Trimaco Floor Guards

TRIMACO E-Z Floor Guards™ work by easily placing a sheet of adhesive plastic film on the bottom of your shoe or boot to avoid tracking dirt and debris into a home or jobsite. Simply STEP, PULL and TEAR. No need to bend over and struggle to apply like traditional shoe covers. Going back outside? Don’t bother removing the film, just reapply a new layer as you re-enter the jobsite. Keep your home or jobsite clean with the easy to use and economical E-Z Floor Guards.

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4 Tips For Better Work Agreements

The work is the most important part of any contracting job, but your work agreement comes in hot as second. A contract is obviously important when it comes to avoiding costly lawsuits, but it’s more than just avoiding legal fees. A well-written work agreement will save you misunderstandings and the time, money, and frustrations attached to them. When it comes time to write your work agreement, there are four areas to keep in mind.

Services (aka The Work)

This part is basically an outline of the customer’s expectations and what you will be doing to meet them. Here you will lay out the details of the contracted work that lay out the “what,” “where,” and “how.” You also want to include the details on all the possible what-if’s that may come up during the work project. And should changes come up during the job, you’ll want to include cause for provisions so that you can write up an amendment to attach to your original agreement.   

Consider probable scenarios and clearly lay out the terms of how they will be addressed so that all risks and obligations are in writing. Should hiccups come along (ie. a color change halfway through the project, or a paint spill on pricey rugs due to the customer’s child), you’ll want to make sure that liability and accountability fall on the right party and you’re getting paid for the work you do.

There are many questions to consider in this section. Will you be providing all of the materials? Will other contractors be involved in the client’s overall project? What will constitute “agreed upon” work between you and the property owner? The clearer you are and the more specific ground you can cover, the lesser the chance of mishap. But remember to consider your clients needs as well as your own. They’ll likely push for things like an agreement with a satisfaction guarantee so that they’re not stuck suffering with any mistakes. Keep things fair by appointing liability and responsibility where it’s due.

Term & Termination (The Timeframe & Deadlines)

This part is pretty simple as it’s all about the time from start to completion, but be sure to give careful thought to your deadlines or time spans. Surprise damages and “acts of God” like weather can have a big impact on total project time, so address how probable factors will work into projected timelines and draft up any special amendment guidelines the project may need. Special attention is especially due to the causes for contract termination that may come up for either you or the property owner and the consequences of failing to meet your agreed times and terms. Such situations can get costly, so this could be a good place to address dispute resolution via mediation or arbitration rather than the courtroom.

Payment and Terms (How Much Money And When)

Estimating Software

This section is pretty self-explanatory, but because of the problems that arise with money, it requires thorough thought and care. Be clear on who pays whom, how much they pay, when they pay, and how they pay. Special situations like installment payments or payment upon client satisfaction need to lay out dates, times, and how satisfaction is determined. Aim to be as clear and detailed as possible — what county any disputes would be settled in, the amount and date of each installment, mediator of choice, penalties for late payments, and so on — so there aren’t any disastrous loopholes or areas for misunderstanding.   

Special Considerations (All The Extra Stuff)

Keep in mind that your work agreement will help you and your clients avoid potential problems, but it’s no substitute for regular communication. Determine the best way for you and your customers to discuss progress, mishaps, or the present agenda. This gives them the opportunity to raise any questions or concerns which will help shave down misunderstandings and surprise project remorse.

The same benefits of communication will extend to you and your team by joining at the start of each day with a simple, to-the-point work huddle. When it comes down to doing a job right, clear communication is always the way to go. Don’t make any assumptions. Instead, ask questions and make sure everyone is feeling good about the work that’s taking place. You may need to invest time and creativity in the beginning, but it will save you, your team, and your customers plenty in time, money, and energy later on.

