As a mobile pet groomer, you work day in and day out to make sure your clients’ pets are taken care of and look great. You take care to keep your business practices safe, and you’ve put in the time and effort to master your craft. Now you have to build a website that will allow you to build your business further.
Making a great website is easier said than done, however. It’s hard to know where to start with so many resources, each claiming to have the perfect formula for a great website. In place of attempting to give you a fail-safe and comprehensive guide to building a guaranteed-to-be-successful website, we’ve put together a few simple tips to get you started in the right direction:
1. Make the Pets the Stars
You don’t need to go crazy with the design of the site. In fact, the simpler the better. What you want is for potential clients to see your work. Feature the pets you’ve worked with often and prominently.
When it comes to colors and designs, at most look to enhance the images of your work, and at the very least, make sure it doesn’t distract from it. If possible, use a good camera to get high-quality images of the pets you groom. If the animals are going to take center stage, you want them looking as nice as possible.
2. Make Sure You Own the Rights to the Images You Use
This seems like a no-brainer, but you may be surprised at how often business owners get dinged for putting content on their site that they have not secured the right to use. No matter how well an image may fit on your site, it’s not worth the risk to use it if you don’t have the rights.
Make sure that your clients give you express written permission to use images of their pets on your website (and social media). It’s not a given that they’ll be okay with seeing their pet on your site, so if you’re planning on taking pictures of your process, they need to know and give their permission.
If you use stock images anywhere on your site, check that you have permission to use them without paying. There are a few free sites that offer high-quality stock images at no cost—we’d recommend using Pexels and Unsplash.
3. Don’t Discount the Value of Good Writing
Even if you don’t consider yourself a great writer, you can likely tell the difference between well-written web copy and poorly written web copy. From more content-heavy items such as blog posts or white papers to sparser assets such as a landing page, the quality of writing on your page drives public perception of your business.
Luckily, you don’t have to be a professional writer to put together passable content. Here are a few tools and tips to use as you write:
- Take advantage of grammar tools. Grammarly is a free tool you can use that will catch a bit more than the basic spelling and grammar checks that Microsoft Word does.
- Get others to edit your work, and give them full reign to tear it apart. If you have other employees, run everything you write by them. If you are running your business on your own, reach out to friends or family. Here’s the key: make sure they edit without taking your feelings into account, and make sure that you look at their edits without getting defensive. If you aren’t familiar with the editing process, this can be hard, but it’s worth it.
If you follow these steps and still feel that your writing isn’t up to scratch, consider reaching out to a freelance agency or posting a request to Upwork, where you can set your rates and get a writer to put your project together.
4. Make Sure Your Site Can Be Found
Hopefully, you have good clients who will spread your mobile pet grooming business through word of mouth. Even with this benefit, however, you still need to make sure that people online searching for mobile pet grooming services can find you. This is where search engine optimization (SEO) comes in.
There’s no way to give a deep dive into SEO in this blog post, but we can give you a few basic tips that should help improve your visibility:
- Do a basic keyword search. SEMRush offers a basic keyword search for free (with a paid option available) that will allow you to see search volume and related keywords for what you’re looking for. Run a search for “Mobile Pet Grooming” or something similar to give yourself an idea of the keywords you should be using.
- Feature your keywords in the headings of your pages. The way search engine algorithms search the content of your site for keywords changes often, but one rule of thumb you’ll be safe with is to make sure that you feature your most important keywords in the headings of your site.
- Include your location in your site. This will help you appear when people run a search specifying your region. If you’re in Brooklyn, for example, use the keyword “Brooklyn mobile pet groomer” or “New York City mobile pet groomer.”
Take some time as you build your site to do SEO research—the tips above barely scratch the surface of what you can do. There’s no guarantee that any one step to improve SEO will rocket you to the top of a Google search, but following the tips above will improve your odds.
5. Show Your Pet Grooming Qualifications
Just as a potential client will be interested in seeing the quality of work you do, they’ll want to know that you are qualified to be trusted with their pet.
Find a place on your website where you can prominently display your qualifications. If you have any educational qualifications, include them. If you have great reviews online, display your 5 stars in all their glory.
Another great qualification to include on your website is a badge to show that you’re insured. When you buy a PCI policy, our team can help you add a PCI badge to your website to signal to all clients and potential clients that you’re covered.
In addition to this coverage protecting your business, it also shows clients that you’re a professional and that, if something does go wrong, they have recourse available to them to solve the problem. Especially if they’re bringing you into their homes to groom their pets, the knowledge that you’re a professional is a huge point in your favor.
If you aren’t insured already, you’re in luck. With PCI, you can get mobile pet groomers insurance in 10 minutes or less for just $278 per year. Your business deserves protection, and your clients will want to know that they’re working with a pro. Accomplish both by signing up for a mobile pet grooming insurance policy today!
