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In this episode of Owned and Operated, we dive into how the team is leveraging Contractor Commerce to bring e-commerce to the trades. From selling water heaters online to experimenting with lead conversion strategies, the hosts explore what it looks like to run an online storefront for big-ticket home service items like HVAC systems and home generators.
They break down the full journey—from initial impressions and setup to real-world implementation—and share the ups and downs of paid ad campaigns, membership features, and online payments. Plus, they speculate on how consumers may shift toward buying home services online and what they’re doing to stay ahead of the curve.
Whether you're curious about tech integrations or looking to streamline your sales funnel, this episode is full of firsthand insight into launching an e-commerce experience in the home services space.
🚨 In This Episode, We Cover:
🔹 Implementing E-Commerce for Trades: Lessons Learned
🔹 Online Sales of HVAC Systems and Generators
🔹 How Contractor Commerce Converts Web Traffic
🔹 Paid Ad Campaign Outcomes and Adjustments
🔹 Using Online Payments and Membership Tools
🔹 Future Testing and Strategy Optimization
🎙️ Hosts:
🗣️ John Wilson
🗣️ Jesse Reyes
🧰 Contractor Commerce
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✅ Engage more new customers and serve existing ones better
✅ Build a scalable, year-round revenue stream—auto-shipping filters, booking installs, and more
🚨 Special Offer: Get your first 60 days FREE
Thousands of contractors are already doing it. Don’t get left behind.
Episode 200 Transcript
John Wilson: [00:00:00] Now, we told the folks from Contractor Commerce that we were gonna talk about it today, and they helped out by giving us a ridiculous promo. They're giving 60 days free if you click on the link below. So huge savings. Awesome thing to just test out. In the episode, Jesse and I unpack what the first couple months has looked like, how we're using it, how we're thinking about it, how we're testing it, uh, and it was a great conversation.
So head over to contract your commerce.com/owned and operated to claim your 60 free days. Besides that, enjoy the show.
Welcome back to Owned and Operated. Today on the show we have Jesse from Wilson. Welcome to the show.
Jesse Reyes: Oh, happy to be here.
John Wilson: Yeah, this is fun. We had, uh, we had Lori on earlier this week. We're hoping to, like over time bring more and more people on. I think it'll be kind of fun to sort of like talk about what we're doing.
So, uh, today we're talking [00:01:00] about e-commerce and the trades, which is something we've been messing around with for. Three months, four months. About two and a half I think. Yeah. So how about you start us off with like what we've been doing, like initial thoughts?
Jesse Reyes: Sure. So we, I feel like e-commerce has more or less been on our radar for like a year or more.
I
John Wilson: feel like most
Jesse Reyes: contractors
John Wilson: think they need to do it.
Jesse Reyes: Yeah. What,
John Wilson: whether or not they do is maybe arguable, but they think they need to.
Jesse Reyes: Yeah. It's, it's been on our brain for a while. We just didn't really have. Capacity or like an easy way to kind of
John Wilson: mm-hmm.
Jesse Reyes: Dip our toes into it. And then about two and a half months ago, we signed one with contractor commerce and their platform.
Mm-hmm. And what they, what they kinda offer is sort of an out of the box solution for e-comm, uh, which works really well with our current context. 'cause there's not a lot of upfront like work on our end currently [00:02:00] we're. Only using it for online estimates, specifically for any kind of large equipment piece.
John Wilson: Yeah. Um, like
Jesse Reyes: water
John Wilson: heater,
Jesse Reyes: water heaters, uh, home generators, hvac, AC furnace. I think those are currently the three that we do. You can certainly do more. Um, but those are the three we we chose to start out with and more or less. Uh, the way it works currently is there's a button on our website or landing page.
Mm-hmm. And usually just with a call to action about a free, free estimate, free online estimate, instant estimate, that kind of thing. The visitor clicks on it, and then it just kind of walks them through what I would call a quiz. Which is what I think a lot of traditional e-com sites would call it. Yeah.
And it basically just asks you a series of qualifying questions. One of the first ones being where are you? So make sure they're in your service area, but then it'll, [00:03:00] it'll ask if it's hvac, they're gonna ask for some of the data about your house. How, how big is the square footage? What type of heat? What type of heat are you looking for?
Uh, where is the unit? That kind of thing. So they kind of just click the multiple choice. And walk, walk through this quiz. And then at the end, based on the data that the customer supplied, it'll give you or give the customer a range of options.
John Wilson: Mm-hmm.
