Website Conversions in 2026: What Actually Works

In this episode of Digital Marketing for Contractors, Caitlyn and Meredith break down what’s actually driving website conversions in 2026 — and what contractors need to prioritize to turn traffic into booked jobs.

They explain how the definition of a “conversion” has evolved beyond just form fills and phone calls to include meaningful actions like chat interactions, scheduled appointments, and quote requests. The conversation highlights the growing importance of first-party data, AI-driven personalization, and building trust through strong social proof and clear messaging.

Listeners will learn how dynamic content can create more relevant experiences, why mobile-first design is now essential, and how speed, accessibility, and technical performance directly impact lead generation. The episode also covers practical tools and tactics — from heat mapping and session recordings to A/B testing — that help contractors continuously improve results instead of guessing.

If your website gets traffic but doesn’t consistently generate quality leads, this episode provides a clear roadmap to turning it into a true conversion engine.

Want to find out how we can create a custom digital marketing game plan for your contractor business? Schedule a call with us at fatcatstrategies.com.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:10

Welcome to Digital Marketing for Contractors, a podcast for home improvement contractors to help you crush your lead goals and take your business to the next level. Join us each episode as we give you powerful insights and practical tips on the best digital marketing strategies to help you grow your home improvement business. Let's get started.

Caitlyn Noble: 0:30

Welcome back to Digital Marketing for Contractors. We're your host, Caitlin and Meredith with Fat Cat Strategies.

Meredith Medlin: 0:36

Hello. Hi. We have got a fun topic for you guys today, especially fun for me as a web person myself. She's so good. I'm stop. Keep going. Um, our topic today is website conversions in 2026 and what actually works to get you website conversions. Um, so we're gonna be breaking down all the trends, the tools, um, tips we have for you guys so that you can turn more of your website visitors into book jobs and that all-important revenue that we're chasing.

Caitlyn Noble: 1:07

Praise, praise, praise, praise. We're gonna cover what's changed this year. And by this year, it's we're recording this, it's the beginning of January. So we're hoping that all of these changes are coming into fruition. Yep. Um, they they will. Um, but more importantly, manifesting it, thank you. Um but these things aren't changing. AI personalization, frictionless experiences, and conversion optimization strategies that are built for the day and age of the year of our Lord 2026.

Meredith Medlin: 1:39

Let's get into it. Let's get into it. So before we talk strategies, let's talk about what a conversion actually means today.

Caitlyn Noble: 1:48

Favorite question.

Meredith Medlin: 1:49

Favorite question.

Caitlyn Noble: 1:50

What's a what's a conversion?

Meredith Medlin: 1:51

What's a conversion? And honestly, if you're not talking to your marketing agency about conversions, if they're trying to woo you with just here's some new SEO content or here's some metrics that don't have anything to do with conversions, ask them about it, ask us, send us your analytics, we'll help you out. Um, but really a conversion isn't just a form fill anymore. Um, it really is any call or phone call. You know, traditionally, when I mean when I first started marketing, um, it was a form fill, it was a phone call. That was your conversion. But it really is any kind of meaningful action that your visitor on your website is taking um that gets them one step closer to becoming a customer. Yeah. Um, that can be scheduling an estimate, that can be booking a call, that can be just requesting a quote. So anything some of them, surely. But we have live chat features, we've got texting features, um, signing up for email newsletters, um, that kind of thing. Oh, I that's perfect. Thank you.

Caitlyn Noble: 3:01

I know I just have to play that person. But since we are in 2026, conversion marketing means understanding your audience so well that your website guides them, guides them to the next step without confusion, hesitation, or friction. So let's dive into key website conversion strategies that are working right now.

Meredith Medlin: 3:24

Beautiful. Um first party data and consent-driven targeting. Lots of those were lots of buzzwords. Lots of buzzwords. Um, if you have or your agency has suggested adding something like a checkbox on your forms with some text that says, by checking this box, I agree for XYZ company to contact me via this or that method. You are already starting to implement some of these things. Um, third-party cookies, and I'm not talking about the delicious kinds that I'm constantly thinking about. I'm talking about on your website, third-party cookies, those having been slowly and quietly vanishing from the digital marketing landscape over the last few years. Quietly, it's right. Yeah, it's it's made it so that uh first party data, meaning data that you get directly from the users.

