If you build a performance website, you should expect your overall website activity to be driving over 90% of your net new growth. Net new? That’s new business from companies or specifiers you’ve never dealt with. The rest will probably be coming from outbound sales activity and word-of-mouth referrals.

As construction decision-makers increasingly use digital channels to search for products and services, you must elevate your construction website design. Your website is your most important sales and marketing asset and is worth investing in accordingly.

Keeping your performance website up to date is critical and time should be allocated every month to add or update new content, but what about keeping people up to date with these changes?

When designing a performance website, gathering user feedback can help you identify potential issues and areas for improvement before the website is launched. It’s worth allocating the budget to pay independent users to spend an hour going through the website and giving you honest, objective feedback.

It’s worth doing this at least annually.

When building your performance website, consider the analytics you need to track and analyse once the site is live. This will help ensure that the website is developed to allow for accurate tracking and analysis of key metrics.

For specifiers, clear and consistent technical information is essential to make informed decisions about building products and materials. Architects rely on manufacturers product data. Making sure this information is structured correctly on your website is critical.

When building a performance website a common mistake is leaving SEO until the end.

This often stems from working with a designer who sees their role as taking care of the visual experience and that SEO is a separate project to be taken care of by a different team post-launch. This is the wrong way to go about it.

“What I want to see is websites being better curated – more thought about graphically. Because there is nothing worse than having a really good technical resource that is awful to look at.” - Ged Couser, Architect Director, BDP 

Most people would agree that their website is a critical tool for connecting with their target audience and driving growth - not just a digital brochure. Now let's dig into the 7 sections that really make the difference.

The success of a construction website design project depends on effective project management, clear objectives, adequate planning and excellent communication among team members. 

How do you make sure all these things are in place? By making sure the right people are in the right roles and that those roles are clearly defined and understood across the team.

How do you select the right partners for your construction website design and development projects?

Growth Driven Design (GDD) is a website design and development approach that emphasises continuous improvement and optimisation that is is particularly effective in the built environment.

Here's how it can help you launch website projects more quickly while improving results.

Integrating your CRM with your website is a serious super power. For example, it enables you to see which pages of your website a contact has looked at, when, and how many. And that's just the beginning. But most companies aren't doing it.

Before you begin a website update or redesign, it is important to ensure that your website strategy is well-defined and aligned with your business goals.

Your website is an essential part of marketing to architects and, according to our research, it is their "first port of call" when researching new products. 

However, many building product companies consider their website a brochure. A static page. 

Your website can be so much more than that!

A good website is a critical asset for every business, but the unique dynamics of the construction industry make website design more complex than in other B2B sectors.

Here's a list of 5 of the best building product websites.

This is in no way a complete list – it is 5 of our favourites! Over the coming months we will continue to highlight building product companies that are also doing a great job serving their customers online (stay tuned). 

Building product businesses are racing to support specifiers’ online specification research process, but are not getting the best advice on how to do this. Digital specialists are not generally construction specialists, and often don’t understand the complexities of the industry and the specification route to market.

Before we go any further on this, first let’s address what makes the digital specification research process so important.

A unique and compelling website isn’t an option anymore. If a building products business has a poorly designed website, it can result in losing customers and potential leads turning to competitors.

Regrettably, this happens frequently as many small building product businesses create their websites to cut costs rather than working as a lead magnet.

In this blog post, we'll explore the top six website design mistakes to avoid so you can ensure users have positive experiences on your website…

Is your website design made to help individuals move through the buyer's journey?

The issue is that many building product websites come across as brochures rather than lead generation sites. Although it's a good idea to have product information on your website, the design itself might be causing users to bounce and click off your website. 

Your website should be your best salesperson, generating leads, helping customers, working 24/7, consistent, always on-message and measurable.

Here’s how you can get started…

With the vast majority of customers turning to the internet to search and find businesses, it’s essential to have a good, solid website design. 

Web design can make or break the user experience, and ultimately determine whether or not people will return to your building product website.  

That's why it's important to understand the principles of good building product website design and to apply them to ensure your site is built to convert traffic into customers.

At the beginning of the year, we interviewed 7 architects in Manchester to help us understand what they think about building product websites.

If your website is a major headache, you're far from alone.

Many building product businesses experience low lead generation, lack of ROI, and low traffic to their website pages. 

The most common solution to these issues is to re-design the website with a non-construction specialist. A process that typically costs £50,000 and takes 6-12 months to be delivered (not accounting for projects that overrun in terms of time and budget). Often with lacklustre results.