 

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Top Interior Painting Mistakes

Common Mistakes Made on Interior Paint Jobs, and How to Fix Them

Many people rush their interior painting job – maybe it’s the inconvenience of putting the use of a room on hold, or having to take off work to get it done – and rushing leads to mistakes. Although hiring painting contractors is almost always the best choice for getting your paint job right the first time, our professionals have gathered a few  quick fixes for correcting common mistakes made on a rush job:

Paint drips

At some point during an interior painting job, it’s likely you have put too much paint on the roller or inconsistently spread paint on the wall. The drips caused by these mistakes may not be noticeable until the paint has dried, and at that point it may seem too late to fix the error. Luckily there is an easy solution: use a fine-grade sandpaper to remove the drips and then clean the area thoroughly. You can then go over the drip-free area with paint and primer. No one will ever know!

Wall stains

Typically indicative of improper priming, you fortunately don’t need to sand any paint off to fix a stain. Simply brush some stain-blocker over the affected areas and paint over it once it has dried. You may want to bring in painting contractors if you notice your walls are easily stained. The professionals should be able to identify the cause of your stains and recommend a course of action if there’s a larger issue at hand (like mildew).

Tape tears

If you started removing your painter’s tape and tear off some of the new paint in the process, have no fear! Maybe you waited too long to take the tape off, or maybe the room was too warm and the tape fused to the paint. Either way, the solution is simple for this interior painting mistake: just use a sharp blade to cut the tape away from the lifting paint, then sand, clean, prime and paint until the area is covered.

Carpet spills

Maybe you forgot to put down a drop cloth, or maybe it just shifted throughout the day and exposed some of your carpet. Either way, if your carpet is exposed to a paint spill you need to soak up as much of the paint as possible before it dries. A clean, dry sponge will collect much of the paint and a scraper can do the rest. Gentle dish detergent can be used to clean out any remaining spots on the material. Preserving your flooring is a great reason to hire painting contractors, as they have the equipment and expertise to prevent accidents.

Painting your home might seem like an easy job, but there are several common errors that can be easily avoided if you hire painting contractors. However, if professionals aren’t in your budget, these quick fixes should help you in the event of a mishap, so you can still enjoy your paint job without always seeing that drip or spill you made when rushing to get your kids to soccer practice. If you’re set on doing the job yourself, it always helps to be prepared!

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6 Summer Exterior Painting Tips

Beautify Your Home This Summer with Help from the Exterior Painting Experts

As the spring rains reach their end and you’ve finally shaken off those winter blues, you may notice your home’s exterior could use a little love. The harsh conditions of winter can wreak havoc on your exterior paint job, leaving your home in need of a colour touch-up or even a complete overhaul. A fresh coat of paint on your home can make you the envy of the neighbourhood, boost your curb appeal (particularly if you are looking to sell), and just generally make you feel proud of the house you live in. If you choose the right day, the summer is the perfect time to get some exterior painting done—here are some tips to help you along:

Mind the Weather

For obvious reasons, you shouldn’t paint your exterior on a rainy day. But there’s more for you to consider weather-wise than just the rain—heat and humidity can play a huge role in the success of your paint job as well. Ideally, you should paint on a day with low humidity and a temperature in the mid-twenties. In fact, a cloudy or overcast day is considered the best day to paint your home’s exterior. These conditions help ensure that your paint dries properly without blistering.

Mix Your Cans

If you need multiple cans of paint to get the job done, then there’s a possibility of slight colour or texture variations from can to can, even with the same colour of paint! This can lead to an uneven finish on your exterior painting job. Instead of using up one can of paint before moving on to the next, use a large, clean drum or bucket to mix the cans together and create an even,  consistent colour using the paint from all your cans.

Get Off to a Clean Start

Remove peeling paint from your home’s exterior, wash all the surfaces you plan on painting, and sand down any surface that’s not smooth. Exterior house paint adheres best to a clean, smooth surface; and since a paint job can’t hide any surface imperfections found on the area you plan to cover with paint, it’s important to give your walls a little love before you get started.

