Annual Cost: $15,540

Sanders’ Take: We want customers to know we truly care, and that we’ll never take them for granted. It’s our intention to earn their trust and create a lifelong relationship. We work hard to provide sensible solution options with integrity. The reviews on our website are real comments from real customers. We do not preview, steer, or edit those reviews — we earn them. It’s important for us to exceed customers’ expectations on every call, every day.

Professional Opinion: Overall score: 80

I’d give Sandershomeservices.com an 80/100. It’s a mobile-ready, professionally designed site with a high degree of trust and easy-to-find information that is, in most cases, exactly where you’d expect to find it. Showing multiple images of the company’s service vehicles, mention of mainstream advertising, and third-party badges (ACCA, etc.) give the site a high degree of trust.

For findability, Sanders Home Services earns a 70. You can have the best-looking website in the world, but it won’t generate much value if prospects can’t find it on the first page of Google for keyword phrases related to the services you provide. I reviewed sandershomeservices.com’s rankings on Google for more than 650 keyword phrases, and the website ranks on the first page of Google just 23 times. This indicates a tremendous opportunity to optimize the site. HVACR companies that invest heavily in SEO and content marketing typically have considerably more organic visibility. At a minimum, Sanders Home Services should create multiple XML sitemaps and initiate a content marketing and outreach campaign.

I would give Sanders Home Services an 82 for accessibility and content. Although sandershomeservices.com only has about 60 pages, every page on the site I reviewed was well designed and laid out. Through color and graphic design, Sanders Home Service has done an excellent job making the pages of the site easy to read and navigate. The website also utilizes a responsive design, so it automatically adjusts to look great from any device. The site could use some additional adjustments to improve its speed.

Sandershomeservices.com receives an identity and trust score of 88. One of the quickest ways to build trust with consumers is to show them a truck they’ve seen around town. Sanders Home Services nails this with its homepage banner. Not only does the banner show multiple trucks, but it also shows the company’s branded, physical location — another trust builder. The site also includes a link to customer reviews; although, clicking on this button generates a pop-up that may get blocked by some browsers or closed by some visitors. Sandershomeservices.com mentions the company’s radio ads, and I’d classify mainstream advertising as another general trust builder. The website could earn additional points by bringing some of its third-party trust builders higher on the page and also by putting widely-recognized logos like Visa and MasterCard by the phone number.

— Ben Landers, president and CEO, Blue Corona

Publication date: 3/30/2015

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