It’s hard to believe that there are still businesses without a website. Actually, almost half of all small businesses don’t have a website.
Some business owners think they don’t need one because they have enough business. That’s fine, but what if you’re a contractor and you want to grow? You may want a website, but don’t know where to start.
Read on to learn the top contractor website design tips for your business.
7 Must-Have Contractor Website Design Tips
1. Sketch out Ideas on Paper
When you start designing your site, you’ll want to start by drawing out ideas on paper first. That will save you time when you’re trying to program your site later on.
Approach the sketches from the perspective of your user and what you want them to do when they get to your site.
If your visitors find your site from an online search, they’re likely to go to the home page. What are the important things that they should know about your business? Do you want them to call for a free estimate or do you want them to sign up on your email list?
These questions will help you clarify the purpose of your site and design your site to direct your users to take action.
Must Read: Top 15 Collaboration & Prototyping Tools for UX/UI Designers
2. Design for Mobile First
Your site’s visitors are likely to visit your site on a mobile device. Search engines also crawl mobile versions of websites first, which makes it a priority for your website to be mobile-friendly.
It’s not even an option anymore. It’s a necessity. Your site needs to be set up so it’s easy to read on all devices. You also need to make sure that it’s easy to navigate and simple to use. Cluttered mobile site design will only confuse visitors and encourage them to leave your site.
3. Rely on Professional Expertise
Are you reluctant to build a website because you don’t have the coding skills?
There are a number of free platforms that you can use to build the website yourself. That doesn’t replace professional expertise, though.
Think about it, to build a website that is top-notch, you have to understand SEO so it can be found in search engines. You have to understand some code to customize the website, along with the latest website design trends.
You also have to be a great copywriter to keep people on your site.
You have enough to do and with a website designer on your team, you save time from having to become an expert in everything. You can find a web designer for contractors here.
4. Give, Give, Give
It may sound counterintuitive, but the more you give information about how people can do simple tasks on their own, the more likely they are to work with you.
You’re not telling people how to do your job or costing yourself business. You’re showing people that you’re an expert in your field and you love what you do.
Painting contractors can show people how to choose the right exterior colors for their home, the difference between paint and primer, how to prepare for painting and a host of other common issues.
The more you share about your work, the more value you add to your potential customers. When you do this through a blog or video marketing, you also boost your site’s chances of being found online.
5. Make It Fast
In contractor website design, you might not think too much about the speed of the website. Yet, speed matters to your site’s users and to search engines.
Google says that if your site takes longer than three seconds to load on mobile devices, you’ll lose 53% of your visitors.
A slow website could kill your business and you wouldn’t even know it.
How do you know if your website is slow? There are several speed tests that you can use to see if it’s slow. You’ll also get feedback on how to fix those issues. The top speed tests are Google Page Speed Insights, Pingdom, and GTMetrix.
Some of the feedback is technical. You’ll want to hand that off to a developer to fix.
6. Prove That You’re Worth Working with
People will buy your services when they trust that you can do the job? How do you build enough trust online to get an appointment?
Put rave reviews on your site. About 84% of people trust online reviews as much as a personal friend’s recommendation.
The more positive reviews you put on your site, the easier it is to build trust. One other thing that you can do to attract sales online is to post before and after photos of projects. These images will show the value of your work. Together with online reviews, you’re showing proof that you have a successful business.
7. Capture Email Addresses
When people visit your website, not all of them are ready to hire you on the spot. Only about 25% of people are ready to buy now.
What’s very likely to happen is that they’ll visit your website for the first time, look around for general information, perhaps read a blog post, and then leave.
You can design your website in a way that encourages those people to sign up for your email list. That will help you keep some of those site visitors as leads. You can then use email marketing to continue your outreach to those prospects.
Build Your Site with These Contractor Website Design Tips
The fact is people look online for contractors. Even if you have a referral, they’re going to look up your business online. If they can’t find you, they’ll go elsewhere.
With these contractor web design tips, there’s no excuse to build your website. The main thing to remember is to always, always focus on your users. When you do that, everything else will fall into place.
You don’t even have to be a programming expert. You can use a platform like WordPress or Wix to set it up and be up and running in no time at all.
Want some design inspiration? Check out these new website designs.
