Building a transformative website experience

By Emma Peterson. 

Ken Kelly shares four key ways to boost your business’ web presence. 

In a new episode of Roofing Road Trips®, Karen Edwards sat down with Ken Kelly, former president of Kelly Roofing and a Duro-Last partner, to talk about why it's so important for contractors to integrate technology into their daily operations. With over three decades of experience in the roofing industry, currently serving as president for his own consulting group and a past winner of the Roofing Technology Think Tank’s Innovator of the Year award, Ken is an excellent source for such wisdom.  

 When you hear about business growth and technology, you probably think of the services out there that offer tools like SEO assistance and lead generation. And while these are very helpful, Ken usually starts his students a little closer to home – with refining their websites. Ken explained, “Today, even if you're door knocking, a potential customer is going to check you out online. They want to know what your web presence looks like.”  

To help contractors navigate building from scratch or reviewing their existing website, Ken shared a few quick changes that can elevate a brand’s web presence:  

• Offer cookies: One of the first things you should do when reviewing your web presence is to make sure you have a GDPR plugin, which manages user data and permissions. Ken explained, “This is the rule about letting consumers know about data usage, the plugin is what creates that little tag on the bottom of each website that says, ‘do you accept this site using cookies?’” While this might seem like a small thing, having it makes a huge difference for how major search engines rank your site.  
• Make it accessible: You should also look into the accessibility of your site. This means making sure visually impaired individuals can press a button and have the website read to them or check to make sure that your site is still legible if the viewer is color blind. Not only is this important in making sure you are reaching a wider client market; it also changes how your website ranks on search engines. Ken explained, “Search engines like Google and Bing do look at this on websites. And if it isn’t super accessible, they are going to assume that their potential customers who are using the search engines are not going to get the best results or experience and you’re not going to rank very high in search results because of it.” 
• Check your security: The simplest thing you can do to manage your website security is to make sure it has “https” in the front of the URL. Ken explained, “If it doesn’t have ‘https,’ specifically the ‘s’ on the end, that website is considered unsecure, and those big search engines won’t rank you high. To fix this, you can just spend just a couple of dollars to take an existing site and convert it into a secure site.” 
• Prepare for mobile users: Recently, there has been a shift in internet usage and over 50% of users are now browsing websites from their mobile devices. This means two things for contractors when it comes to developing their pages. One, you should make sure that your page adapts to smaller screen formats. This is called a “responsive design.” Second, make sure it is optimized to load quickly. Ken elaborated, “Because mobile users aren’t necessarily on wireless internet connections, search engines have begun to favor sites that are light when it comes to its content. This is because lighter content sites tend to load faster and give searchers a better user experience.”  

These suggestions are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to optimizing a website, so it's easier for both potential and returning customers to find you. However, they are a great place for contractors to start their tech journey! 

For next steps and to learn more about using technology to grow your business, listen to the rest of the podcast.