#200 How E-Commerce is Transforming the Trades and Home Services Industry

Now, we told the folks from Contractor Commerce that we were gonna talk about it today, and they helped out by giving us a ridiculous promo. They're giving 60 days free if you click on the link below. So huge savings, awesome thing to just test out. In the episode, Jesse and I unpack what the first couple months has looked like, how we're using it, how we're thinking about it, how we're testing it. Uh, and it was a great conversation. So head over to contractyourcommerce.com/ownedandoperated to claim your 60 free days. Besides that, enjoy the show. Welcome back to Owned and Operated. Today on the show, we have Jesse from Wilson. Welcome to the show.

Oh, happy to be here.

Yeah, this is fun. We had, uh, we had Lori on earlier this week. We're hoping to like over time bring more and more people on. I think it'll be kind of fun to sort of like talk about what we're doing. So today we're talking about e-commerce and the trades, which is something we've been messing around with for 3 months, 4 months?

About 2 and a half, I think. Yeah.

So how about you start us off with like what we've been doing, like initial thoughts?

Sure. So we, I feel like e-commerce has more or less been on our radar for like a year or more.

I feel like most contractors think they need to do it.

Yeah.

Whether or not they do is maybe arguable, but they think they need to.

Yeah, it's been on our brain for a while. We just didn't really have the capacity or like an easy way to kind of dip our toes into it. And then about 2 and a half months ago, we signed on with Contractor Commerce and their platform. And what they, what they kind of offer is sort of an out-of-the-box solution. for e-com, which works really well with our current context because there's not a lot of upfront legwork on our end. Currently, we're only using it for online estimates, specifically for any kind of large equipment piece.

Yeah. Like water heater.

Water heaters, home generators, HVAC, AC, furnace. I think those are currently the 3 that we do. You can certainly do more, but those are the 3 we chose to start out with. And more or less the way it works currently is there's a button on our website or landing page, Mm-hmm. and usually just with a call to action about a free, free estimate, free online estimate, instant estimate, that kind of thing. The visitor clicks on it and then it just kind of walks them through what I would call a quiz, which is what I think a lot of traditional e-com sites would call it. And it basically just asks you a series of qualifying questions. One of the first ones being, where are you? So make sure they're in our service area. But then it'll, it'll ask if it's HVAC, they're going to ask for some of the data about your house. How big is the square footage?

What type of heat?

What type of heat are you looking for? Where's the unit? That kind of thing. So they kind of just click the multiple choice and walk through this quiz. And then at the end, based on the data that the customer supplied, it'll give you or give the customer a range of options.

Mm-hmm.

Those options are sort of preset by us. And Contractor Commerce allows a certain logic to where if they answer this, they'll be shown that. And we're currently doing 3 choices, I believe. And each choice will be instead of the full price of the equipment, we just have an as low as per month type thing. And yeah, so we've been doing that for about 2 and a half months. That's not the only thing that Contractor Commerce does.

What else do they do?

They also have the ability to sell equipment, I believe, on Their platform.

Like direct, like swipe a card?

Correct. Yeah, they can process payments. They also have the ability to— something that I think they do with a lot of contractors is they'll set up a filter for HVAC subscription type thing. And then they'll—

Oh, I think that's how they started.

Yeah, I think—

I don't think we're doing that though. No.

And they also— the only other thing they'll do is, um, memberships. If you have an annual membership, allow you to sell those through their portal, essentially.

Yeah, I think, you know, I saw this company years ago, they're local. I'm trying to remember their name, but they had like a store built in, which I thought was kind of interesting. I think I like the transparency part. I don't know that it, I don't know that customers have cared that much. We do get leads, like it does drive traffic, which I guess we could talk about. But I remember thinking like 10 years ago, like, oh man, this is cool. Like they have their pricing out there, but I don't know that anybody looks. And I think with AI, I think it becomes even less of a thing. And have we figured out how the shop interfaces with like ChatGPT?

In what way exactly? As far as like a generative experience type thing?

Yeah, like, well, will it— will ChatGPT like give us credit for having an additionally like helpful site?

Oh, you're talking on the— okay, as far as like, uh, optimization to appear in AI results.

You know, an AEO or whatever? Is that what they're calling it?