Caitlyn Noble: 4:17

Legally. Legally, on your website.

Meredith Medlin: 4:20

You've consented. You've consented to it, is more important than ever. Um, like I said before, the consent boxes on your forms is one great example. Um, another one is when you have a scheduling tool on your website, which can be Calendly, it could be House Call Pro, it could be a number of different tools. If somebody is booking an appointment with you, putting time on your calendar, that is a conversion, and it's a pretty great conversion, I might add. Um, and really any other time when somebody's calling you and there's something in the recording when they call your phone tree saying, you know, this call is being recorded for quality assurance, blah, blah, blah. Anything like that, you're getting consent from the user and you're able to start tracking their movement in the not creepiest way possible. As marketers, we love that because we get to with permission. We are creepy though. We are creep, we're creepy for a living. Oh, with permission. With permission for a living to generate revenue for your company. Um, so all of these things make it so that your conversions are more targeted and they're better quality. Uh listen to that last episode if you can hear Meredith. If you can hear me in the last episode, where I was whispering from a closet next door, apparently, with my microphone. Take a listen. I promise you'll know what we're talking about. Bad leads. Bad leads. We don't want them. And these things with first party data and consent is gonna help you avoid bad leads. But um let's talk about AI.

Caitlyn Noble: 5:56

Yeah, personalization. Of course. Can we not not not talk about AI? We have to talk about AI. Strategies that are not not going to not stop working. AI-powered personalization. AI isn't a buzzword. It's not, it's central to personalization. If I haven't already just said that, tailoring content, calls to action, and messaging based on behavior or intent helps boost conversions in ways generic sites can't. For sure. This is something that you're like, what did all of those words just mean? And as I was like saying them, I'm like, how do I explain that? Yeah. Um, so you're taking dynamic content insertion, for example. So one of the best things you can do, and this has been one of our tips, tricks uh that now you all get to hear it. Let's expose that to everybody. But um we're here to help. We're here to help, guys. It's free advice. Um so you can personalize your Google ad customer experience by adding clo dynamic class code on your landing pages so the user sees exactly what or where they search from right there when they land on the page. Exactly. Break that down into language that wasn't what I just said.

Meredith Medlin: 7:17

So basically, um on your website, there is a way that your web developer can help you out by putting what's called dynamic location class. It's a little snippet of code, but putting that on your page, say in your headline, when somebody lands on your landing page and they searched from Cary, North Carolina. Wow. Um, when they hit that page, it would say bathroom remodeling in Cary, North Carolina, or Carrie's best bathroom remodeler instead of wherever your showroom is out of. Um, so if your service area covers 40 different cities, you want to be able to make Google ads to where their specific city can show up when they hit the landing page. It just shows the Google user that your ad, your service is tailored to them. Everything makes sense, it's a cohesive experience, and it really is that next level of personalization. That AI needs to see. It needs to see that, and it's also going to help the user have a better experience to convert. Because remember, we're talking about how to get users to convert on your website. And so this dynamic insertion is just one way to really refine the user experience. So what they see after clicking on an ad is exactly what they're looking for, and they won't even need to click away. Weird. It is weird. Speaking of creepy, we that's what we do, and it makes for a great user experience. I'll be honest. It really does. Let's talk about something you have a degree in. I do. Surprise! Psychology major over here. Um I went to her graduation. Yes, yes. That was very sweet. Go pack, if there's any Wolfpack fans out there. Yes. If you're not, I'm sorry.

Caitlyn Noble: 8:59

Um you just missed me throwing up the woofy, which not a soul could see. No, I don't even think I saw it.

Meredith Medlin: 9:05

You did it secretly. There we go. Go pack. Um, conversion psychology. I know you're like, where are they going with this? Conversion psychology. That's what we're tying it back into. It's not just about reducing friction, um, but it's building trust with your potential customers. Um, and that's through building trust with clarity, with um awards, recognition, um, social proof, making sure that the users know that you're a legitimate company, you've won X amount of awards, the community recognizes you, um, you have great reviews.