Start from the Top

Unlike with many other things, you should never start a paint job from the bottom. Because paint can run, as you move up the exterior walls you can produce streaks and dribbles over the already-painted sections. By starting from the top of your surface instead, you’ll cover up these streaks more easily as you move downwards, ensuring a smooth finished texture to your paint job.

Follow the Shade

Direct sunlight is bad for drying paint as it can cause the paint to blister from becoming too warm. If you’re planning your day around painting, then think about how the sun rotates around your home and paint each section as it’s in the shade as much as possible.

Contract Professionals

Whether because you are busy or just overwhelmed, or even if you simply don’t like paint jobs, you can always call an exterior painting professional for help with painting your home this summer. These professionals have the skills and experience to give your home the treatment it deserves!

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Letting Data Drive the Decisions

As a digital marketing consultant, I rely heavily on clickstream analysis tools, like Google Analytics, to gain actionable insight for my clients.

Data from these reports allows me to review which channels, devices, and campaigns are driving new leads, and where to best allocate time and marketing budget. While Google Analytics isn’t the only tool available for tracking your marketing campaigns, I’m partial to it as it’s free and easy to install and configure.

Here are five reports and tool features you can use to assist you in making data driven decisions.

1. Channels

The Channels report provides you with a high-level overview of which online marketing channels are leading to new visitors and leads.

Here’s an overview of a few different channels that can be used to evaluate the performance of your marketing campaigns in Google Analytics:

Direct

These visits are logged anytime a visitor types the exact URL of a page on your website into their browser, or uses a bookmark to access your site. Direct visits can assist you in measuring the overall popularity and awareness of your brand. These visitors are already familiar with your business.

How it’s actionable:

This report is great for evaluating how various marketing campaigns are leading to brand awareness (e.g. did you pay for a radio spot that mentions your homepage URL? Do you have a billboard? Did you send out a flyer?) Measure both online and offline campaign performance by adding an annotation in Google Analytics. Learn more about direct traffic here.

Organic Search

These are visitors that have found your business via a search engine including Google, Yahoo, Bing, AOL or Ask.

How it’s actionable:

Use this report to analyze what pages are receiving organic search traffic and leading to new estimate requests or calls. This report can help you understand how your search engine optimization efforts are improving your business’ visibility and bottom line in organic search. Don’t forget to associate your Google Search Console account so you can view the queries (keywords) that are leading to new organic sessions.

Social
These visitors have come to your site via a social channel including Facebook, Houzz, Yelp, Google+ and more.

How it’s actionable:

While there are many metrics you can use to help evaluate how well your social media marketing strategy is working, one that I find valuable is how many people are clicking through back to your website. Using this metric as a KPI, helps me understand if we’re reaching the right audience and if our sharing and engagement is leading to visits back to our website.  Using this report can help you understand where you should be spending your time on social media.

Referral

These visitors have accessed your site via a link on a 3^rd party website or blog.

How it’s actionable:

Who is sending you qualified traffic? Have you run an ad, published a guest post, actively contribute to a forum, or have a partner or affiliate that’s linking back to your website? The referral report will help you understand which advertising efforts and relationships are bringing in new leads and sales.

Paid Search

This report shows you how your paid ads on Google AdWords, Bing Ads or other paid search providers are leading to new visitors and goal completions. If you’re running a Google AdWords campaign, make sure your Google Analytics and Google AdWords accounts are linked.

How it’s actionable:

What type of experience are your landing pages providing? Is the traffic converting? If so, from what keywords? Is your PPC campaign acting as a touch point in your customer’s online journey to purchase? Use this report to find out.

2. Goal Completions

Increasing traffic is only half the battle. Increasing traffic that converts is how you win the war. Tracking all desired visitor actions like estimate requests via form completions, downloads, phone calls, etc. is vital for understanding how well your digital marketing campaigns are working.