Jesse Reyes: Those options are sort of preset by us and a contractor.
Commerce allows a certain logic to where if they answer this, they'll be shown that. Um, and we're, we're currently doing three choices, I believe. Each choice will be instead of the full price of the equipment, we just have an as low as per month, um, type thing. And yeah, so we, we've been doing that for about two and a half months.
That's not the only thing that contract commerce does.
John Wilson: What else do they, do?
Jesse Reyes: They, they also [00:04:00] have the ability to sell equipment, I believe, on their platform.
John Wilson: Like direct, like swipe a card,
Jesse Reyes: correct. Yeah, they can process payments. They also have the ability to, something that I think they do with a lot of contractors is they'll set up a, a filter for HVAC subscription type thing, and then they, oh, I think that's how they started.
Yeah. I think, I don't think we're doing that though. No. And uh, they also, the only other thing they'll do is, um, memberships, if you have an annual membership, they'll allow you to, on my side, sell those through their, to their portal essentially.
John Wilson: Yeah. I, I think, you know, I saw this company years ago. Um, they're local.
I'm trying to remember their name, but they had like a store built in, which I thought was kind of interesting. I, I think I like the transparency part. I don't know that it, I don't, I don't know that customers have cared that much. We do get leads like, it, it does [00:05:00] drive traffic, which I guess we could talk about, but I remember thinking.
Like 10 years ago, like, oh man, this is cool. Like, they have their pricing out there, but I, I don't know that anybody looks, and I think with ai, I think it becomes even less, uh, of a thing. And have we in, have we figured out how the shop interfaces with like chat gt
Jesse Reyes: in what way? Exactly. As far as like a generative experience type thing
John Wilson: or?
Yeah, like, well, will it, will chat GBT, like give us credit for having an additionally like helpful site?
Jesse Reyes: Oh, you're, you're talking on the Okay. As far as like, uh, optimization to appear peer and AI results
John Wilson: an a EO or whatever. Yeah. Is that what they're calling
Jesse Reyes: It's got a couple, yeah. Couple names these days.
I don't know if like, specifically having a eCom portal wouldn't necessarily help a home service company rank in ai. Mm-hmm. Currently, and I don't know that anyone has the authoritative, definitive, uh, [00:06:00] kind of definition of what will. Gets you to show up in in AI searches. 'cause it's still very new. It's very, yeah.
Um, AI is also generative, so where it may not show you the same thing twice and the models are different, that kind of thing. But as far as showing up in ai, a lot of the initial research and it's very initial, essentially what I've kind of blamed is that it's very close to sort of the same best practices for SEO.
Mm-hmm. And that's because AI is pulling from the internet. It's just mass searching the places that it, that it pulls from. It's, it's gonna look for authority ratings. Yeah. Reviews, listings from other, from anything that would be, uh, approved or like an authoritative database on local businesses. Mm-hmm.
That kind of thing. Um, certainly any kind of mentions from, uh, high authority news websites or anything like that. So a lot of the. Sort of current theories [00:07:00] for what, you know, show helps you show up in AI is very similar to SEO right now that Yeah. Could very much change in the future.
John Wilson: No, that tracks, okay.
So we put, we put this prebuilt e-commerce stand website. What happened? So
Jesse Reyes: the, the first month we, we very much very literally just threw it on our website. Mm-hmm. Um, didn't really push it at all. And, and I, I would say that was like the phase one, which was just get it up and running, let's, mm-hmm. Let's see what it does.
And in that month time, I think we got around 50 or so we'll call 'em leads that came in.
John Wilson: And leads is kinda like relative.
Jesse Reyes: Yeah. So, um, I, I would call them. Leads once they're in contractor commerce and we get their information that they submit.
John Wilson: Yeah. I don't They interface with
Jesse Reyes: the quiz. Yeah. Um, I don't know that I would call them.[00:08:00]
I would call contractor commerce. A lead gen source. Like if you're thinking about an Angie or these aren't necessarily new leads at this point, it's just someone was already on the website anyways. Most probably they were. This is like a capture tool, correct.
John Wilson: Like how do we convert better?
Jesse Reyes: But, so yeah, we saw around 50 that just clicked the button essentially and filled out the quiz.
Um, of that we had about 30%, uh, result in the book job. And then there was, so was that 16, 17, uh, thereabout, I think. Yeah. That feels, I mean, that feels pretty good. It's. If you're comparing it to like a form lead from a lead aggregator, that would be really good. If you're,
John Wilson: do we know, like do we know what our leads off our website was the previous month?
