PortaPottyBossPro Blog — Running a Porta Potty Business

Turning Your Porta Potty Business Website Into Booked Rentals

Most portable toilet companies have a website. Fewer have a website that brings in work. The difference is usually not design. It is whether a visitor can quickly understand what you offer, ask for what they need, and hear back fast.

Why the Website Matters Now

Event customers in particular find you by searching, as covered in Getting More Event Bookings for Your Porta Potty Business. Homeowners doing a remodel do the same. Even contractors who were referred to you will often look at your site before they call. Your website is often the first impression, and sometimes the only one before the customer decides whether to call.

What to Put on the Site

Keep it simple and useful. A visitor should be able to find these things in a few seconds:

• The area you serve, by town or county
• What you rent: standard units, deluxe flushing, ADA accessible, high-rise or crane units, hand wash stations, restroom trailers
• Who you serve: construction, events, homeowners
• How weekly service works and what a rental includes
• How to request service or get a quote
• Your phone number, in big text, at the top

Real photos of your units and trucks beat stock photos. A clean, stocked unit on a real job site tells a customer more than a paragraph of copy.

The Request Form

The most important thing on the site is the request form. Keep it short. Ask for name, phone, email, address of the site, date needed, how long, and what kind of units. Add a notes box for anything else. Every extra field you add costs you some requests.

In PortaPottyBossPro, website request forms flow into Form Responses. The office sees each request in one place, with everything the customer entered. From there the office can build an estimate from the service list and send it. The customer approves online, and the approved estimate becomes scheduled services.

The Sign-Up Form

Some customers already know what they want. A homeowner needs one unit for a six-week remodel. A small builder wants two units with weekly service. For them, a sign-up form is faster than a quote. The sign-up form lets the customer choose services, see your pricing and enter a card, which is captured with the sign-up. One click in the office converts a sign-up into a client. The card is on file before the first delivery.

Customers who use the customer app can also sign up for services and see pricing there, which is handy for adding a unit or a hand wash station to an existing site.

Answer Fast

A website request that waits until tomorrow is often a request someone else already answered. Check Form Responses several times a day, especially in event season. Reply by text if the customer gave a mobile number. Two-way texting from the office keeps the conversation tied to the customer, so anyone in the office can pick it up.

A simple rule helps: every request gets a real answer the same business day, even if the answer is a question.

Make the Site Easy to Find

A good site does nothing if nobody finds it. Make sure your business shows up on maps with the right hours, phone and service area. Ask happy customers for reviews. List the specific towns you serve on the site, in plain words. Write a few useful pages about the questions customers actually ask, like how many units an event needs or what weekly service includes. Keep the site updated when you add units or areas.

Track What Works

Ask every new customer how they found you, and write it down. Over a season you will see whether the website, referrals, job site signs or something else brings in your best work. Put your time and money into what works. The next article, Reviews and Referrals for a Porta Potty Business, covers two of the strongest sources.

Keep It Honest

Do not promise what the trucks cannot deliver. If you only serve certain counties, say so. If event weekends book up, say to book early. A customer who reads an honest site and then gets exactly that is a customer who comes back.

Mobile First

Most visitors will see your site on a phone, often standing on a job site or sitting in a car between errands. Check it on your own phone. Can you find the phone number without scrolling? Does the request form work with a thumb? Does a tap on the number start a call? A site that looks good on a desktop and frustrates on a phone is losing requests every week without you knowing it.

Keep pages fast and plain. Big images that take ten seconds to load on a weak signal send people back to the search results, where your competitor's page is one tap away.

To see how website requests, estimates and sign-ups flow into the rest of the system, visit the Porta Potty Business Software page.