It's got a couple, yeah, a couple names these days. I don't know if like specifically having a e-com portal wouldn't necessarily help a home service company rank in AI currently. And I don't know that anyone has the authoritative, definitive, uh, kind of definition of what will get you to show up in AI searches because it's still very new. It's very—

Yeah.

Um, AI is also generative, so where it may not show you the same thing twice and the models are different, that kind of thing. But As far as showing up in AI, a lot of the initial research, and it's very initial, essentially what I've kind of gleaned is that it's very close to sort of the same best practices for SEO. And that's because AI is pulling from the internet and—

It's just mass searching.

The places that it pulls from, it's, it's going to look for authority ratings, reviews, listings from other from anything that would be approved or like an authoritative database on local businesses, that kind of thing. Certainly any kind of mentions from high authority news websites or anything like that.

Right.

So a lot of the sort of current theories for what, you know, helps you show up in AI is very similar to SEO right now.

Yeah.

Could very much change in the future, but—

No, that tracks. Okay. So we put, we put this prebuilt e-commerce thing on our website. What happened?

So the, the first month we, we very much, very literally just threw it on our website. Didn't really push it at all. And now I would say that was like the phase 1, which was just get it up and running. Let's see what it does. And in that month's time, I think we got around 50 or so, we'll call them leads that came in.

And leads is kind of like relative.

Yeah. So, um, I would call them leads once they're in Contractor Commerce and we get their information that they submit.

Yeah. I don't— they interfaced with the quiz.

Yeah. I don't know that I would call them— I would call Contractor Commerce a lead gen source. Like if you're thinking about an Angie or an Upwork, these aren't necessarily new leads at this point. It's just someone was already on the website anyways. Most probably they were.

This is like a capture tool.

Correct.

Like how do we convert them?

But so yeah, we saw around 50 that just clicked the button essentially and filled out the quiz. Of that, we had about 30% result in a booked job. And then there was—

So was that 16, 17?

Thereabout, I think.

Yeah, that feels— I mean, that feels pretty good.

It's— if you're comparing it to like a form lead from a lead aggregator, that would be really good.

If you're— do we know, like, do we know what our leads off our website was the previous month? Because that would be the measurement, I guess. Like, did we access more leads? Because we probably didn't have zero leads the month before. Like, we probably had like some amount.

Yeah, and that, and that, I think that's the right way to look at it. And I, I would probably look at sales first, like website sales, mainly because we have the phone—

Like, did it jump?

We have the phone number on the website. So like, if you're counting the calls as a lead, then yes. But what I would like to see is a jump in website sales from this new— ideally this qualifies the people Better.

Yeah.

And hopefully incentivizes them too.

Yeah. Yeah. They feel like they have more decisions in their buying journey or like more information in their buying journey.

Yep. Another thing we saw is a smaller portion. I forget the number exactly, but we would see this thing where they would, they'd fill out the journey before or after they booked a totally different job.

Yeah. Yeah.

And I think my guess is that most likely they were already coming to our website for the job that they booked. They saw the book.

Curious.

Yeah. And they were curious, which is not a bad thing.

Like, they have information now.

It gets us in, uh, gets them in our system. We can follow up with them.

Now, is that going into like, is that going into our automation for coupons or cold calling, or is that going into that?

So currently it's, it's going to 2 places at the same time and it'll go through our Hatch automation, which will follow up with SMS and email. And then on the other side, at the pretty much instantaneously, it will also ping call center.

Yeah.

So that a CSR can call them directly, reach out and say, hey, saw you fill out this form, are you interested in it? Um, and essentially offer a Usually a, uh, in-home free estimate.

Has— and no one's tried to actually buy just straight on the website yet?

No, and we don't have that option activated.

Oh, gotcha. I don't know. I, I think, I think we all think that consumers want that. I don't know that they do.

Yeah, I— and I think that's, that's really the main question I'm trying to answer by using Contractor Commerce on our website. Again, the first month we literally just threw it up there, didn't push it at all.

Yeah.

The second month we, well, we started to mess with verification where they have to verify their number, that kind of thing. But starting this month and going forward, what we're actually trying to do is push the online quote or estimate. And when I say push, we're talking about it in some of our Media ads, TV, radio.

Yeah.

That kind of thing. And then also we have a PPC campaign specifically for HVAC and it's an option on the landing page. Um, and we've, we've got it to connect to Google to kind of optimize for that action if it sees it.

Yeah.

