The Bar Every Heating Company Already Clears

Heating and cooling companies build better websites than almost every trade I audit.

I’d like about a third of that sentence back, and I’d like it back before anyone forwards it to their web designer.

The email I get every single time

Whenever a trade lands near the top, an owner writes in to tell me the number is worthless.

Two of those arrived this month. The gist never changes. Third of forty seven is lovely, and the phone still didn’t ring on Tuesday.

One of them added that he’d spent a serious amount of money on the very site I’d just complimented, which put me in an awkward spot for a day or so.

He’s right. I’d rather sit inside that objection for a while than talk around the edge of it.

What my score actually is

The number is a weighted average of ten checks, and every one of those weights is written down.

All ten are things I can test from outside your business, with no login and nobody’s permission.

Does the page open on a phone. Does it open quickly. Is the connection secure. Are there stars under your name.

Not one of them asks whether your website answers the question a homeowner arrived with.

None of them reads your prices. None of them knows whether anybody called you afterwards. My robot has never once booked a service call.

Would you hire a contractor on the ten things it can see?

So a trade can sit near the top and lose work all day long, and the score won’t so much as flinch.

What it does say, honestly

Heating and cooling lands on 76 out of 100.

Orthodontists and plastic surgeons were the only trades above it. The plumbers and electricians came out underneath, and so did every restaurant, salon and accountant I ran the same checks against.

That grade is built from the websites that opened for me. 83.9% of these businesses have a website at all, and my ten checks have nothing whatsoever to say about the rest of them.

A business that lists a Facebook page instead of a website still counts as listing one in that total, which is a generous way to count and I count it that way on purpose.

Too generous for you? Fair enough, and it would only push the grade around at the edges.

Why the objection is half right

Ten checks is a floor.

Every one of them is something a competent builder clears without being asked, and about half arrive switched on with whatever software your site runs on.

Corpus Christi tops my mobile check for that exact reason, and the theme did that part, not the owner.

Clearing a floor has never made anyone a dollar. It removes your excuses, which is worse news than it sounds, because the reason your phone is quiet is now something you can’t buy from a builder.

Are you still hoping the website is the problem? I understand the appeal. A website is a thing you can pay someone to replace on a Thursday, and the invoice feels like progress.

I have taken that money myself. A salon owner paid me for a rebuild she didn’t need, and her old site was fine before I laid a finger on it.

Why the objection is also the wrong lesson

Third of forty seven doesn’t mean the company two towns over is worse than you.

It means he passes the same checks you pass. A trade that scores this well has stopped separating anybody, because the thing that used to sort the good from the lazy is now table stakes for everyone holding a phone number.

Ten years ago I could win an argument for a client by showing that the competition’s site fell apart on a phone. I can’t do that in this trade anymore, and I miss it more than I should admit in public.

So what separates you now, on the screen where she’s deciding?

She’s comparing three heating companies at nine at night with the house going cold.

She isn’t comparing the ten things I check. She’s comparing which one told her what a system costs, which one said how fast it could get to her, and which one had already worked on her exact model.

Those three answers, and how easily she reaches them, are most of what people mean by user experience. No robot of mine can grade a single one.

I picked my own heating company that way, and the one I called had posted something the week before while the other two looked shut.

All three of those answers live in wording that a person has to sit down and write, which is why almost nobody has them, and why the ones who do get away with an ordinary looking website.

How many of those three does your first screen answer?

The number that flatters this trade most

These pages average 63 out of 100 for speed on a phone, against 58 across everything I test.

Fast is good and I’m not going to pretend otherwise.

Fast is also the easiest result in the world for a stranger to screenshot, put in an email, and sell you a rebuild off the back of.

When did one of your customers last mention how quickly your website loaded? No homeowner in the history of this trade has ever picked a contractor for it.

Your pages are quick because they’re small and your photographs are photographs, rather than a slideshow someone talked you into buying.

You didn’t earn that one and you don’t have to defend it either. Just don’t pay for it twice.

What I’d weigh instead

If I could test the three sentences a homeowner needs, I’d weight them at eighty of the hundred and throw most of my ten checks in a drawer.

I can’t. Nobody can, from outside, across thousands of businesses at once, which is exactly why the checks that survive the process are the mechanical ones.

I’ve never seen an audit of this kind without the same hole in it, mine very much included, and anyone who tells you their dashboard has closed it is selling you the dashboard.

So read that score for what it is. A statement that the plumbing under this trade’s websites is in better shape than almost anyone’s, and a total silence about everything sitting on top of the plumbing.

The heating and cooling sites I’d hold up as good mostly don’t win on my ten checks. They win on the first screen, where a stranger finds a price range, an honest response time, and a photograph of the actual crew.

When someone hires me to build one of these, the ten checks take a morning. The three sentences take three weeks, because they need the owner, and the owner is on a roof.

You can still have the ten run on your site for nothing if you want them. Mine will come back mostly green, I’ll tell you so, and you’ll have paid nothing to find out that your problem was never the code.

Do this tonight

Open your own homepage on a phone that has never been to it before.

Read the first screen out loud, and count how many of her three questions it answers before your thumb has to scroll: what will this cost, how soon can you be here, and have you worked on my system before.