Caitlyn Noble: 9:42

So big flashy red buttons are gonna work anymore.

Meredith Medlin: 9:47

I mean, you can have some big red buttons, but ain't nobody gonna click them if they don't think you're a legit business. So have your shiny red buttons to your heart's desire. But um make sure that next to those buttons around that buttons, as long as it's above the fold, you've got some trust building.

Caitlyn Noble: 10:05

What's above the fold? I think it is.

Meredith Medlin: 10:08

Yeah, but no, for for all the great people. Um, when you land on a website, before you scroll down, everything you see on your screen is considered above the fold. So basically, you don't have to scroll or go anywhere to be hit with great reviews or certification badges or maybe pictures of your team. Team pictures, like look, these are real human people. Oh, here's their pet. Like Oh, don't put a dog on the home page. And by that I mean please do. Yeah, please do. Dog sell. They trust.

Caitlyn Noble: 10:39

You trust people with dogs. You do, even though our company has cat in it. Listen. Listen, it's animals.

Meredith Medlin: 10:44

We love animals. Yes. So CTAs should always be accompanied by some sort of trust signal. Thank you. Exactly.

Caitlyn Noble: 10:52

And that's the psychology behind conversions.

Meredith Medlin: 10:55

Exactly. They trust you, so they want to give you their information.

Caitlyn Noble: 10:58

This is not new to anybody, but it's still relevant in 2026. With most users interacting on mobile, your phone, every element from navigation to those CTAs, those call to actions that Meredith was just talking about, need to feel seamless. Think about your experience when you are on your phone looking at a website. Are you frustrated? Are you happy? Are you like you feel like, okay, I'm looking at this site, I understand this company, I'm able to get to what I need on my phone. That is so important. And like we used to say back in the day, well, the big decision's really gonna come down from the people who then like went to their desktop and you know, and converted. So we used to Yeah, exactly. Like we would used to be like, oh, look at all the people who came in through mobile and then left and then came back through desktop. You want to let people convert through their mobile device.

Meredith Medlin: 11:58

Convert while you have their attention, when they're on the phone, make it easy. Um, you know, chat feature form, phone call, make sure all of these are working on mobile. Yeah. A lot of times you see a great looking desktop experience. Don't assume it looks good on mobile. Yeah. A lot of times it doesn't. And that's why whoever you're working with should be designing your website with mobile responsiveness first of mind. Um, so make sure you take a look. Um while you're listening to this, this as long as you're not driving, of course, take a look on your phone, look at your own website, scroll through the pages, see what your experience is like, and um, you know, make sure it's up to par with what you're looking for and what you want your your customers to have. Exactly. Mm-hmm. This one's super important. Yes, this next one is big. Um, speed, accessibility, and technical performance. Also, not new news. It's not new news. Um, it is a necessary evil that we have to constantly stay on top of because your website changes constantly, not just when you add new content, but if you are keeping your website updated with plugins and all the technical things that you're paying somebody so you don't have to worry about, when they are updating these things, it has inadvertent effects. So making sure that you're always staying on top of the technical performance of your website is so crucial. Um, and you know, a good way if you want an action item right now, a good way to know, okay, well, how is my website performing if I should be so concerned about it? Yeah. Um, go to Google's Page Speed Insights.

Caitlyn Noble: 13:35

Free.

Meredith Medlin: 13:36

Um free tool, super um, super easy to use. All you have to do once you get there is put your URL in. Um, and it's gonna give you a score on mobile and on desktop. And this is super important. Those scores almost always are different. Um, it would not be surprising if your mobile score is lower than your desktop, that's okay. But we want that score to be in a healthy place. Google has some recommendations for you. So when you look at that report, it's gonna be color-coded nice and easy. Take a look at it. Um, and you may be asking, okay, well, this is just one tool. Why why should I trust this? Why does it matter? It's Google. It's Google. And where are the answer? It is. Okay, good it matters because it's Google. It is Google's prerogative to follow what their tools are saying to provide priority with Google ads when you're looking at um landing page experience for Google Business Profile um to show a website first with organic searches. If Google's native tool is saying this website performs really well, all of Google's platforms are gonna be more likely to show your website. So it behooves you to please the Google gods. And a great way to do that is by looking at page speed insights. Super simple. All you have to Google page speed insights.

