5 Contractor Locator Best Practices That Drive Decking Sales

This may seem like an uphill battle if you don’t know where to start. Fortunately, it’s doable if you hone in on one high-potential aspect of your website: your contractor locator. 

Your locator page is the all-important portal for customers to find local pros that use and install your products. With the right implementation, it can be a valuable tool to enhance the web user experience, a source of accurate, rich info on your local contractors, and a means for customers to qualify themselves as leads without ever leaving your website. 

Does your locator accomplish all of the above for your decking product consumers? If not, you’re missing out on sales. As a modern manufacturer of decking products, you’re likely looking to boost your sales online. 

Here, we’ll share 5 best practices of contractor locators that can skyrocket your sales. 

1. Use Geolocation Detection and Internal Search 

How can you connect an eager customer of decking products to a solution even faster than they thought possible? By having your website forge that connection before users have to do much at all!

One way this can happen is through geolocation detection. By implementing it on your locator page and throughout your website, your users can automatically get re-routed to the nearest professional without having to type in a city, state, or ZIP code.

Another way you can provide this seamless experience is through internal search. Let’s say a user is browsing your decking brand website, and suddenly chooses to find a local contractor. 

By having a search bar somewhere prominent on your website and your locator page, you can give users the option of simply entering their ZIP code to be taken directly to your locator page — and to a list of local pros that can help them. 

Geolocation detection and internal search are relatively small, simple additions to make to your locator’s functionality, but they can make a big difference in engaging web users who are ready to buy from your brand. 

2. Create a Superior User Experience 

When users come to your site in search of decking products, you don’t want them to be confused or frustrated. You want them to have a pleasant experience while looking for the right local contractor. 

This is the idea behind a great user experience (UX). According to some estimates, a $1 investment in UX leads to $100 in returns, representing a 9,900% ROI. Get the user experience right, and you’re more likely to see customers come back to your site for more.

Some of the hallmarks of great UX design are clean visuals, clear and straightforward directions on what the web user should do next, and helpful information presented in an easy-to-understand way.

An example of a brand that gets its locator page right in this regard is Deckorators. The decking product manufacturer has a locator that employs a pleasant design with a responsive map. 

However, the brand takes the user experience a step further. 

Before a customer makes a search, they’re informed that they can select “Certified Pro” and “Certified Elite” contractors from the listings, which are shown respectively as dark blue or gold pins on the map. This allows customers to save time by going with a Deckorator-trained and approved contractor, if they so choose.

Think of ways to make the use of your contractor locator as easy and pleasant as can be, and you’re well on the way to a sales-boosting UX design for your locator.

3. Leverage Local SEO for Organic Search Traffic

What better way for a customer to land on your decking material brand than by searching for the best decking products near them? 

It can happen! This is the magic of search engine optimization (SEO). Searchers visit 1.5 billion physical locations related to their Google searches every single month, which highlights the importance of a local SEO strategy. 

By connecting rich, locally-optimized, relevant content to your contractor locator, you’ll increase the chances of your locator turning up in everyday consumer search queries. 

For a good example of how this can be implemented, look at Fiberon’s contractor locator. 

After users enter their ZIP code to find a contractor, they’re presented with a helpful list of pros to choose from and a link to more information for each listing. 

Those links lead to pages with more details on each contractor, including the specific services provided, areas of expertise, business websites, social media links, and more, if applicable. 

As a decking materials brand looking to boost sales, you can take an important cue from this strategy: link some locally-relevant, unique content about your contractors to as many locator listings as possible. You’ll also want to use a premium locator solution with built-in support for local SEO, such as the Bullseye Contractor Locator software.

This way, you’ll serve customers who are hungry to learn more while also appealing to the search engine algorithms, which results in more high-quality web traffic.

4. Enrich Contractor Listings With Helpful, Accurate Information

Local SEO content is one way to add useful data to listings, and you can also include snippets of helpful info in the listings for each individual contractor. 

This includes information on special sales and promotions your contractors might be putting on, what their specialties are, hours of operation, what product lines they work with, or whether they’ve gone through your brand’s proprietary training and have earned “Certified” status. 

You could also use a “clickable” phone number link that instantly connects to users’ smartphones, whether they’re using a desktop computer, laptop, or are already on a mobile device.

Doing these things will build a positive customer experience. To take things up a notch, ensure that your dealer locator can integrate with Google Business Profiles (formerly known as Google My Business). That way, as contractors with Profiles update their business information, your locator automatically collects and displays it.

5. Have a Method to Generate and Follow Up With Leads 

The biggest perk of a good locator, and one that often goes unrealized, is its ability to generate leads.

A best-in-class locator solution such as Bullseye is more than capable of handling this for you. 

Locator pages powered by Bullseye can generate customer inquiry forms, which users fill out and submit both to your brand and local contractors. At that point, the user becomes a valuable lead to your business, and to whichever pro they’ve decided to talk to. 

This is powerful, because your brand is then in a position to supervise the customer’s next steps — from awareness of your brand to the consideration of their options, and finally to their decision to buy. You can have your sales reps follow up and provide helpful info on decking projects, while allowing your local pros to build the relationship further.

There’s no doubt about it: a lead capture mechanism is one of the most important aspects of a locator for increasing sales. Use a high-quality locator software that supports lead gen, like Bullseye…and watch your sales numbers change for the better!

To Boost Decking Sales, Ensure Your Contractor Locator Hits All the Marks

Today’s homeowners are savvier than ever. They want to make informed decisions about which professionals they’ll work with. 

When it comes to decking, they may already be sold on using your brand of products — but may simply need to know which local contractor is nearest, or which one they can trust the most to complete an installation to their satisfaction. 

Your contractor locator can quickly give them peace of mind in both cases. By utilizing local SEO, good UX design, accurate business information, and simple services such as geolocation detection and internal search, it’s easy to show customers the way.

If you want to implement all of the above features now, plus add powerful lead and sales-boosting capabilities to your digital stack, consider going with Bullseye.

Bullseye was built to help manufacturers increase their leads and sales. Its integrations with Google Maps and Business Profiles, its ability to create attractive contractor locator pages with detailed listings, and its sophistication in capturing lead data for follow-up make it an essential tool for your sales arsenal. 
If you’re ready to attract more decking product customers, and you’re interested in seeing how Bullseye can help you achieve that, schedule a free assessment of your current locator page today.