But it's one option alongside calling us or just scheduling directly. Online. And so far we haven't really seen a lot of activity on the PPC Lander for the contract to commerce, you know, free online estimate.

How into budget are we? Like how much have we spent?

Month to date, about $2,800.

So we've sent traffic.

Yeah, there's been thousands. Like it's thousands now. This campaign's new, so that traffic—

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Is getting whittled down to be better, so it's a lot of—

Also, thousands is kind of crazy.

Yeah, I mean—

I mean, as far as like a cost per click, that feels like low.

Yeah, and it'll, that's what we would expect to see if we're launching a new campaign, it kind of just—

Like a buck?

Getting the data.

A buck a click?

It depends, I think it depends on the market, depends on what exactly kind of keywords you're optimizing for, but the idea is—

I assume like HVAC installers, Install quote, like I would assume that's like $30 a click or something ridiculous.

Yeah, but they're not gonna be targeting just that. They'll be targeting a giant family of various keywords. And so that traffic will be really high at first and then they'll kind of whittle down based on what's working, what's not, that kind of thing. But yeah, from the PPC, we've seen not a lot of activity for the online. Estimate, it seems to be that those people from that traffic source, PPC, they're very much trying to get someone today as soon as possible. Something's broke.

Yeah.

They're not shopping around necessarily, which is a good thing. Yeah. And I don't think that necessarily means that contractor commerce is bad or people don't want it. I just think that specific—

It's a different state of urgency.

Yeah.

Yeah. Because I think what, what I've noticed as far as like when people are going through the quizzes, Is it's it seems to be activating buying behavior at like nine p.m. I think that I think that's what their data said before we got onto. It's like yeah, people will be like Sunday at eleven or you know they're watching TV and they start for some reason looking for first. Like I've personally never done that, but apparently our customers do. So they'll start like just looking and seeing what the options are because there's a there's a lot of really interesting like. Hey, you got a lead text after 5 PM.

It was funny too. We had— before we kind of nailed down the procedure with call center, yeah, our offshore call takers who usually do the after-hours stuff, yeah, yeah, they would see the lead come in and they would just call immediately.

Oh sure.

And I listened to a call, came in, it was like 10 o'clock at night, a guy requested a water heater. And so they were called immediately and the guy was like, you're calling people at 10 PM? And the the CSR was like, yeah. And then we booked the job. Like, yeah, we got it.

Nailed it.

It was it was funny.

We we've I think that has been interesting is we've gotten a surprising amount of water heaters from it. I think as far as like job numbers so far, more water heaters than HVAC.

Yeah, and I don't know what the exact ratio is, but that that is correct. Now HVAC being HVAC. It still has more of the sales, like the actual dollars. Numerically, we are seeing more water heaters.

Yeah. So far, ROAS has been a win. If we look at it as our ad spend being the subscription, it's kind of been a big win.

It's significant. I'm trying to do math in my head, but it's—

Well, what did we drive last month off Contractor Commerce?

Last month being March, I think it was around $40,000. Yeah, $40,000.

So that feels good.

Yeah.

Well, what about April?

Or yeah, that's all right. March was $40,000. April was $20,000. Then this month, currently we're halfway through May, we've broken $10,000. So, but it looks like we're at least on pace for $20,000 through it.

So yeah, yeah, that feels pretty good. Do you think We are unusual, I think, for the trades because of how much web traffic we have. We have a lot of web traffic. I mean, obviously that helps, but like, what's your take on that?

Uh, I think it depends on the quality of the traffic.

Um, yeah, because some of ours is not.

Yeah, it depends where the traffic's coming from. And PPC is a great example. The current campaign that we have running, uh, seems to be optimizing for People who are urgently looking for an HVAC replacement, which is great. That traffic would theoretically do well, you know. When you get into just the organic traffic of the website, it's going to depend heavily on— well, there could be a source where people are searching for you directly through your brand.

Yep.

It's a good source to have, but they also Maybe searching you for a multitude of reasons. Um, also if you, if you're doing SEO and you have any kind of content that's maybe more general and not specific to your service area. Yeah. Which is a tactic I see a lot that companies do where you'll just, you know, what's the optimal temperature for your thermostat?

I mean, we have a ton of that.

Yeah. And it, I wouldn't say it's, it's bad.

