An excellent website is no longer an option for any type of construction, remodeling, or trade contracting firm. Fact is, website excellence is now a requirement for business success. The good news is achieving website excellence is attainable for even small construction firms, along with the broader requirement of implementing a complete digital marketing program that drives sales leads, and ultimately new customer acquisition.
But how? Construction Marketing Association sponsor Modern Marketing Partners (MMP), will share Contractor Website Best Practices, along with a Contractor Website Checklist, several diagnostic tools, Contractor Website Examples, and a couple of website package options.
Contractor Website Best Practices
You are probably wondering, what is the so-called foundation (construction metaphor) of an excellent contractor website? Good question. There are at least 3 “foundational” elements to an excellent website, along with many best practices including highly visual, mobile and responsive, and search engine optimized. We’ll cover each, and then summarize with the website checklist.
Every Picture Tells a Story
No question, construction is visual, so examples or images of homes, commercial buildings, electrical panels (whatever your specialty is), should be plentiful and descriptive. Customer testimonials including videos are impactful. That said, these images should be low resolution, or smaller file sizes to ensure fast loading, as website speed is now a search engine ranking factor, and certainly important to positive user experience (UX). Beside image file size, most content management systems (CMS) have an image compression tool and/or browser caching to ensure fast-loading. Finally, images should be properly named using keywords and dashes, and not special characters.
Mobile and Responsive
Depending on your customer target, a high percentage of website visitors will be using a smart phone, so viewing the website on a mobile device is important. If you target consumers, mobile browsing could be 70-80% or more. So the mobile user experience or UX, has to be effective, eliminating pinching and scrolling. Furthermore, Google now uses mobile as a ranking factor for mobile searches. Below is an example of a mobile/responsive website with both desktop and smartphone displays.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
How do you get prospective customers to your website? Well, you can implement paid search, or get free, natural or organic traffic by implementing search engine optimization or SEO. The most basic SEO is Meta code which includes page titles, meta descriptions, and image/ALT tags. URL or domain redirects are a basic SEO requirement, with either the www.domain.com or domain.com version redirecting to the other, so two (duplicate and penalized) websites are not indexed by search engines. Robot.txt and XML sitemaps are basic SEO requirements. Recently secure domains, for example, HTTPS or SSL became a search engine ranking factor. Link building is still an important SEO tactic. And Local SEO or Local Citations are critical for regional contractors and construction firms. For a complete explanation of SEO including local citations, please view the MMP SEO Guide, and MMP blogs on Local SEO, Part 1 and Part 2.
Other Digital Marketing
Beside the 3 aforementioned website best practices, there are several other tactics that support website effectiveness and results including content, social media, and email. No question, content is king with websites and search engines. Large websites with a lot of content rank higher in search results. So build landing pages for multiple topics, products or services. Registration pages or forms allow you to capture leads. And blogs allow for high frequency posting on a variety of subjects. Sprinkle customer testimonials liberally throughout the website, including customer videos. Videos are an important type of content with lots of SEO opportunities. Post videos on YouTube, and copy the embed code for placement on website pages.
Social media is a proven approach for driving website traffic. Develop social profiles for Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, and Google+. Place social icons in the header and/or footer of the global template, and hyperlink icons to corresponding profiles (always open in a new browser window). Use social share toolbars on blog and resource pages. And implement an active social posting program using scheduling tools like Hootsuite.
Email is an excellent tactic for driving website traffic and engagement. Build large customer and prospect lists, and distribute frequent emails with links to blogs, resources, and offers or calls-to-action (CTAs).
Contractor Website Examples
Following are examples of contractor websites including Blue Sky Builders, a regional remodeler, and Reasonable Electrician, a local trade contractor.
Contractor Website Checklist
- Mobile/Responsive
- Content Management System (CMS)
- Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
- Visuals/Examples/Testimonials
- Content including blogging and videos
- Social media icons/links
- Multiple contact options
- Terms & Conditions + Privacy Policy
- Measure website traffic and other metrics via Google Analytics
- Paid search including PPC and remarketing
Contractor Website Packages
Modern Marketing Partners (MMP) offers complete website design, search engine optimization (SEO), and related digital marketing services. For contractors and construction services of all types, MMP has bundled website packages including Basic and Advanced Website packages with the following features.
Basic Website (starting at $2500):
• Mobile responsive
• Content Management System (CMS)
• Pages includes Products/Services (with images), About, Contact (with form)
• Search engine optimization (SEO)
Advanced Website (starting at $4,900):
• Mobile responsive
• Blog with images/offers
• Content Management System (CMS)
• Pages includes Products/Services, About, Contact (with form), Quote (with form), landing pages (for local cities)
• Photo Gallery (editable)
• Search engine optimization (SEO)
• Local Citations / Local SEO / Local Mark-Up code
• Social Media network set-up or updates
• AdWords set-up
• Remarketing set-up
To learn more about Modern Marketing Partners (MMP) Contractor Website options, visit MMP here.