A 12-truck HVAC company in the Midwest. Family-owned, 18 years in business. Good reputation. Consistent revenue. And a website that was quietly costing them business every day.
Here's what we found and what we fixed.
The Starting Point
When they came to us, the numbers looked like this:
- Website traffic: ~800 visits/month
- Monthly web leads: 40-45
- Conversion rate: roughly 5%
- Average response time to a web lead: 6-8 hours
- After-hours lead capture: essentially zero
Revenue was solid but flat. The owner knew he was missing calls — he'd hear about it from customers who said they tried to reach him and went with someone else when nobody answered. He didn't know how systemic the problem was.
The Audit Findings
We ran their website through PageSpeed Insights. Mobile score: 31. Desktop: 58. It loaded in 7 seconds on mobile.
Their Google Business Profile had 34 reviews (mostly 5-star) but hadn't been updated in 18 months. Service descriptions were generic. No Q&A section. Photo count: 6.
Their website had a contact form buried on a "Contact Us" page. No call-to-action in the hero section. No live chat. The homepage headline said "Quality HVAC Service for [City] Area Homes."
Nobody was following up on form submissions systematically. The owner checked email when he could. Sometimes that was within the hour. Sometimes it was the next day.
What We Built
Phase 1: Website Overhaul (Weeks 1-2)
New homepage with:
- A headline that led with the emergency response guarantee: "Emergency HVAC Service — Most [City] Calls Answered in Under 2 Hours"
- Clear CTAs in the hero (call now + book online)
- Reviews embedded prominently (pulled their 5 best Google reviews)
- Service cards with benefit-focused descriptions
- A trust section with "Why Choose Us" that had specific, verifiable claims
Performance fixes:
- Images compressed and converted to WebP
- Migrated from shared hosting to a managed host
- Cloudflare CDN added
Result: mobile PageSpeed score went from 31 to 78. Load time from 7 seconds to under 2 seconds.
Phase 2: AI Intake and Lead Capture (Week 2-3)
Installed an AI chat widget that:
- Greeted visitors after 30 seconds on the site
- Asked about their HVAC issue (AC, heat, emergency, maintenance)
- For emergencies: immediately displayed the phone number and offered to connect
- For non-emergency: collected contact info and scheduled a call
- Was active 24/7 including nights and weekends
Also added a "Request Service" button that led to a simple 3-field form (name, phone, service needed) with confirmation going to both the homeowner and the operations team via text immediately.
Phase 3: Google Business Profile Overhaul (Week 3)
- Added 40+ photos (trucks, team, equipment, before/after)
- Rewrote every service description with local keywords
- Added 15 Q&A entries covering common customer questions
- Set up Google review automation: 24 hours after a job closed, a text message to the homeowner with a direct Google review link
Phase 4: Lead Response Automation (Week 3-4)
- All web form submissions → immediate text alert to the owner and office manager
- AI-drafted reply sent to prospect within 5 minutes confirming receipt and next step
- 24-hour follow-up if no appointment was booked
- 72-hour nurture email if still no response
The Results (90 Days After Launch)
| Metric | Before | After | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Monthly web leads | 42 | 87 | +107% |
| Average response time | 6-8 hours | Under 5 min | -97% |
| After-hours leads captured | ~5/month | ~18/month | +260% |
| Google reviews | 34 | 91 | +168% |
| Mobile PageSpeed score | 31 | 78 | +150% |
Ad spend: unchanged. Total monthly tool cost: $180.
The after-hours improvement was the biggest surprise. The owner hadn't realized how many people were hitting his website at 9pm with a broken AC and then calling the first business they found that would respond. Capturing those leads at all was essentially free money.
What Drove the Results
The performance improvement and conversion optimization drove more leads from existing traffic.
The AI chat captured leads that previously bounced — people who visited but wouldn't fill out a form or call.
The response automation meant they almost always talked to a prospect before the prospect called a competitor.
The Google profile overhaul drove additional organic traffic over the following 60 days as the improved profile and review volume lifted their local ranking.
No magic. Just a well-built stack.
The Owner's Take
"We'd been doing the same thing for 10 years and just accepted that the website didn't really do much. Turns out it was doing a lot — mostly for our competitors."
That's the pattern. Business owners assume the website is working because they don't see it failing. They don't see the 800 people per month who visited and left without contacting them.
A website that converts 5% loses 95% of visitors. Fix the website, fix the follow-up, run the automation — and that equation changes.
