Whether you are rebuilding your property or selling a fire-damaged house, finding a good contractor is one of your most important tasks. The process of finding a contractor online for your house fire repair project can streamline your search and help you connect with the right professionals swiftly. By leveraging online resources, reviews, and portfolios, you can effectively assess the qualifications and experience of potential contractors, ensuring they are capable of addressing the specific needs of your fire-damaged property with the necessary expertise and care.
First, you need to contact your insurance agent, of course, and start the house fire settlement process but then sooner, rather than later, you are going to need to find a contractor to handle the repairs.
Now if you already know a contractor the process will be much easier. However, be sure to keep in mind that you need to hire a contractor with house fire repair experience.
House fire repairs are different than other repairs and require greater attention to safety. If you don’t know a house fire repair contractor, then you are going to have to find one.
Looking for House Fire Repair Contractors
In the past looking for contractors more than likely meant going to the Yellow Pages and perusing the contractor ads.
But you don’t see many Yellow Pages lying around anymore. That’s because everything has gone online. To find a contractor you are going to have to go online as well.
Finding Contractors Online
The good news is most contractors in this day and age have a website. So you can do a search and click on the links for contractors in your area.
How do you determine the quality of a contractor by their website? Here are some tips to help you.
People tend to buy from businesses they know, like and trust and typically that means contracting businesses that are in your area’s top Google search results.
So you should start out looking at the contractors in the top rankings first.
When you go to a contractor’s website, look to see if they have completed projects similar to what you are looking to have done.
Also, be sure to check out recent project photos, reviews and case studies.
Another tip is to look for mentions of a contractor in different places on the web. This can help ensure that the contractor is established and that they are going to be around in the future to provide follow up service, if needed.
Additional Things to Look For When Visiting Contractor Websites:
Expect something more than a free website
Many companies don’t put much thought into their online presence and simply use a free template that doesn’t look very professional, doesn’t fit their company and is not optimized to provide the potential client with the information he or she needs quickly and easily.
Look for a contractor that has invested the time and energy necessary to create something truly unique for their business.
This indicates they are willing to put in the work and will likely do the same when it comes to your house fire repairs.
A good company won’t just whip up a website in a weekend; they will conduct a full web and online marketing analysis, develop unique messaging to suit their business, produce a custom design, add lots of relevant and optimized content, create clear and user-friendly navigation and flow, add high value branded contact forms, and much more.
In other words, they will make sure their website stands out from the competition and positions them as a market leader.
Expect clear messaging
The website copy should grab attention and effectively communicate the contractor’s unique value and how they differ from the competition.
Messaging is vitally important because they only have a few seconds to engage with you the website visitor and encourage you to take the next step and contact them. Smart contractors realize this and have a site that accomplishes this important goal.
Expect responsive web design
Every website should be optimized for viewing on different sized computer, smart phone and tablet screens. This is called Responsive Web Design – one website that responds to the device on which it is being viewed. This means that whether someone is visiting the site on a computer, iPad, or mobile phone, they are going to be able to see everything clearly and navigate the site easily.
This is extremely important today because statistics show that over 40% of your website visitors are on a mobile device. So if you are looking for contractors on the web via your mobile phone and you come across a site that is not mobile-friendly take it as a red flag and move on.
Expect large photos
We live in a visual world. Plus, visitors have short attention spans. Great photos are a quick way for contractors to engage website visitors. This means that their website should be packed with high resolution photos of their projects that wow you and make you want to learn more about them.
Expect lots of contact forms
It’s not enough to only have one contact form on the contact page. Again, people are often visiting sites on mobile devices and don’t want to spend a lot of time trying to contact the contractor. The website should include contact forms on nearly every page that stand out and encourage visitors to get in touch and take that next step.
Expect personalization
You want to find contractors that have built a great business and that don’t hide behind a bunch of stock photos. Contractors who don’t have photos of their own work or of themselves are another red flag. We strongly suggest looking for contractors that include photos of themselves and their team as well as photos of their office, trucks, jobsites and anything else that can build trust and differentiate them from other contractors.
Expect social proof
When prospective customers are browsing websites, they want to see that a person they are considering hiring is reliable. So how do contractors show this? By provide plenty of testimonials, preferably with real names and customer photos, that’s how. Video testimonials are even better. Look for contractors with lots of testimonials. Also, look for social proof via social media feeds and awards that they may have won and associations to which they belong.
Want to avoid the hassle of hiring a contractor?
Sell your fire-damaged house in as-is condition to We Buy Fire Damaged Houses. We pay all cash so you can get your money fast and move on with your life. You won’t have to worry about stressful repairs going on in the house and about budget overruns.
Simply fill out the form below to get started.
Photo by Emmanuel Ikwuegbu on Unsplash