Somebody whose air conditioning has stopped wants to know two things from a contractor’s website: can you come, and when. We wanted to know how often the site answers the first question before asking for their details, so we read 105 of them.
We sell a service area checker, so we have an interest in the answer. We have reported what we saw and named no businesses.
What we looked at
105 websites: 35 HVAC, 35 plumbing and 35 electrical contractors across 21 US metro areas. 90 were independent businesses, taken from the top results of a search for each trade in each metro. 15 were location pages of national franchise brands. For each site we read the homepage, the service area page and the request or booking form, and recorded how the service area was described and where. We did not submit anything, enter an address, or contact anyone.
What we found
A list of towns is the default. 77 of 105 sites (73%) name the cities, towns or neighbourhoods they cover. For 37 (35%), that list is the most precise thing on the site.
Independent sites almost never offer a check. 5 of 90 independent sites (6%) had a ZIP code checker, and four of those five used the same page template. Counting maps and locators, 7 of 90 (8%) had anything interactive at all. We found at most one that appeared to check a full address.
Franchise pages are the exception. 14 of 15 franchise location pages had an interactive tool, either a ZIP locator in the header or a map with drawn boundaries. These come from a few brand templates, so the figure says more about those brands than about franchising.
ZIP codes are rarely how the area is stated. Only 8 of 90 independent sites (9%) described their area in ZIP codes, and 4 of 105 published a ZIP list. Visitors are left to work out whether their street is in a town that is listed, which is harder than it sounds where town and postal names differ.
The form comes first. 88 of 105 sites (84%) take a request or booking online, but only 9 (9%) put service area information directly above the form. Of the 80 forms we could read, 45 asked for the visitor’s address, ZIP or city. 30 of those 45 sites offered no way to check beforehand, so the visitor submits and the business decides afterwards, usually by phone.
One site in six leaves it vague. 16 of 105 (15%) offered only a phrase like “serving the metro and surrounding areas”, and 19 (18%) said to call if you were not sure.
On a third of sites the area is not on the homepage. For 34 of 105 (32%) it was only on a separate page, in the footer or in a menu. Among HVAC sites it was half: 17 of 35.
Why it matters
Every one of those 30 “submit first” forms produces some enquiries the business cannot take. Each one costs a call back or a rejection email, and the visitor has lost the time they could have spent finding someone who does cover them. Neither side is doing anything wrong; the site just asks the question in the wrong order.
The fix does not need to be elaborate. Putting the service area above the form helps. Letting the visitor type their address and get an answer helps more, because it settles the edge cases a town list cannot: the street on the far side of a boundary, the town with two postal names. That is what our service area checker does, and if your area is currently a ZIP list, the ZIP list audit will show you where that list and the map disagree.
Limitations
Each site was coded once, with no second independent check. We read pages as delivered, without running scripts, so a map or form that only appears once scripts load may have been missed. 49 sites used a third party booking tool that we did not open; some of those tools can check a ZIP code inside the booking flow, so the “no check” figure is an upper bound for those sites. “Directly above the form” was judged from the order of the page, not its visual layout. The independent sample is the top search results, which favours businesses that invest in their websites.