Ainhoa Rodriguez-Muguruza
With a big part of the construction industry moving their selling processes online and investing in their digital presence, guaranteeing a remarkable first impression through your website has become urgently necessary. Gone are the days you could think of a website as an optional element within your growth strategy. Without a carefully designed site, chances are, you become invisible.
As many as 84% of construction companies expressed their intention to sell their products exclusively online in their immediate future. This decision was prompted by the strong role websites have come to play within the decision-making process of customers, serving as the base upon which customers determine the credibility of a business.
Introducing your building product brand effectively through an impactful and flawless design becomes even more important when speaking to construction professionals, such as architects, specifiers, contractors, and interior designers. In 2017, a solid 98% of specifiers reported researching online when seeking construction solutions for their specifications, number that has likely increased!
Whilst not all specifiers look out for the same design elements when researching products online, it is known that construction professional expect a meaningful digital experience when accessing a website, being attracted towards efficiency and clarity. Time is of the essence for construction professionals, making availability and easiness to be found key for specifiers to get to your site.
But are you aware of the things that are keeping your website from being found by potential architects and specifiers?
Are Any of These 4 Mistakes Holding You Back?
#1 Your Page Takes Too long to load
Needless to say, there is nothing more frustrating than a website that takes forever to load. According to Google, the probability of a user abandoning a page increases by 32% when the loading time goes from one second to three, reaching a 90% bounce rate when taking more than five seconds. Five seconds! But, just as I mentioned, time is of the essence for specifiers, and they have not time to spare.
Since Google's Algorithm Speed Update last June, page speed is also a ranking factor. And it is known to be a decisive factor. If your page is not able to keep up with the loading speed of the highest ranked pages, it will simply not make it among the first results of the search engine. This, according to Infront Webworks, could lead to the loss of 7% of all possible conversions.
#2 Your SEO is Inconsistent
75% of users browsing online will only click the first three results shown by the search engine, turning pages ranking lower virtually invisible. Ensuring your website appears within the first results on Google’s SERPs is, consequently, not something to be overlooked. Any website, recently designed or not, should have a clear SEO strategy that directs its consistent and effective optimisation.
With over 40% of the revenue of building companies coming from purely organic traffic, underestimating the power of SEO can make you pay a high price. Not just because leads interested in your brand might not be able to find you, but because it is likely that they end up finding your competitor instead! It is a simple as that: if your website does not dominate the SERP’s, another one will!
#3 your website is not responsive
Having a website that adapts to different devices is an element Google looks at when positioning its search results. In fact, Google will make sure top pages are efficiently mobile-friendly! This does not come as a surprise when we realise that, in the first quarter of 2021, mobile devices generated 54.8% of global website traffic. And that is without counting tablets!
If a customer reaches a business’ website and this is not responsive, 1 out of 2 users will feel that the business does not care about their digital experience and will likely keep browsing. In fact, 94% users recognise not trusting a website if its design is not responsive or if they are asked to use their desktop to complete a purchase…
#4 Your Website is not Safe
As people increase the time they spent online, Google enforced its commitment to keep its users and their data safe, prioritising displaying websites with HTTPS (HyperText Transfer Protocol Secure) over the ones with HTTP (HyperText Transfer Protocol). Safety should also be important for you and your business since security breaches can damage your reputation and make you lose revenue.
Ensuring your website’s security will, basically, protect it from hacker attacks. A common mistake is thinking that hacking is rare and that it does not have often but, unfortunately, up to 30,000 websites are hacked daily and 64% of companies worldwide have, at least, experienced a cyber-attack in the past. Over 94% of those attacks in 2019 were on WordPress websites!
Can You Identify These Issues Before it is Too Late?
Yes, you actually can! In fact, it is recommended that you audit your website periodically, using some of the wide range of free tools available online to check the performance of each aspect of your website. Despite what is commonly thought, the data pulled from website auditing tools is clear, accessible, and comprehensive, allowing you to ensure your website is running at its best!
#1 HubSpot Website Grader
Whilst there is a myriad of software available to report on the efficacy of your website, HubSpot has made available to all website owners, HubSpot users or not, an intuitive tool that assesses your website in all the parameters mentioned above and provides you with a tangible score. This tool will give you on-the-spot recommendations on how to improve your website’s performance.
#2 GTmetrix
A must-have according to our new in-house developer Tom (keep an eye out for our blog post about him soon!), GTmetrix is a powerful tool that looks into your page’s loading time and provides you with a full breakdown of the time it takes to successfully load, the elements that might be slowing it down, and the changes that you could implement to improve your pages’ loading time.
#3 Moz Domain Analysis
Moz Free version will provide you with an overview of the SEO metrics of your domain (or any other domain!), helping you identify SEP opportunities. This tool will show you your domain authority, your ranking keywords, and top pages. This information can be the perfect starting point for you to review your SEO strategy and align your optimisation efforts with your research.
#4 Google’s Mobile Friendly Test Tool
As you might have already noticed throughout the post, Google has a lot to say when it comes to which pages rank higher on its SERPs. Using the Mobile Friendly Test Tool will give you some insights on the perception the search engine has of your site. If instead of looking at the URLs on your site one-by-one, you would prefer to bulk test them, you can use the free tool by Experte.
#5 Why No Padlock?
With a very simple and minimalist layout, Why No Padlock? will make you aware of any insecure elements in your website that could prevent your website to be considered a secure page. This tool will produce a list of elements that might need to be reviewed and will provide you with advise on how to avoid SSL mixed content warnings on your site.
Are You Meant to Do this Alone?
I mean… You could! But it can get busy! Due to expectations regarding website design and quality getting higher and higher, companies are increasing the budget invested in website optimisation and upkeep. A comfortable way of ensuring your website has all the elements to perform at its best is to reach out to a marketing agency familiar with digital marketing and your field.
#1 Choose an Agency with Industry Experience
Most people are not aware that, just as doctors specialise, so do marketing agencies! Whilst some agencies might claim that they provide general services, an agency who understands the building product industry will be able to optimise your website and trickle down the design of your site ensuring it appeals to the right audience.
#2 Support your Website through Growth-Driven Design
Growth-driven design was first applied in 2017 and has been reported to increase leads in 16.9% and revenue in 11.2% within the first 6 of a website. This approach runs on continuous web optimisation based on real time data. Insynth, for example, designs their websites in a platform geared for growth-driven interactions, the HubSpot’s CMS Hub.
#3 Make Sure They Are Research-Based and SEO-Driven
Any decision made regarding your website should be based on a heavy research. At Insynth, through HubSpot’s Google Search Console integration, we obtain data from the searches that had led visitors into a particular website and we gather that information into a SEO strategy piece that allows us to adapt the language of a site so it resonates more accurately with the target audience.
#4 Look for Long-Term Support
Whilst it might be tempting to reach out to a specialised agency only when a problem comes up, chances are that problem could have been avoided through consistent support. If, on top of that, we understand that SEO optimisation should be a constant effort, agencies that offer a monthly retainer and that make sure your site is healthy at any given time.
About Insynth
At Insynth we deliver a predictable flow of leads, customers, and specifications for building product brands through our inbound marketing approach, proven to reach a technically demanding audience.
We use the latest marketing techniques such as construction inbound marketing, to equip building product companies to grow sustainability in this era of digital transformation.
As the only HubSpot certified agency to major in construction marketing. We have a proven formula of bringing a variety of functionalities together including CRM Implementation, Web Design, Sales Automation, SEO, and Email Marketing to achieve your ultimate aim: Growing your business and gaining new specifiers and customers.