How our ‘About’ page generates us 12 leads per week.
By Steven Herd
This week, I have received new landlord leads and new vendor leads, addressed directly to me, from our website.
As CEO and Founder of MyLondonHome, I wanted to ensure that I was different than the sometimes typical ‘elusive’ business owner.
Who are you hiding from?
Most CEO’s and MD’s don’t receive emails from clients, new or old let alone emails from buyers or tenants. They have people for this along with a complaints procedure that they do not engage in.
Why? Because they are not publically available. They hide. Often behind a bland and anonymous ‘About’ page that does nothing to share the passion as to why the business was set up in the first place. The web company has probably said this works or maybe they never got around to finishing the text.
I have noticed a growing trend for our industry to remain anonymous, whereas other industries are going the other way. Maybe estate agency business owners and directors feel by having a boring generic ‘About’ page, they will make themselves appear corporate or larger than they are.
I have an issue with this. It doesn’t work. It makes you look bad, really bad.
A business local to my family home has been serving the local community for 90+ years having been established since 1928. It is THE place to go for serious brands and oddly, school uniforms. My 11 daughter was starting at ‘big’ school this year so off we went, I headed downstairs to buy a new suit, my wife and daughter went upstairs. A really long story cut short is my daughter’s new blazer needed adjusting, they promised to have this delivered on time, ready for her first day. Fast forward a few weeks and it was looking like they were going to fail…
My wife, who called and was fobbed off by staff, was able to contact the business owner directly from their website and had the issue resolved in under 2 hours – with a bottle of bubbly thrown in. A business owner with 5 branches, and over 100 staff but was still contactable personally.
A real WOW moment in customer service that has bought our continued customer loyalty – we remain passionate advocates of this business.
Can this happen with your business? I doubt it. Not if you’re not visible.
This is why with our new website launched 7 months ago, we wanted our people to be at the heart of our business and contactable by our clients. Not have them hiding in the back office. Our ‘About’ page is visited in 30% of occasions and has resulted in an 8% increase in leads direct to the team. The feedback from clients has been outstanding as all feel at ease that we are all just a direct call away.
Our new website also won the Gold award at the prestigious Lettings Agency of the Year Awards this year.
If you are serious about growing your business or even remaining in business then be visible, in fact, make all of your senior team visible and contactable from your website, it IS what your clients and customers want and it is the BEST barometer for you as to how you are really doing in delivering the ultimate customer experience.
Let’s see an end to generic ‘About’ pages and let’s be proud to be the public faces of our businesses.
After all, if you can’t handle customer and client feedback you probably shouldn’t be steering the ship… Just a thought.
Steven Herd
