Website Dos and Don’ts For Your Construction Firm

Let’s just get into it.

When a customer goes to a website that is dedicated to a construction service, he’s trying to find information about what services said business provides, whether the business is one of the manufacturers of welded mesh or simply providing manpower for contructon—and for evidence that the firm does what it does well. He is not likely to be impressed with flashy images and music. Give him the advice he needs, and perhaps offer a testimonial or 2.

The Essentials

A construction firm’s website should offer customer testimonials, calling particular attention to those on the site. Ways to do that include comprising a quote from a satisfied client or noting a significant contract your company has won prominently in your own site.

It is surprising just how few provide testimonial pages to distinguish themselves. Past customers’ feedback provides prospective clients validation your company has credibility and distinguishes you from experienced companies.

To further put clients’ minds at ease, utilize official images that represent the different expert building business organizations (national and local) that your company belongs to. Do you produce wire furniture? Are you a wiring and fencing specialist?

Use your site to differentiate your company from other building businesses. Do not simply roll your business history–be certain by telling potential customers the advantages of doing business with your company instead of another.

Excellent construction is not cheap, and inexpensive structure is not excellent. The exact same may be said for several website design companies, so forego design companies which specialize in “cookie cutter” sites based on templates. The majority of the time, cheap sites such as these are just not optimized for search engines, as well as an attractive building site can still cost you six-and-seven-figure contracts when it is not optimized well—that is not money well invested. Ensure you’ve got a professional who will enhance your website’s search engine optimization (search engine optimization).

If you currently have a website for your construction business and are thinking about a company to maximize it for you, ask for concrete examples of how they could acquire other building organizations to rank well on Yahoo!, MSN and Google. (Make sure you request their target keywords, not only for stats on hunts of their organization’s name) It does not matter whether you sell laminated timber products or you provide manpower for construction, the range of services/products that you provide does not matter. As long as these keywords target the right demographics as well as the essence of your business, you will benefit greatly from having someone manage the SEO for you.

Make the amount of website navigation (menu) options restricted. Folks ought to be able to get what they’re searching for in the shortest period possible and achieve their destination webpage with as few clicks as possible.

Provide descriptions and photographs of previous projects, including the time it took to finish the undertaking.

Additionally, use alternative image tags for photos and menu buttons on your website. This won’t only supply some search engine advantages, but also make the website fully accessible to visually impaired users using a screen reader.

Make certain to keep the goal of the website crystal clear on the peak of each page. Whenever someone becomes known from Google, she wants to determine that she is in the ideal place in a matter of moments.

Mistakes to Avoid

First of all, you need to become prospective clients on the telephone as fast as possible. You can not always expect prospective customers to send you an email, and enjoying email tag isn’t the ideal way to offer them in your services. Not using a toll-free amount exhibited in a prominent location on each and every page of the website is a cardinal sin of promotion to get a building site.

Flash-animated sites for the building are overrated. Many search engines have difficulty reading Flash movie files, so you are given limited opportunities to maximize a Flash site for your target keywords. An entirely Flash-driven site is typically 1 page which changes, instead of some non-Flash construction site which may include as many as 15 pages, each page optimized for a different pair of target keywords and doing independently of others on Google. Each webpage will also be full of keyword-rich text, and so that is 15 distinct lightning rods for traffic, rather than only the one using a Flash site. Deciding to forego an all-Flash website could indicate picking up five times as much traffic via Google, and then scoring several times more prospects.

Flash-based website navigation is really a no-no. Search engines like Yahoo! and Google send “bots” into a site (sometimes called “spiders” by internet designers). If Google’s spiders do not have a clear route to a website’s webpage (either through an internal link on your website or a link from another site ), this page only does not exist on Google. Because most search engine spiders typically cannot read or read Flash-based menu hyperlinks, they don’t have any way of moving to a website’s other pages (and hence these pages won’t be found in Google). Keep away from Flash-based site menus, or include a link to your website design map in your home page, or some text links from the website’s footer, which offers a route to another page on the website.

Avoid having a domain name (.com) which contains digits or hyphens—attempt to maintain the number of syllables on your domain to a minimum.

Ensure to have enough content on every page. Although some business owners favor to have hardly any text on a webpage, to keep things somewhat cluttered, internet designers worth their salt at the search engine optimization game will constantly say”content is king” when it comes to getting love from Google; and also the more keyword-rich exceptional content on a particular page, the better. Keep information which will be most applicable to a potential customer up on the peak of the page.

Keep away from music onto a building website. This is not a music or website for a club—songs is an additional diversion that is definitely unnecessary.

Prevent inconsistency with font sizes and colors. You need to be certain an older audience does not have difficulty reading the text. The larger-sized text along with a white or light backdrop would be the easiest to read.

Do not forget to upgrade the appearance and feel of your website every one or two decades to keep it fresh. Do not get bogged down with a custom content management system with restricted capacities. Ensure that your internet developer can easily enhance your website and streamline it. When employing a web programmer, inquire their willingness to consider alternatives aside from a material management system.

Some businesses don’t check their site for cross-browser compatibility. Ensure that your website works well in Microsoft Internet Explorer, Firefox and Mac browsers.

Never use a complimentary email address server (Hotmail, Yahoo!, Gmail, Comcast, etc.) on a building site agreeing contracts ranging from five to eight characters. Your credibility is going to take a back-click, together with your website visitor.

Preventing an all-Flash-based website is also great from a loading standpoint. The heavier the Flash files, the longer it takes for pages to load (in an era where the dial-up is nothing but a memory). Every moment the page takes to load, you are getting back-clicks out of a website visitor.

Places to Be

While sending newsletters out and engaging in Twitter, Facebook, sites are fine for websites selling goods or to cope with repeat clients, it is not essential for building businesses.

Message boards could be comparatively useful at bringing more visitors to your website. But be aware there is a fine line between what is perceived as contributing to a plank and what is perceived as spamming it. Dedicate to some message board that is linked to the building, and just insert your link to a signature after the first couple of articles. Google puts more burden on a connection that is related to the conversation content.

A much better path to take: Boost your company by supporting a fantastic cause. With the prevalence of ABC’s Extreme Makeover Home Edition, now is a fantastic time to become involved with charity building jobs by donating valuable materials such as the durable glulam timber or labor to your nonprofit’s construction project in your town. Your company is going to be blamed for its contribution by the nonprofit’s PR, and you may note it on your site. A building business may also easily visit PRweb and, for under $100, send a mass, self-written information item. Obviously, the narrative is more inclined to be conducted on little news sites and sites which use RSS news feeds associated with this market, but a larger book or site will opt to run it. Additionally, notify the regional media about your participation and offer your site address.