To track these interactions I set up a goal, which allows me see who’s converting and from what channels. To track phone calls, Congruent Digital uses CallRail, a dynamic call tracking solution that easily integrates with Google Analytics.

3. Mobile

With mobile searches surpassing desktop searches in Google last year, having a website that’s optimized for mobile visitors is essential. In a recent Google Performance Summit, AdWords execs shared some surprising statistics including:

• There are now trillions of searches on Google.com and over half of those searches happen on smartphones
• Nearly one third of all mobile searches on Google are related to location

In Google Analytics, view your mobile visits by either using the left navigation option and selecting Audience > Mobile > Overview or use the advanced segment option to filter for mobile visitors only. When viewing these reports, questions to ask are:

• How does the time on site, bounce rate, and goal completions compare with desktop visitors?
• Is contacting us easy on mobile devices (do you have a click-to-call feature?)
• Are your forms mobile friendly?

Google just updated their existing mobile ranking algorithm which is supposed to provide an additional rankings boost to websites that are mobile friendly.

Not sure if your website is mobile friendly? Try Google’s free Mobile Friendly Test tool here. You can also use the free tool Screenfly to see how your website appears across multiple devices.

4. Location

Understanding how to segment and filter your data by location can make it more insightful. While not a hard and fast rule, typically traffic from outside of your service area won’t convert and can skew important metrics in your Google Analytics reports.

Also, getting tons of traffic from a blog post is great, but if it’s not coming from your local service area, in my experience chances are slim it will lead to new business.

Tip: set up an advanced segment or filter to help you understand which channels are leading to new visitors from the cities and towns from your service area. Make sure you are localizing your landing pages so that you’re sending clear signals to search engines about the cities and towns that you serve.

5. Landing Pages

Channels aside, regardless of how a potential customer finds you online, the experience your landing pages provide is crucial to acquiring new leads. A landing page is defined by Google Analytics as the first page a visitor views during a session – also known as the entrance page. If your website’s landing pages are providing a poor visitor experience, you’ll be wasting money paying for advertising and marketing services.

You can find the Landing Pages report by navigating to Behavior > Site Content > Landing Pages. Important metrics to look at when evaluating the experience you’re providing visitors are:

• Bounce Rate: Bounce rate is defined as a session that only visits one page. A high bounce rate, a low session duration, and no goal completions can all be red flags
• Avg. Session Duration: this metric is defined as the total duration of all sessions (in seconds) / number of sessions. If you’re avg. session duration is low, it could indicate visitors aren’t quickly finding the information they are looking for
• Goal Completions: a goal is any desired visitor interaction. While the online path to purchase can often span multiple sessions as your customers do research, if you’re doing a good job of explaining who you are, what you do, and why you’re a better solution than your competitors, eventually potential customers will want to talk.

Wrapping it Up

Whew, that’s a lot and I’ve only scratched the surface of the reports and features available in this powerful tool. Having data that’s actionable is worth its weight in gold.

If you have questions about implementing anything I’ve mentioned, or would like to learn more about Congruent Digital’s online marketing services, you can email me here. I look forward to learning more about your business!

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Brian Jensen

Brian Jensen is the CEO at Congruent Digital, a full-service online marketing agency that provides clients with a data-driven approach to search engine optimization, social media, content marketing and pay-per-click advertising.

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Give Your Garden A Makeover This Summer

Refresh Your Garden This Summer As we continue to enjoy the sunshine, we get to spend more time outside and when the outside of our home isn’t up to scratch, it can cast some shade on your outdoor entertaining. To help you make the best of the exterior of our home, here are some tips …

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Stay Put Drops

300% more slip resistant than 8oz canvas, the Stay Put™ Canvas by Trimaco gives you slip-resistant protection that stays put. The drop consists of two layers—absorbent canvas and a durable non-slip backing. Use the canvas side up to keep tracking to a minimum. Protect your jobsite with the Stay Put™ Canvas.

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