It leaves many building product business leaders perplexed. "How do we improve our site quickly and cost-effectively?" 

Sound familiar?

This blog comprehensively compares the traditional strategy website design process to the new and fastly growing 'Growth Driven Design' approach. To help you choose the right one for your website.

I’d like to begin by saying I’m not a writer. I can plan your project and build you a website; I can even show you around a construction site. But writing a blog? Let’s just say I’m new to this…

But, as Project Co-ordinator at Insynth, I was given the opportunity to attend Brighton SEO – a training conference for those interested in developing their skills in the world of digital marketing and SEO.

So, I wanted to take this opportunity to write my first ever blog post and reflect on one of the sessions I attended.

Inbound marketing has proven to be a remarkably efficient tool for creating benefits and helping generate more traffic and leads. As the construction industry becomes more tech-savvy, many companies are deciding to adopt this innovative marketing stance and follow the principles of an inbound marketing strategy. But are they ready?

Your building product website is your most important digital asset. It’s the first place people go to learn about your products or services or to find out more about your business.

Whilst other touchpoints (product directories, social media, press releases, for example) are important, your website is your home-base – your ‘digital sales rep’ working 24 hours a day, 7 days a week to promote your products and offerings.

By now you’ve no doubt heard that the specification process is changing. 

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 commercial interactions move online, websites have become the most important asset when attracting leads. Users are, more than ever, expecting their digital experience to be flawless, determining a business’s credibility through their website’s design and moving onto competition if they consider the user experience in your website to be poor or, simply, not good enough.

How well does your website perform? How hard does it work for your building product or construction company? Do you even know how to find out?

Outstanding websites that convert architects to returning customers requires an investment, both time and money, and you need to know what your return is on that investment.

If your website was one of your sales reps, would you let them off not meeting their key performance objectives or quotas? Would you be happy to just give them a pat on the back, and say, “Just try your best!”? No… I didn’t think so.

The way construction product’s businesses are getting specified is changing, this is partly due to the changing nature of the workforce.

If you’re aged between 25 and 40 you’re classed as a millennial and this age group makes up 35% of the UK workforce.

Millennials are digital natives, who grew up using the internet and technology. But why is this relevant to construction products businesses?

Well, 73% of millennial workers are involved in decisions to purchase products or services for their companies and millennial B2B buyers cited internet search and vendors’ websites as their top two means of researching products and services.

Does your construction products website cater to the needs of these modern specifiers?

If you think it needs some improvement, then read on to find out how to get your construction products website can get your business specified.

Your website is your virtual storefront, people may become familiar with your brand through other platforms such as social media or trade shows, but your website is the place they visit when they want more information about your business and your products.

However, although websites are gaining prominence in the built environment, there are still manufacturers falling short of their competitors with underperforming sites.

But where should construction product businesses start if they want to improve their website?

With this in mind here are 5 easy fixes for your construction products website to give an excellent first impression, communicate the essentials and educate your prospects.

When we need a question answering or some more information on a topic; where do we go for answers?

If you need to know how to cook the perfect steak, buy a new pair of jeans or find out the weather forecast for the weekend, where do you turn to first?

If you’re anything like me, then the answer is the internet.

And, contrary to popular belief, architects are just like us too.

When they need to find a specific product, do some research or get some inspiration they open a new tab and use a search engine to get some answers.

In fact, a recent study found that 98% of architects prefer to research building products online.

In this post, we’ll be delving into, how to reach the millennial architect, what goes into a winning construction products website, and how to use design, layout and content to encourage architects to specify.

The world is certainly not short of web design agencies. I actually Googled how many web design agencies there were in Birmingham, and without any official statistics, I began counting manually.

I got bored after 100.

The point is, as a building product business owner, you have a lot of choice; too much choice, some may argue.

So, how do you “sift through the noise” and whittle the list down to find an agency that works for you? In this post, we highlight some of the top questions to ask your web design or design and marketing agency - once you’ve shortlisted your potential candidates.

Read on…

There’s no two ways about it: redesigning your website is an investment in money and time.

Sadly, however, many building product businesses focus too heavily on budget without taking the time to properly research and find an agency that’s a good fit.

And, in many ways, that’s understandable. Designing and building a website is seen as a bit of a dark art, conjuring up images of nerdy minions tapping coding language into a system that somehow translates into a visual masterpiece.

But, if you don’t take the time to properly research your web design team, you will sadly end up like the poor old lady down the road who constantly gets ripped off by her dodgy MOT centre.