Because that would be the measurement I guess. Like did we access more leads? 'cause we probably didn't have zero leads the month before. Mm-hmm. Like we probably had like some amount.
Jesse Reyes: Yeah. And that and that, that, I think that's the right way [00:09:00] to look at it. And I, I would probably look at sales first, like website sales.
Mainly because we have the phone number, like due to jump, we have the phone number on the website. So like if you're counting the calls as a lead, then yes. But what I would like to see is a jump in website sales from this new. Mm-hmm. Ideally, this qualifies the people better. Yeah. And hopefully incentivizes them too, you know?
John Wilson: Yeah. Yeah. They feel like they have more decisions in their buying journey or like more information in their buying journey.
Jesse Reyes: Yep. Um, another thing we saw is a smaller portion. I forget the number exactly, but you, you, we would see this thing where they would, they'd fill out the journey before or after they booked a totally different job.
John Wilson: Um, yeah. Yeah.
Jesse Reyes: And I think, my guess is that most likely they were already coming to our website for the job that they booked. Mm-hmm. They saw the bug. They were just curious. And they were, yeah. And they were curious, which is not a bad thing. Like they have information now. It gets us in, [00:10:00] uh, gets them in our system, we can follow up with them.
John Wilson: Now, is that going into, like, is that going into our automation for coupons or cold calling or is that going into that?
Jesse Reyes: So currently it's, it's going to two places at the same time and it'll go through our hatch automation, which we'll follow up with SMS and email. And then on the other side, at the, pretty much instantaneously it will also.
Ping call center. Yeah. So that A CSR can call them directly, reach out and say, Hey, saw you fill out this form, are you interested in it? Um, and essentially offer usually a, uh, in home free estimate
John Wilson: has, and no one's tried to actually buy just straight on the website yet. No. And we don't have that option activating.
Oh, gotcha. I dunno, I, I think, I think we all think that consumers want that. I dunno that they do.
Jesse Reyes: Yeah, I, and I think [00:11:00] that's, that's really the main question I'm trying to answer by using contractor commerce on our website. Again, the first month we literally just threw it up there and didn't push it at all.
Yeah. Um, the second month we, well, we started to mess with verification where they have to verify their number, that kind of thing. But starting this month and going forward, uh, what we're actually trying to do is push the online quote or estimate. When I say push, um, but we're talking about it in some of our, um, media ads, tv, radio.
Yeah. That kind of thing. And then also we have a PPC campaign specifically for hvac.
John Wilson: Mm-hmm.
Jesse Reyes: And it's an option on the landing page. Um, and we've, we've got it to connect to Google to kind of. If optimized for that action. If it sees it, yeah. But it's one option, uh, alongside calling us or just scheduling directly [00:12:00] online.
And so far we haven't really seen a lot of activity on the PPC lander for the contractor commerce, you know, free online estimate.
John Wilson: How, how into budget are we, like how much have we spent, uh, month to date to
Jesse Reyes: about. 2,800 and then
John Wilson: so we've sent traffic.
Jesse Reyes: Yeah. There's been thousands, like it's thousands now.
This campaign's new. So that traffic
John Wilson: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Jesse Reyes: Is getting whittled down to be better. So it's a lot of,
John Wilson: also thousands is kind of crazy. Yeah. I mean, I mean, as far as like a cost per click, that feels like low.
Jesse Reyes: Yeah. And, uh, it'll, that's what we would expect to see if we're launching a new campaign. It kind of just like a buck.
Getting the data
John Wilson: a bucket click.
Jesse Reyes: It depends. I think it depends on the market. Depends on what exactly kind of keywords you're, you're optimizing for. But the
John Wilson: idea is, I would assume, like HVAC install quote, like I would assume that's like 30 bucks [00:13:00] a click or something ridiculous. Yeah, but
Jesse Reyes: they're, they're not gonna be targeting just that they, yeah.
They'll be targeting a giant family of various keywords, and so that traffic will be really high at first and then they'll kind of whittle down. Yeah. On what's working, what's not, that kind of thing. But yeah, we, from the PPC, we've, we've seen not a lot of activity for the online. Mm-hmm. Estimate. It seems to be that those people from that traffic source, PPC, they're very much trying to get someone today, as soon as possible, something's broke.
Yeah. They're not shopping around necessarily, which is a good thing. Yeah. Um, and I, I don't think that. Necessarily means that contractor commerce is bad or people don't want it. I just think that's specific. Well,
John Wilson: it's a different state of urgency.