Caitlyn Noble: 15:01

Um so we talked all about page speed here and like kind of technical performance, and it is black and white. Like once you plug your site in, it's gonna be a score. You get some numbers, yellow, green.

Meredith Medlin: 15:11

Um what about accessibility though? Yeah, so accessibility is something that um, you know, we should all as consumers be um aware of and concerned about. Um basically, how accessible is your website to a variety of users? Um, they may be hearing impaired, they may be vision impaired, um, they could have any number of other difficulties when visiting a traditional website. Accessibility tools are something that you can add on to your website. It should be very straightforward. And it provides a tool that lets any kind of um disability any kind of person with a disability view and experience your website the way it's supposed to be experienced.

Caitlyn Noble: 15:59

And the Google and the internet they love it. They love that. You're supposed to have that. In fact, like, not to like throw this out there, but I know many times there have been lawsuits because a site isn't accessible for somebody who is vision impaired.

Meredith Medlin: 16:14

Right. The ADA has a lot of compliance and rules and regulations. Um, but that may sound scary. The good news is there are tools that make it very easy to take care of it. Yes. Um, one that we really like and is actually one of our partners, shout out to Accessibility. Um they have a really easy-to-use tool that's super effective and immediately increases your accessibility scores. Yeah. Um, so check that out. We actually have a place on our website where you can get a free website accessibility audit. Um, if you go to fatcatstrategies.com, is your website ADA compliant? And we're gonna put that link in the show notes. Good luck typing that out. If you remember that, God bless you. Um but go there, go in the show notes, check it out. You'll get a free website audit and find out how accessible your website really is.

Caitlyn Noble: 17:07

And we can totally help you fix it. We can fix it. We can do it. If it's not accessible, if you love your agency, we can still help you fix that. Yeah, no worries. Um, the last thing to really look at in this section um in terms of strategies that are gonna keep working in 2026, uh, you have to continue to test and look at uh data and what mean like what that means. So conversion optimization isn't one and done, it's a process. You've got to use analytics, of course, heat maps, A-B test, and user feedback to prove that this is working. Right. Um we we have a tool that we love. Oh, yeah. Tell tell them about it. Hot jar. Yes, yes.

Meredith Medlin: 17:49

Hot jar, again, we're gonna go back to that note of um marketers are really creepy. Yes. Um, hot jar is a tool that allows you to actually record user experiences. Now, don't get it twisted. We're talking about the screen, just recording like where the mouse is going on the screen of a user to see what their user behavior is like. So if you have a landing page and you're sending ads there, yes, and it's really not converting, you're like, okay, I've had 500 people click on my ad and go to the website. Why am I not getting any nobody's converting? No forms are being submitted, no phones are being called. You put hot jar on the website, let the data track for a couple of days. When you go back and watch those recordings, you may find something shocking shocking, like the submit butt button does not work. Yeah. Or the phone number is not clicked to call. It literally makes me sick to my stomach to think about. Or there could be something where the mobile experience isn't what you thought it was, but this recording is going to catch it for you. So this kind of tool. I think it is. It is. They have a free plan. There's a paid for yeah. There's a paid version, but the free tool is super simple. Um, there's also hot jar alternatives. That's just the one that we have used as an agency for Clarity, I think, Microsoft, yeah. Um, so you've got some options there, but just make sure that you're checking in and doing those kinds of tests, looking at your analytics. Um frequently. It really is up to you, but what you should be doing is keeping an eye on your conversion rate and your click-through rate. Yeah. All keep an eye on your on your KPIs. If they start dropping or you launch a new landing page and something doesn't seem right, conversions are dropping, form fills are dropping, and it's not a seasonality thing. Exactly. Go ahead and take a look. Um, otherwise, you should be checking in on your data pretty regularly. Yeah. We check our clients' data daily, weekly, monthly, and we are always looking at trends. So make sure you're keeping an eye on that. And um, it never hurts to do a CRO audit.

