When a customer is browsing the internet looking for an appraisal, they generally want to know two things right up front, before anything else:
- Can this appraiser do the type of appraisal that I'm looking for, and
- Can they do it in the area that I want
If these two questions cannot be satisfied within the first twelve seconds or so, they're gone – off to some other site or back to their Google search.
People are lazy. People don't like to read. How many times have you been listening to a cranky underwriter blather on about a completed report you just did, and you're thinking to yourself, "Did they even read my report?"
My recommendation is always to spoonfeed the important things to your site visitors, and telling them exactly what to read, or what to click on. This is really important for your calls-to-action, but also should dictate your placement of important things on a given page.
For these two things, list your main types of appraisals and main service areas in bullet point lists, and put them near the top – don't make someone scroll down a page to find it. Also, don't put important lists in paragraph format, either. I see appraisers all the time who bury their service area in the middle of a paragraph, guaranteeing that it won't be read by most visitors. For an example, check out www.vcappraisals.com/goodhome – I'll bet your eyes are drawn to the bullet points immediately.
