Your construction company's website is a big part of your business. If you're like most construction companies, you overhaul it every few years, budgeting for a brand new website that is bright and trendy. But if you're being honest with us, how much business growth have you seen from any of those brand new websites? If you're not sure, or if you're pretty sure those redesigns didn't impact business much, if at all, then I've got news for you. These 5 actionable website design tips for construction companies can all be implemented easily (and in way less time than a full website redesign) and will work to increase conversions on your site. Check it out:
01. Keep it Simple
When it comes to construction, professionalism is key. You want your clients to know, at first glance, that you're a construction company that delivers professional projects on budget and on time. A simple website design conveys that clean, confident persona you want, and makes it easy for your potential clients to find exactly the information they're looking for.
Whitespace
If you're looking for a way to improve your website design right now, look at your website's home page, and take out about 3-5 elements, trading them for white space instead. There's a reason whitespace was our #1 website design trend of 2020. It forces you to focus on just the items that are most important to your construction company. It also helps draw your visitors and leads to the areas of your site where they can make a conversion.
When you limit the distractions on your site, you end up with a more focused, intentional design. With more focus, your construction company looks more professional, and your website does a better job of directing visitors to conversion points on your site.
02. Make Navigation User-Centric
This website design tip is all about keeping people on your site. Once a visitor is on your construction company's website, it should be your goal to keep them there. The longer someone stays on your site, reading content, checking out your services, and looking at your previous projects, the more likely they are to make a conversion. Your website's navigation is key to keeping those visitors on your site.
What Do Buyers Want?
Think about what your ideal buyer is looking for when they come to your site. Chances are, they want to know:
- What your company history is, and where you build.
- What kind of construction projects you take do.
- What your past construction projects looked like.
- How they can contact you.
There's an old website design tip floating around that says, "your visitors should never have to click more than twice to get anywhere". While that's a great thought — if you have a crazy amount of pages, that's going to lead to a HUGE navigation menu. Instead, we recommend that you edit, edit, edit. Bring it back to your buyer persona or ideal client once more. What information are they looking for? What information do you want them to get from your site? Boil it down to just the most important components, and streamline your navigation to reflect those top priorities.
03. Make it Fast & Responsive
This one is a no-brainer. If your construction company's site doesn't load quickly and doesn't meet visitors on any platform, you're losing leads. The average internet browser will abandon a site if it doesn't load in just 3 seconds. And if your site doesn't respond to different screen sizes? Forget it. Not only will you have problems keeping visitors on your site, but you're probably going to have issues ranking highly on SERPs.
You'll know if your site is responsive or not by pulling it up on your phone or tablet. How does it look? If it's tough to read, scroll, or navigate, you've got some changes to make. You can test site speed with just about any free tool on the internet. We recommend HubSpot's Website Grader because it'll tell you not just what's wrong, but also how to fix it.
Image Size
A common problem construction companies face when it comes to site speed is huge image sizes. You want to share images of your amazing construction projects, but those images can take forever to load.
This is actually an easy fix. If you're having site speed issues, a great place to start is implementing a quick plugin like Smush, which will easily compress images for you so they load a lot faster. You can also take the time to compress each image before you upload it to your site going forward, so you don't deal with lagging in the future. If you want your website to draw in and convert leads, it has to deliver a seamless experience. Site speed and responsiveness are key here.
04. Make Conversion Points Obvious
Minimalist color palettes with bold accent colors are in, and for good reason. Your construction company's website is more than just a brochure, right? You want visitors and leads to take an action — call you, send an email, download a content offer, or fill out a lead qualifying form. Website design can help you out here in a serious way.
Minimal Color Palette
If you make use of a generally minimalist color pallet and utilize white space correctly, then anytime you insert a bold pop of color on a button or CTA, your site visitor's eyes are immediately drawn there. This is a quick, actionable website design tip, but it's one that's remarkably effective. If you're trying to improve conversions, the way you stylize those conversion points can have serious impact.
Our home page makes use of a largely black and white color palette. That is, until you get to a bright orange pop of color at the bottom of the page.
Your website exists to capture new leads for your construction company. Once you've got your color palette down, here are 6 more website design elements that boost conversions.
05. Never Stop Improving
For any company, construction included, it's easy to think of your website as this big thing that you design, develop, and launch — end of story. The truth is, your website should be a living representation of your construction company that is constantly changing and improving. If this is a new concept for you, check out our blog on Growth Driven Website Design.
The idea here is that 1) a website is a huge project and 2) the internet is constantly changing. What was awesome website design in 2020 probably isn't going to be as exciting in 2021. A lot of construction companies get hung up on developing the perfect website — so hung up that the project takes years, and by the time it's finally launched, you're already behind.
Function Over Perfection
The key to successful website design that works for you is small, constant improvements. It's more important that you have a functional website than it is you have a perfect website. For now at least, work with what you've got. Make changes in the places you know will improve user experience and increase conversions. Then, watch and see how those improvements impact your digital marketing strategy. With that data in hand, you can continue to make changes that deliver significant results.
Don't feel like you have to change your construction company's website all at once. While a big change is good every once in a while, it's always more important that you have a functional website that is serving your leads and contacts rather than a perfect website.
I hope these 5 actionable website design tips help you make effective improvements to your construction company's website! If you run into any questions while you're at it, or if you're just not seeing the results you expected, give the Evenbound team a call. We're always happy to help.
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