But I think it's meant to get, well, it gets traffic, but I think more importantly, like it's something to backlink to. At least that's how I think about that type of content where it's like, I mean, this is like 5-year-ago SEO, but it's like, hey, we're gonna put an informative blog and then we'll run a backlink from USA Today to it and boom, we got DA.

Yeah, I mean, backlinks are, are hugely powerful and good. I think it's just don't expect those kind of articles to be—

Produce.

The traffic that gets the jobs booked.

Yeah, I have a friend that has double our traffic and like we already have a lot and he has double. So like that's 30,000 hits a month and no revenue off the site.

Yeah. And that's the case in point because when you get in those general keywords, you're getting traffic Potentially from all across the country.

Yeah.

Doesn't necessarily help you if you're a local.

All right. So we put it on there. We've gotten positive ROAS. I think we're still like testing. We're trying to run more traffic to it, basically seeing what more reps looks like. Like, does volume increase leads, which we're still early on that. So we haven't like totally determined, but I would assume it does. I, I'm curious what like other contractors are doing with Contractor Commerce, like how many leads they get versus their traffic, like how many people start clicking on the funnel. I think that would just be interesting.

Yeah. And I think too, we still have some optimization within Contractor Commerce itself. I think, you know, just off the top of my head, probably our follow-up sequence is one we just threw up to get it started. Yeah, I think that's been looked at. That can probably be improved. And then Contractor Commerce does give you some ability to put content in that journey as far as like more information, images, that kind of thing. And I think that could also be helpful. Something that I want to do that we haven't done yet is when they complete the journey, essentially they get a page that says, hey, this is what happens next.

Yeah.

This is what to expect.

Yeah.

We don't really have that. They're filling it out and it's like, okay, You'll hear from us. And that's like, you know, so I think things like that could also help. But yeah, we'll see how impactful it'll be when we get there.

That's great.

All right.

Any last thoughts on contractor commerce or even e-commerce for the trades?

I think the biggest thing is really figuring out, do customers want these features from a home service company? And if they do, how do they want them and when do they want them? Which again, that's In my mind, a lot of the experimentation that we're doing is trying to answer that question.

Yeah.

Something that I've heard other people say is, well, people buy cars off the internet. Why wouldn't they buy HVAC or water heaters off the internet? And theoretically, yeah, they're both really high-ticket items. But I think there is a key difference where a car is something you're excited to buy, something that—

Yeah.

You think about it. You know, if you're a little kid, you might have one poster on your wall. Nobody's doing that with the train. Whoa.

Yeah, I agree. I think it's like people will spend much more time. They're excited to research, they're optimizing for that. Whereas I think the role or the benefit that I see of it so far is it hits transparency. And like, if someone's in their buying journey and they're in like the data collection, like a confused buyer won't buy. So our job, and I think where Contractor Commerce is helping, is like get rid of confusion of like, hey, here's what it is, here's the cost. It's one more thing that they can now like put a peg in. 'Cause I think it is pretty like, who knows? What a furnace and air conditioning costs, and it seems like there's a lot like huge swings up and down depending on like everything like brand, company, size of house, type of house. So I feel like it's just our job to give them the information they need to like call us, and I think that that is good enough. Like I think that's good.

Yeah, and you hit upon an. A real interesting point to the transparency side. Currently we're displaying the price as just a per month minimum, like, hey, as low as however many dollars per month. Um, that would be in my mind something to experiment with is actually showing the price.

Whole dollar.

Which I, my impression is, uh, home service companies are kind of nervous to do that because again, the shopping around thing. I think that would also help answer the question, you know, is this something that's useful and helpful to, to consumers? Because again, a furnace isn't something you would be excited about buying. But if you put that info out there, people become conscious of the fact that you can shop for it.

Yeah.

Does that become an advantage for your company if you're good at it? You know?

Yeah.

I think it's a possibility. Yeah.

So I think, yeah, we'll probably hit this again in a couple months with like, hey, here's what happened. Running a bunch of branded spend towards it. We're running a bunch of like paid search spend towards it. Did it work? That'll be funny to figure out. Cool. Any last take for marketers out there?

I would say, I mean, I think marketing is always an experiment hypothesis, then you test it. See what happened, reiterate. I think that's true of testing e-commerce, but really anything in marketing is kind of follows that process.

Thank you for checking out Owned and Operated. Thanks for coming on the show. This was fun. Uh, make sure you check out ownedandoperated.com and like and subscribe for more.