In this post, we aim to simplify your research process, outlining the four critical things you should look out for in your web design agency if you want your website to work hard for your building product business.

Read on…

“You guys are great, but your website’s shocking.”

Many building product manufacturers come to us having experienced this feedback from their Customers. You’ve spent years building up a positive reputation within your space, but your website hasn’t been changed since the 90s and it’s in need of some serious TLC. In short, it’s letting you down. It’s stopping you from winning those bigger and better projects.

A website redesign isn’t a simple process. It’s an investment in your time and your money. So, before parting ways with your hard-earned cash, we’ve put together 6 design essentials that your building product website needs in order to thrive.

Similarly, if you’ve recently undergone a website re-design but it’s not quite generating that ROI, use this post as a checklist to see if it’s ticking all the boxes.

Read on…

Website design is a multi-layered process with so many different elements to consider. A website needs to be aesthetically pleasing enough to engage the User, while also representing the Company brand and delivering the information it needs to in a clear and concise way.

Simple, right?

So how do you ensure your potential Customers or Clients gravitate towards your website rather than passing it over for one of your Competitors?

There are a number of key elements which consciously or subconsciously affect a User’s first impression of your site.

And boy is that first impression important, with Users on average taking a mere 50 milliseconds to form an opinion of your site.

Here are a few ways in which you can begin to create a website that people want to engage with.

Creating a new website isn’t just a case of designing something that looks good. It should be a strategic process that takes into account your building product brand and Value Proposition at every stage.

Having a poor website which creates a bad User experience and doesn’t serve your Customer’s needs can negatively impact your Company sales and de-value your brand.

Here are some aspects you should take into consideration when going through a website redesign.

Having a unique, compelling and well-optimised website for your building product company isn’t an option anymore. Like all of your other business assets, it needs to pull its weight and, ultimately, it needs to pull in sales.

One of the biggest tell-tale signs as to whether you have a compelling website is its bounce rate. Anything over 60%, according to PerzonSEO, means that people aren’t sticking around long enough to view your online offering. Additionally, a poor number of inbound enquiries (form submissions, technical downloads) will, too, provide insight as to how effective your website is as a sales tool.

So, where are building product businesses going wrong? It this post, we identify 8 possible reasons as to why your website isn’t pulling its weight.

Read on….

Here’s a question: where does your building product brand live?

Does it live out on the road with your sales reps? Is it based on one-to-one interactions with your customers? Are your high-profile projects a reflection of your brand?

If you answered ‘yes’ to all of the above, that’s great.

But, is that enough in this day and age?

If you want to generate more leads, build up a strong identity and engage with new specifiers, then your website should be the home of your brand.

In today’s post, we look at some key things that every architect wants to see from your online offering, with key insights from Insynth's very own Head of Design, Louise Urquhart, who'll be sharing her pearls of wisdom when it comes to creating lead generating building product websites.  

In the latest session recap from INBOUND2020 I took notes on Luke Summerfield’s webinar about ‘Using your website to grow your business.’ Luke is a member of the HubSpot Product team as well as the founder of Growth Driven Design.

In this session he highlighted how the world of web-design is shifting, as is business’ use of their website.

Luke started by saying that website software used to be distributed on CD Roms but today we are in the era of SaaS. The technology, processes and culture of how we build a website is evolving and is giving us an opportunity to make our websites reflect your customers and help grow your business.

One of the most effective digital marketing strategies out there is SEO. Business owners and marketing managers often have the same questions. What is SEO? Is it essential? How does SEO help with lead generation?

We’ll take a brief look at what SEO is, why it’s important and 5 reasons why SEO online marketing can change your business for the better.

Suddenly we find ourselves with a lot of downtime. You may still be working but priorities may have changed. Not everyone’s workload has been affected by this pandemic, but there’s definitely a shift.

Those jobs that always get dropped to the bottom are suddenly on your to-do list as other customer work is put on the backbench.

If you’re in this situation then see this downtime as an opportunity to make some improvements. That way, when a version of normality returns, you’ll be ready for business.

Post Grenfell, the attitude around specification has become more stringent and cautious, with legislators and specifiers alike demanding greater reassurance about the performance, safety and provenance from the materials that are being used in construction.

So how does this impact your construction marketing strategies and why does Inbound Marketing become the ideal method of adapting to this change?

For marketers Google Analytics can provide a wealth of information about your website and audience. Sometimes it’s easy to get caught up in the day to day marketing activities and gloss-over warning signs.

