Einstein Moving Company
Challenge
Einstein Moving Company is based in Texas — they started in Austin, but have since expanded to Dallas, San Antonio, Houston, and McKinney. When Cameron (co-owner) came to us in 2018, he had a lot of goals! From helping wrap up and transition to a new site to more effectively measuring conversion rates, there was a lot to be done. Of course, his main goal was to increase bookings.
Solution
In addition to a website audit and improving their analytics, we were also taking over Local SEO and Google Ads. Their previous agency provided generic reports and were reporting on views of a contact page as a goal, instead of people actually filling out the form. Our goal was to ensure that our client knew that work was being done with a crystal clear picture of results, without providing an overwhelming amount of information or using marketing buzzwords. It was important to establish trust to make this relationship work! The New Website They needed a new website to replace their outdated one that didn’t provide as great of a user experience as some of their competitors. The site was being completed by another agency — we were hired to ensure that the new site was SEO-friendly and that the transition went smoothly. Our role was to perform a technical audit of the development version of the site and provide feedback to the developers so important fixes could be implemented before it launched. However, the other agency strung our client along, and instead they got a partly finished website that wasn’t coded well and had a quote form that didn’t work. We took over the project and had to start from square one! Going into this new project phase, we knew that their new site needed a few things: Custom icons to represent the different services and locations they serve — the original site and the mockup from the previous agency used generic icons Customer reviews and information about their team of movers — we want people to feel comfortable inviting strangers into their home Mobile-friendly design — a no-brainer, but the previous agency only designed for desktop despite ~40% of their traffic coming from mobile Individual service pages — their old site only had one service page that listed all of their services in brief, making it difficult for them to rank for important keywords We blazed forward designing and developing the new site, and were excited to have it launch soon. However, the site launch was delayed due to the complexity of the quote form. Building the Quote & Booking Form The quote and booking form was a lesson in scope change. What we thought was originally going to be a standard “request a quote” Gravity Form turned out to be a complex custom app/plugin (well beyond the scope of a normal website project). The form had a lot of moving pieces, and we worked with a software company that handles the client’s CRM to create a quote form that worked with their custom API to book moves in real-time. Previously, potential customers had to fill out a form with their move details, and Einstein Moving would get back to them with options — lots of back and forth. Now with the Booking form, anyone can book their move online, at a time and date that makes sense to them, based on Einstein Moving’s actual availability. There was a lot of development and bug testing on our side, as well as some changes from the original design of how information on the quote form is displayed. There were also complications on the API side of things which took time for their software company to implement. This form delayed the launch of the new website, but the new get a quote form is a vast improvement over the previous forms they had. After the user fills out the form, they’re provided with an estimate and given the option to book their move online or get the quote emailed to them if they’re not ready to make a decision right away. If the move cannot be estimated (e.g. an office move or there are multiple stops the moving truck has to make — their engine isn’t set up to handle that yet), they have the option to get contacted by someone at Einstein Moving for a quote. Google Ads We audited their account and made the decision to make tweaks and changes to their current campaigns instead of starting new campaigns from scratch, as there was a good campaign structure already in place, but improvements could be made. There were quick wins that we could implement, such as adding new negative keywords and pausing moving quote keywords that were appearing for keywords such as “moving on quotes” and “howl’s moving castle best quotes”. (The wrong type of moving quotes!) Throughout our management we’ve set up campaigns for new locations they’ve launched and have been able to pause campaigns for locations that are busy, so we’re able to focus more budget on moving keywords (e.g. movers in mckinney) for the newer locations that need help acquiring leads. The moving industry is competitive in Texas! Brand campaigns for all locations are set up to protect their growing brand from competitors. The industry is also very seasonal (busy season being April – September), so the campaigns typically see more traffic during the summer months. With the new site and form, our ads are better able to meet the searcher’s needs. SEO Before we started our monthly SEO contract with this client, we worked on updating and optimizing their GMB listings and cleaned up their citations for all 6 locations: North Austin, South Austin, Dallas, Houston, San Antonio, and McKinney. Updating their GMB listing to better serve their customers was important, so it provides searchers with essential information they’re looking for! Since we’ve started our ongoing SEO work in April, we’ve seen a 35.5% increase in visitors to the site — almost 9,000 more users than the same period in 2019! Monitoring spam has been a huge part of our local SEO work, as many moving companies are stuffing their names with keywords and implementing other spammy practices to get ahead. We’re also sharing Google Posts on their GMB profile, have implemented Local Business, FAQ, and Service schema on their site, made updates to the location pages, and have improved blog post content. Through our efforts, we’ve seen their rank improve substantially for service keywords, and we’ve seen more visibility in the local pack and organic listings for {movers + location} keywords.
Results
Since launching the new site, we’ve seen the conversion rate of multiple channels improve. Since many of the goals were changed (such as tracking the new booking form vs the individual forms for each location on the old site), we’re comparing conversion rate of the old site in 2019 vs performance since site launch. The site-wide average conversion rate in 2019 was 11.7% — in 2020 so far, the conversion rate of the new site is 19.4%. Below are some stats for specific channels: 31% increase in organic traffic since site launch, with a 28% conversion rate 84% increase in paid traffic since site launch, with a 17% conversion rate 21% increase in all other traffic since site launch, with a 15% conversion rate Overall, the new site is converting well and didn’t lose traffic when launched. These results are even more impressive considering that COVID-19 lowered their traffic for a while! Limitations The main limitation of this project were the circumstances surrounding the form on their new website. Their custom CRM posed many challenges, and we weren’t able to work from a well-established API. There was a lot of testing and seeing if it worked, which meant there was a lot of going back and forth. This ate up time, and the project went over budget.
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