular as they are horribly implemented and misused.

 

I think I recently read something about the autoplaying videos on website homepages (background gif's, people mowing, etc.) cutting down on conversion rates (slower load times, more people changing their minds because it's taking too long to load, etc.)...Just because it looks flashy doesn't mean that it will bring more customers in. Finding a designer that understands the sales process, and business goals is really important!!

 

Tony, can you re-word what you were saying? I am confused.

 

I was afraid I'd have to clarify that. I know me, so this is probably going to get wordy and might even meander 1 or 12 times. lol

Short answer... Some of the "best websites" submitted are junk.

(Don't anyone get paranoid that I'm referring to their own site they might have posted. I didn't pay attention on who owns what during my run through and will probably just talk about one that I know isn't a lawnsiter's site.)

Long answer...

An analogy might be that Joe Homeowner, can look at a Walmart 99 cent block retaining wall and say, "Yep, that's exactly what I want. Awesome!", whereas you, the landscape pro, will look at Joe Homeowner and say, "Right, I get why you think that, but here's why that's a horrible idea.". With some of the linked sites, I think you'd be hard-pressed to find legit web marketing folks who will agree with the submissions.

In a sampling of those sites, I'm seeing terrible execution of both front end design and the underlying technology used, but they have the same commonality: "They're overly tech'y.", which is what i mean when I say "whizbangs for the sake of whizbangs". Tech for the sake of tech tends to not go well.

I've had the following conversation dozens of times:

Me: "Why does that paragraph about Aeration fly in from the left?"
Bob's Lawn Care: "Because it looks really cool."
Me: "How does that sell for you? Does your visitor like it? Does it work on all browsers and devices?"
Bob's Lawn Care: "It also makes a whistling sound when it comes in."​

When you scroll down a web page and content flies in from the side, you might look at it and thing, "Damn, that's cool.", whereas some of us look at it and think, "Gross, how much code was used to make something that visitors don't actually like, find useful, or even care whatsoever about? Now I have to see if it works on my phone, too.". There's a reason you see those kind of animations and whatnot available via pre-made templates at ThemeForest, but rarely will you see the methods used by legit web agencies. They sell to people that think it looks cool, whereas a pro "should" have your best interest in mind and apply what they know works.

One of my favorite exercises is to have people visit sites with serious web budgets and see what tech they do and don't apply to a site. When you go to Amazon or Apple, two companies that solely exist to sell you things ASAP, do you see content or products flying in from all directions? Do you see background videos running for no apparent reason? Do you see anything to distract you from reading about the offering? Do you see hard to read fonts? Do you see pages of white text (or, God forbid, "lawn care green" text) on a black background? Use other company's marketing budget to your advantage. There are plenty of lawn and landscape companies out there that can be leveraged like this for something more apples to apples.

So, howabout a deep'ish dive on one of the linked sites?

One submission that is well-liked, is a bloated, visual mess, with a homepage that's still trying to load on my cellphone and the desktop version pushing 10mb of useless video, over 15.7 seconds, into my browser. Even their ubiquitous "lawn care" service page takes 15.2 seconds and is 8.53mb. I even had to double check that one. Turns out that the web agency didn't optimize images, so what looks to be a couple of mid-size photos are actually 4.8mb and 1.9mb, respectively. And now I know why my phone hates the site. lol I'd guess each page on the site probably faces the same issues.

In addition to that, the typography used makes it a chore for "the typical" lawn care demographic to read. Small, italicized font and no paragraph breaks? I guess I'd buy their services if I could actually read about their services. I will say, however, that while oversized, I do like that site's quote estimate form. It's very nicely done.

When I look at the agency that built that particular site, I see that video backgrounds are "their thing". The agency's own web site is littered with background video galore. I think I even just got motion sick from it... But, it comes down to that "What's the purpose of it?" thing? How does a background video of a looping handshake help me when I'm trying to focus on reading super tiny text about the benefits of grub control?

Maybe it's just me. Design is subjective, you know. Lead gen, however, is quantifiable. From my view, we generate better leads when people can easily navigate a web site and be sold on what they see and learn. Usability studies have been backing that up since the olden days of the 90's when Jakob Nielsen first started writing on the subject, as well as that magical time when the <blink> html tag was finally deprecated.

Whew... Anyone mind if I tighten that up a bit, maybe extend it, and turn it into a very long blog post?

Questions or clarifications, just yell.*

*Unless you're from the agency that built that awful site. There is no defense.

 

I think he is saying:

Many of the sites posted as good examples are flashy, but not effective. Attractive but technically ugly.

Check out the load time on a site with a huge slider and multiple animations. My Squarepace (not known for speed) site loads in 1-1.5 seconds. Many of my competitors are at a second or under. One of the sites listed above clocks in at over 5 seconds! This matters- it may not rank well, and almost certainly won't convert as well as it should.

The original question is a great one. The problem is that there are less than 10 people on this forum that know how to identify a site that is a true marketing tool.

And honestly, in this industry, there are sooooo few good sites. But there are things to be learned from almost any site... you can always be a bad example

 

I think he is saying:

Many of the sites posted as good examples are flashy, but not effective. Attractive but technically ugly.

Who says those sites are not effective? For all intents and purposes, everyone uses Wordpress that can be realitively easily "optimized" for page speed. And while page speed is important for experience and SEO, a site that takes 2 seconds to load is probably the least of some of these peoples worries when it comes to SEO.

 

Oops, he beat me to it

 

Ha! You know it takes me awhile to get my full ramble on, Ben.

I like your answer better than mine.

 

[QUOTE="
For instance, let's take Aspen's site. Say they're doing 10 leads a day through their site. Do I think they're leaving potential leads on the table and could be doing 12? Yep.[/QUOTE]

Ok, then be specific how.

 

And be specific how the technical side (because that is what you have been talking about), not the design side, would increase conversions.

 

Seems a bit demanding, no?

I've discussed both the technical and design side and they go hand in hand. You can't have a poorly executed site with a giant video loading in the background, which is a design choice, without a boat load of tech to support fulfilling that desire. You won't likely have content that flies in on scroll without a script and a bunch of code to handle it.

Assuming half of Aspen's traffic is via mobile, is your assertion that simply cleaning up extraneous tech and load times (their phone site largely loads the same as the desktop) will not increase conversions?

Let's try to apples to apples, which isn't necessarily an easy task. Pretend these two versions of Aspen's site are, visually, largely the same:

Site 1: It takes someone 32.1 seconds and 8.54mb to load Aspen's current lawn fert page on their phone.

Site 2: It takes someone 4.2 seconds and 452k to load Aspen's properly built lawn fert page on their phone.

Do you honestly think Site 2 will not do better with conversion than Site 1? We track that kind of data. I've never seen implemented improvements not be just that...improvements. There's a reason A/B testing exists.

Now, if I were to make one design tweak that would assuredly work in Aspen's conversion favor, it would be to fix the content font issues. Sometimes, it's the simplest things. Paragraphs of italicized, 14px font on a high res screen? My 65 yr old Mom isn't reading that, let alone my younger eyes. If I can't read it, you can't sell me it.

 

Who says hose sites are not effective? For all intents and purposes, everyone uses Wordpress that can be realitively easily "optimized" for page speed.

The only way to tell the effectiveness of a website with 100% certainty is when you're in control of it or when you've split-tested and tracked hundreds of different high-ranking websites and generated thousands of leads in the local services arena... At that point making comments on the effectiveness of someone else's website is quite easy.