Jesse Reyes: Yeah.
John Wilson: Yeah. 'cause I think what, what I've noticed as far as like when people are going through the quizzes is it's, it seems to be activating buying behavior at like 9:00 PM I, I think that, I think that's what their data said before we [00:14:00] got onto, it's like, yeah, people will be like Sunday at 11, or you know, they're watching TV and they start.
For some reason looking for first and like, I've personally never done that, but apparently our customers do. So they'll start like just looking and seeing what the options are. 'cause there's a, there's a lot of really interesting like, Hey, you got a lead text after 5:00 PM
Jesse Reyes: it, it was funny too, we had, before we kind of nailed down the procedure with call center.
John Wilson: Yeah.
Jesse Reyes: Our offshore call takers who usually do the after hours stuff. Yeah, yeah. They would see the lead come in and they would just call immediately.
John Wilson: Oh sure.
Jesse Reyes: I listened to a call, came in. It was like 10 o'clock at night. A guy requested a water heater and so they, they were called immediately and the guy was like, you're calling people at 10:00 PM And the, the CSR was like, yeah, and we booked the job.
Like, ah, yeah, we got it.
John Wilson: Nailed it.
Jesse Reyes: It was, it was funny.
John Wilson: We, we've, I think that has been interesting as we've gotten a surprising amount of water heaters from it. Mm-hmm. I think as far as like job numbers, so far, more [00:15:00] water heaters than. Hvac.
Jesse Reyes: Yeah. And I, I don't know what the exact ratio is, but that that is correct.
Now, hvac being hvac, it still has the more of the sales, like the actual dollars. Yeah. Yeah. Numerically we are, we are seeing more water heaters. Yeah.
John Wilson: So far ROAS has been a win. Like if we look at it as like our ad spend being the subscription. It's kind of been a big one.
Jesse Reyes: It's significant. I'm trying to do math in my head, but it's,
John Wilson: mm-hmm.
Well, well, what did we drive last month? Off contractor commerce?
Jesse Reyes: Uh, last month being March, I think it was around 40. Yeah, 40. 40 grand. So that feels good.
John Wilson: Yeah. Well, what about April?
Jesse Reyes: Oh, yeah, that, sorry. March was 40, April was 20. And then this month, currently we're halfway through May. Uh, we've broken 10, 10 grand.
So. But it looks like we're at least on pace for 20 through it, so
John Wilson: yeah. Yeah, that feels pretty good. [00:16:00] Do you think we are unusual, I think for the trades because of how much web traffic we have, we have a lot of web traffic. I mean obviously that helps, but like what's your take on that?
Jesse Reyes: Uh, I think it depends on the quality of the traffic.
Um,
John Wilson: yeah. 'cause some of ours is not.
Jesse Reyes: Yeah. It depends where the traffic's coming from. And PPC is a great example. The current campaign that we have running, uh, seems to be optimizing for people who are urgently looking for an HVAC replacement, which is great that traffic would theoretically do well. You know, when you get into just the organic traffic of the website, it's gonna depend heavily on.
There could be a source where people are searching for you directly through your brand. Yep. It's a good source to have. Mm-hmm. But they also may be searching you for a multitude of reasons. Um, also if you, if you're doing [00:17:00] SEO and you have any kind of content that's maybe more general and not specific to your service area.
John Wilson: Yep.
Jesse Reyes: Which is a, a tactic, uh, I see a lot that companies do, where you'll just, you know, what's the optimal temperature for your thermostat? Mm-hmm.
John Wilson: I mean, we have a ton of that.
Jesse Reyes: Yeah. And it, I wouldn't say it's,
John Wilson: it's bad, but, um, I think it, I think it's meant to get, well, it gets traffic, but I think more importantly, like it's something to link to.
At least that's how I think about that type of content where it's like gen, I mean this is like five year ago, SEO, but it's like. Hey, we're gonna put an informative blog and then we'll run a backlink from USA today to it and boom, we got da.
Jesse Reyes: Yeah, I mean, um, backlinks are, are hugely powerful and good. I think it's just don't expect those kind of articles to be produced.
Yeah. The traffic that gets the jobs booked. Um,
John Wilson: yeah. I have a friend that has double our traffic and like we already have a lot. Mm-hmm. He [00:18:00] has double, so like that's 30,000 hits a month and. Uh, no revenue off
Jesse Reyes: the site. Yeah. And that, that's the case in point. 'cause when you get in those general keywords, you're getting traffic potentially from all across the country.