Caitlyn Noble: 19:49

Which we also offer.

Meredith Medlin: 19:50

Which we also offer. So call us.

Caitlyn Noble: 19:54

Okay, we kind of tease this next section, but this is proven tactics and tools and just practices in general that are going to help improve your conversions without guessing. Meredith just talked about tools like Hotjar, Google Analytics does help monitor your, you know, website in general, uh, session recordings, like she was saying, to show where visitors drop off, what stopped them. Those are all free tools. They're no-brainers. You know, check them out, keep an eye on that. Yeah. Um, I'm just kind of flying through this, but another thing that's super important uh A B uh testing. So test headlines, layouts, forms, like the position of those forms, the fields of those forms. See what's actually moving the needle and like what feels right. Um I there are tools as well.

Meredith Medlin: 20:43

Um there are lots of landing page tools. Um, I feel like Unbounce recently came out with um a variation of their plan that allows for you to dynamically change out um the headline on a page and it will start serving the headline that performs better after a certain amount of time.

Caitlyn Noble: 21:00

So that's so that's different from the Google Ads trick exactly.

Meredith Medlin: 21:04

About this actually, this is just full-blown changing out a full headline and just seeing what performs better. So A B tests, you don't have to have a tool to do this. You can do this manually. Create two versions of one landing page with a different headline, different form placement, run them both, see which one has more conversions. Super simple way to do that. Um, and you know, we did also talk about the AI content, yeah. Or, you know, dynamic content. So make sure that if you are not using our secret trick, I hate to give it away, but we want to help you. Make sure you're using dynamic location class in your Google Ads. It's going to help your landing page performance. Um, and if you do that and you like what you see, we have a lot more tricks. So come back, talk to us.

Caitlyn Noble: 21:50

Yeah. Um real time engagement, super important. Live chat hasn't gone away. That's still really, you know.

Meredith Medlin: 21:56

It's almost a standard now.

Caitlyn Noble: 21:57

Yeah, it's helpful. You get those quick answers. Um, you know, without having to actually talk to somebody at your company and take their time if they're price shopping, et cetera. Those also qualify those leads for you, um, having those live chat spots.

Meredith Medlin: 22:14

Um then social proof, yep, trust signals, like we talked about earlier, um, having certifications, badges, um, real customer reviews, yeah, testimonial videos are amazing.

Caitlyn Noble: 22:26

Star ratings.

Meredith Medlin: 22:27

Um, that is really going to help increase your likelihood of having a conversion. So all of this was an effort, again, to talk about what actually works to generate more and better conversions on your website. Um, if you feel like you have a lot of conversions right now, but the quality isn't great, go listen to our last episode. If you can hear Meredith. If you can hear if you can hear me at all in it. Um, but I think Caitlin does have some good points in it. So you'll get half of the benefit. So go back and listen to it. Um, yeah.

Caitlyn Noble: 22:59

If your website isn't converting, like Meredith just said, um if you can hear her, and we're gonna whisper. You're gonna leave revenue on the table. So, Meredith, I'm gonna let you shout this from the rooftops.

Meredith Medlin: 23:15

Oh my God. All right, y'all. At Batcat Strategies, we specialize in building websites and conversion systems that actually work from messaging to analytics and AI personalization. We make sure we prioritize high quality conversions on your websites.

Caitlyn Noble: 23:34

Yeah, let's turn your website into a growth engine that delivers qualified leads and book jobs. Visit us fatcatstrategies.com. You can schedule a free discovery call.

Meredith Medlin: 23:45

All right. Thanks, guys.

Caitlyn Noble: 23:47

Thank you.

SPEAKER_00: 23:51

Digital marketing for contractors is created by Fat Cat Strategies. For more information, visit Fatcat Strategies.com