Pillar To Post

Home Inspection Services

Pillar To Post's logo
Pillar To Post is a corporation of professional home inspectors that has been in business for over 25 years. With over 550 locations, they are the industry leader in home inspections in the US and Canada.

President and CEO, Dan Steward, has been the CEO of Pillar To Post for the past 14 years. In recent years, he recognized a significant challenge the company faced – how to compete in an age of an ever-changing digital landscape. Steward knew that in order for Pillar To Post continue dominating their industry, they would have to also dominate online. Pillar To Post decided to partner with Online Image® in July of 2017 to address this most critical need and seize an opportunity for greater growth.

Pillar To Post homepage on a mac computer

The Challenge

In the initial phase of their partnership, Online Image® engaged Pillar To Post in a discovery phase to uncover any challenges impeding a successful online marketing strategy.

Their website was geared towards realtors when home buyers account for a large percentage of their revenue. Realtors understood the lingo but to a home buyer it was confusing.
Realtors that were interviewed explained that it was too difficult to book an inspection through the website, resulting in a significant loss in number of leads.

With over 550 franchisees, individual locations were competing against each other to rank in mini-markets. This means that where there are multiple locations in a given area, all are fighting for the #1 spot.

Franchisees were driving the cost of their marketing up by competing with one another, thus unnecessarily spending more money than they should.
Multiple franchisees were not showing up on search engines, thus many were losing opportunities for growth where they should have been showing up.

The Solution

Online Image® proposed a new website to solve these changes. The new website had to speak to the right audience and help the users schedule an inspection as easy as possible.

The Strategies Behind The New Website

Design Based On Personas

Personas were built to define the various audiences the website would cater to. These personas drove the user experience modeling, design and layout.

The personas drove many things, including calls to action, style of website and colour tones. The home buying process is a stressful one and using those tones helped ease the experience for the user.

Built A 3D Model A Home For A Reference Tool

This interior and exterior model was designed with the confused homebuyer in mind. In each spot, the user can use this tool to hover over an item in the home and see why the inspector has to inspect it. It has been such a success that realtors are driving their clients to this page of Pillar To Post’s site as a reference tool which is great for website traffic.

Change Of Voice

Instead of speaking to realtors only, the change of voice was focused around both realtors and homebuyers. In 2015, out of 5 million homes sold in America, 1 million did not include a realtor. Today that ratio is closer to 30/70 and it will most likely keep rising. This means that it’s extremely important to speak to those people who are not realtors who do not understand industry lingo.

Pillar To Post 3D House Model

Created A Territory Page

Online Image® came up with the concept of using a territory page. The reasoning behind this was to implement a fair lead distribution. This allowed for franchisees with the most availability to be shown first in the results based on the customer’s requested time of service. If a customer does not request a time, it will give all other inspectors an even round-robin opportunity for business by allowing their information to be in the top left corner of the page.

Pillar To Post Territory Page Screenshot

Created Micro-Sites For Franchisees

On the old website, franchisees did not have any control of their site. Online Image® built out a system where they could make changes and updates where the home office allows, without compromising the brand. The “Request An Inspection” button on each micro-site also sends leads directly to the location the user selects, which is a feature the site did not have before. The new micro-sites now gave franchisees the option to create a local blog and highlight realtors in the area, all to create a better relationship in their community.

Pillar To Post Microsite Screenshot

Pillar To Post home page on their new site

The Launch

Pre-Launch

Online Image® knows based on experience that launching a new website for over 550 franchisees can be challenging. Because of this, Online Image® first launched a beta website to discover any unforeseen issues.

To make this process easier, Online Image® created a button on the bottom of each page where franchisees were encouraged to make edits and suggestions. Nearly 220 franchisees’ information was corrected from this simple process.

Launch

With Online Image®’s extensive background in launching large websites for multi-unit businesses, they knew that launch day would be critical to success. They staffed accordingly from 10 p.m. – 4 a.m. and launched the new website. Overnight, they received some feedback and corrections and each one was taken care of live.

The Conclusion

In the first 3 months of the new site being live, PillarToPost.com saw an overall 148% increase in new users visiting their site compared to the same time in 2017. The most exciting part was that the scheduling company for Pillar To Post called in with such a large increase in leads that they needed to verify their legitimacy before acting on them.

In conclusion, Online Image® partnered with Pillar To Post to launch a highly complex website in order to increase leads at a digital level. Founder and CEO of Online Image®, Russell Burnett II, was excited about Pillar To Post’s high goals and knew his team could produce results with a partner just as willing to put in the effort for success. “The journey to a great online marketing strategy has bumps in the road, and Online Image® is grateful to have been chosen to partner with Pillar To Post to work side by side with them through this process,” said Burnett.

Dan Steward was just as appreciative of the newly formed partnership.

User to Site

New User to Site

“The team at Online Image® did an excellent job in the discovery phase of our website development project. We were impressed by the extensive research done to understand the underlying issues. Their post discovery presentation displayed their creative abilities and technical knowledge. We confidently walked out with a clear understanding of the expectations. I would highly recommend Online Image® to any business for their internet marketing needs.”

Dan Steward

President & CEO of Pillar To Post

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