Yeah. Yeah. Doesn't necessarily help you if you're a local.
John Wilson: Alright. So we put it on there. We've gotten positive roas. I think we're still like testing, we're trying to run more traffic to it. Basically seeing what more reps looks like. Mm-hmm. Like does volume increase leads? Which we're still early on that, so we haven't like totally determined.
I would assume it does. I, I'm curious what like other contractors are doing with contractor commerce, like how many leads they get versus their traffic. Like how many people start clicking on the funnel.
Jesse Reyes: Mm-hmm. I think that would just be interesting. Yeah, and I think too, we still have some optimization within contractor commerce itself, I think.
Mm-hmm. Just off the top of my head, probably our follow up sequence is one we just [00:19:00] threw up to get it started. Yeah, I think that's been looked at that can probably be improved. And then, uh, contractor commerce does give you some ability to put content in that journey as far as like more information, images, that kind of thing.
Um, and I think that could also be helpful. Um, uh, something that I want to do that we haven't done yet is when they complete. The journey essentially. Mm-hmm. They get a page that says, Hey, this is what happens next. Yeah. This is what to expect.
John Wilson: Yeah.
Jesse Reyes: We don't really have that. They're filling it out and it's like, okay, you'll hear from us.
And that's like, you know, so I think things like that could also help. Mm-hmm. Um, but yeah, we'll, we'll see how impactful it'll be when we get there.
John Wilson: That's great. Alright, any last thoughts on contractor commerce or even e-commerce from the trades? I think the biggest
Jesse Reyes: thing is really figuring out. Do customers want these features from a home service company?
And if they do, how do they want them and when do they want them? Which again, that's in my [00:20:00] mind, a lot of the experimentation that we're doing is trying to answer that question.
John Wilson: Yeah.
Jesse Reyes: Um, I, as something that I've heard other people say is, well, people buy cars off the internet. Why wouldn't they buy HVAC or water heaters off the internet?
And theoretically, yeah, they're both really high ticket items. I think there is a key difference where a car is something you're excited to buy. Something that,
John Wilson: yeah,
Jesse Reyes: you, you think about it, you know, if you're a little kid, you might have one poster on your wall. Nobody's doing that with a train.
John Wilson: Whoa, whoa.
Yeah. I, I, I agree. I think it's like people will spend much more time, they're excited to research, they're optimizing for that, whereas I think the, the role or the benefit that I see. Of it so far is it hits transparency and like if someone's in their buying journey and they're in like the data collection, uh, like a confused buyer won't buy.[00:21:00]
So our job, and I think where contractor Commerce is helping is like get rid of confusion. Like, hey, here's what it is, here's the cost. It's one more thing that, that they can now like put a peg in. 'cause I think it is pretty, um. Like, who knows what a furnace, air conditioning costs it? And it seems like there's a lot, like huge swings up and down depending on like, everything like brand, company, size of house, type of house.
Uh, so I, I feel like it's just our job to give them the information they need to like call us. And I think that that is good enough. Like, I think that's good.
Jesse Reyes: Yeah. And you hit upon a real interesting point too, the transparency side. Currently we're displaying the price as just a per month minimum. Like, hey, as low as, mm-hmm.
However many dollars per month. Um, that would be in my [00:22:00] mind, something to experiment with is actually showing the price. Whole dollar, which I, my impression is, uh, home service companies are kind of nervous to do that. 'cause again, the shopping around thing. I think that would also help answer the question, you know, is this something that's useful and helpful to, to consumers?
'cause again, a furnace isn't something you would be excited about buying, but if you put that info out there, people become conscious of the fact that you can shop for it.
John Wilson: Yeah.
Jesse Reyes: Um, does that become an advantage for your company? Yeah. If you look good at it, you know? Yeah. I think it's a possibility.
John Wilson: Yeah. So I think, yeah, we'll probably hit this again in a couple months with like, Hey, here's what happened.
We're running a bunch of branded spend towards it. We're running a bunch of like paid search spend towards it. Did it work? That'll be, that'll be, that'll be funny to figure out. Cool. Any last take for marketers out there?
Jesse Reyes: I would say, I mean, I think marketing is [00:23:00] always an experiment hypothesis. Then you test it.
See what happened. Reiterate. Mm-hmm. I think that's true of testing e-commerce, but really anything in in marketing is kind of falls up my sense.
John Wilson: Thank you for checking out, owned and operated. Thanks for coming outta the show. This was fun. Uh, make sure you check out owned and operated.com and like, and subscribe for more.
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