HareArchContact

Electrical contractor, domestic and commercial

Quote requests come in with the job, the postcode and a photo

A family firm with a full diary and a website that did nothing for the quiet weeks. It listed every service in a sentence, hid the contact form on a phone and had a Google profile pointing at the wrong places.

The situation

A full diary, and nothing to fill the quiet weeks

The firm is a family electrical contractor working on houses and small commercial premises around Maidenhead. Almost all its work arrived by word of mouth. A neighbour recommended them, a landlord passed the number on, a builder wanted an electrician he trusted. That kept the diary full for most of the year.

Then a slow month would come round and there was nothing new to fill it, because nobody outside the family's circle was finding them. The website was one page that listed rewires, consumer units, EV chargers and landlord inspections in a single sentence. The contact form sat low on that page, and on a phone most people never reached it.

The Google profile made things worse. Its service area and categories did not match the towns the firm actually drove to, so it rarely appeared in searches from the places where the work was. Those who did find it landed on a page that could not say whether the firm did the job they had in mind.

How people looked for an electrician

  • The homeowner with a fault

    Searches on a phone, often after something has tripped, and rings whoever looks nearest and most likely to answer.

  • The landlord with paperwork due

    Wants an inspection arranged without a long conversation, and checks the page to see what the visit covers.

  • The new electric car owner

    Wants to know whether a charger can go on their wall and what the job involves before anyone visits.

What we did

Pages for the jobs, a better form and a profile that agrees

  • A page for each main job

    Rewires, consumer units, EV chargers and landlord inspections each have a page of their own, covering who the job suits, what happens on the day and what paperwork the customer is left with. The detail came from the electricians, who know which questions come up on the doorstep.

  • A quote form that asks the right things

    The form asks for the type of job, the postcode and a photograph. A picture of a consumer unit, or of the wall where a charger will go, tells an electrician more than a paragraph of description, and the postcode shows at once whether the job is in reach.

  • A call button that stays in reach

    On a phone, a button for calling stays at the bottom of every page. For a fault that cannot wait, a call is what people want, and they should not have to hunt for the number.

  • A profile that matches the towns they cover

    The Google Business Profile now carries the categories that describe the work and a service area limited to the towns the firm really drives to. It agrees with the site, down to the wording of the services.

  • Reviews, asked for within Google's rules

    After each job the customer gets a direct link to leave a review. Everyone is asked, nothing is offered in return, and every review, kind or otherwise, gets a reply.

The profile work follows the method on the local SEO page, and the site was built the way the web design page describes, quick on a phone and easy for the family to update.

What changed

The first call becomes a useful one

  • Each main service has its own page, written around the questions customers ask before they ring.

  • The quote form asks for the job type, postcode and a photo, so the first call is a useful one.

  • The Google Business Profile matches the site and turns up for searches in the towns they actually cover.

Local search moves slowly, over weeks and months, so the first sign is usually the enquiry itself. A message that names the job, gives a postcode and carries a photograph is already half a quote.

Keep reading

More on winning local work

About this study

This is an anonymised composite drawn from the kinds of trade projects the studio takes on, with the details changed and no real client named. Lowmead Electrical, the business shown in the design at the top of the page, is fictional. The work page explains how we handle composites, and real case studies will replace this one as clients agree to be named.

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