We’ve highlighted 3 red flags you should be looking for in your Google Analytics data. We also reveal how you can combine it with dynamic heatmaps and visitor recordings to increase the number of leads from your website.

When it comes to re-designing your website, traditionally it’s a long process and it can be 6-12 months before results are delivered. Growth Driven Design is a methodology that takes a systematic approach to optimising your website in a much shorter time period.

It’s about learning what is working and what isn’t based on user data from the outset. In the GDD process you can then assess what changes will have the best impact on increasing visitors, leads and sales.

Growth Driven Design rethinks the traditional website design cycle of changing your site every 2-3 years. Instead, it focuses on learning and improving based on user feedback and behaviour in incremental design sprints.

You may be in a position where you want more leads from your website or the amount of leads you've been receiving have slowly dropped off. No matter what your marketing strategy is, your website is always used as a reference point.

Many building product websites come across as brochures rather than lead generation sites. Although it's a good idea to have product information on your website, it's wise to structure and segment it to make it easier to understand. 

When people visit your website they will be at different stages of the buyers journey, your content needs to be appropriate for all 3 stages - awareness, consideration and the decision stage.

An architect likes the look of your building product. In fact, it has the potential to offer the ideal solution for the architect’s project. They just need to check the product specifications on your website.

But these haven’t been included in the product information.

The architect has no way of knowing whether your building product is right after all. The architect could find your contact information and get in touch to clarify the details.

Or they could Google your competitor. The latter takes a fraction of the time.

Architects, specifiers and contractors are all comfortable using live chat. The immediate response allows for a better customer experience, an increase in conversions and for the building product industry especially - a competitive advantage to those who use it.

The technology isn’t particularly new, it’s been around for the last 10 years. You may have seen live chat while you’ve been shopping online or talking to your bank. We found that 94% of building product companies didn’t have it on there website. If you’re part of that percentage, don’t worry – it’s fairly straightforward to setup.

Did you know 92% of B2B buyers are more likely to purchase after reading a trusted review?

So, you’re a building products manufacturer with a website that clearly displays all your construction products, but you’re just not getting specified by architects, and you’re wondering why.

Is it possible that you’re guilty of the four pet hates of architects?

It’s time to find out.

As construction marketers, Insynth often work with building product manufacturers whose aim is for their products to be specified by architects, consultants and engineers. 

But, all too often, building product manufactures aren’t sure what architects are looking for.

They tend to ask us the same question:

‘What content should be included on our website to appeal to architects?’

Insynth have conducted research with architects to establish exactly what they are looking for on a building product manufacturer’s website.

Contrary to common misconception, your website design doesn’t need to be a glossy marketing brochure.  Architects are looking for clear, concise information that gets straight to the point. 

Architects are looking for information and inspiration.

Here are the 10 main things that architects are looking for when they land on your building products website.

The main observation from the vast majority of our site audits is that most building product websites are only designed to be an online catalogue or a brochure website.

Building product manufacturers are missing a golden opportunity to turn their websites into sales lead generation engines which provide their sales teams with regular high quality enquiries.

I was helping a friend a few days ago.  We were looking at his website and he was telling me that he was getting some really unusual enquires.  He has his own powder coating business and loves to win contracts for coating in high volume, but he was getting calls about powder coating motorbike frames.

We took a good look at his website and upon finding the likely cause, it reminded me of a very similar situation a few years ago.

(Check the end of the blog to find out why he was getting bike frame enquiries!)

A conversation we always have with our clients when discussing their content marketing strategy is,  "are you open about price on your website?".

Most of the time we get an uncomfortable response, something like;

• "No, we don't want our competitors to find out how much we charge"
• "We prefer to talk to our customer face to face about price", or
• "Until we know exactly what customer wants, we can't give them a price"

Now, that's all well and good, but let's look at those arguments one-by-one and challenge the thinking behind them.  Then we will tell you why talking about price on your website can drive efficiency, increase conversion rates, win you new business and should be a key element of your construction marketing strategy.

Your website should be your best salesperson, generating leads, helping customers, working 24/7, consistent, always on-message, technically proficient and measurable.

Often, building product companies view their website and digital marketing activities as independent marketing communications activities instead of joining the dots and seeing the big picture - how they can work together in a systematic way to drive leads and, ultimately, sales.

With ever-improving technology and software, it can be hard for you to keep up with what websites can do these days and how sales and marketing automation can improve customer service, increase conversion rates and shorten sales cycles.