Honesty Hour: Why You Need To Avoid Building Your Own Construction Website.
It’s tempting.
With the likes of Wix, Go Daddy and Square Space all offering a place online where even the most novice to marketing can ‘build a website’.
But just because you can, does that mean you should?
Just because I own a saw and a ladder does that mean I can call myself a Tree Surgeon and sort out the Oak Tree at the bottom of the garden?
Just because I own a paintbrush and a tin of paint, do I have the skill to paint the entirety of my rental property?
Just because I did ok in science at school and know what each colour wire in a plug is for, does that mean I’m fit to rewire my house?
No.
Why?
Because a branch of that tree I start sawing could knock me off my ladder and hurt me.
Because that tin of paint I have (that’s been in the garage for a decade) is actually white fence paint. Is that good for ceilings?
And the electrics… I don’t even need to explain that one. ⚡️
Let’s look at all the reasons why even if you are thinking about building you own website, you should avoid it at all costs for the long run…
1. TIME: To design, build and maintain your construction website.
How long would it take me to paint my living room?
About 2 weeks.
Not because I live in a palace.
But because I don’t have the right tools or skillset – plus I HATE painting ceilings.
So painful.
How long would it take a decorator?
A couple of days.
What could I do if someone told me I could have an extra 2 weeks of time?
A lot.
So it makes sense right?
The right decorator is going to paint my living room faster and to a MUCH higher standard than if I did it myself.
I could crack on with what I’m good at (helping Trade and Construction business owners) and make more money than what I’d save trying to do it myself – badly.
How long would it take you to build your own website?
After you learn the platform you’re going to build it on.
Pay the monthly fees.
Watch all the YouTube Videos.
Realise you watched the wrong ones and start watching other ones.
Make a lot of mistakes in what you’re doing.
Emailing SUPPORT back and forth while you wait a day or two each time for an answer.
Think you’ve finished then realised you’ve forgotten something.
Have trouble putting it live.
Spent months of evening and weekends trying to put it altogether.
Lose your mind with it.
And a fair amount of hair.
Put it live, only to realise you don’t really like it, it doesn’t do its job and you have zero interest going in regularly to update and maintain it (which is what every working website needs).
❌ What a waste of time.
Instead, you could have waited until you were financially ready and pass the entire thing over to a website marketing company who know what they’re doing, to do a better and faster job.
Just like my decorator did.
Time is money.
Where is your time best spent?
2. APPEARANCES: The design of your website could damage your brand for your construction marketing.
First impressions are EVERYTHING in your Trade and Construction marketing.
Especially to your ideal clients.
They know what they’re looking for.
If we get the wrong idea about your business it can put us off forever.
Sounds dramatic.
If we’ve made a negative decision about the kind of business you are we won’t come back to find out more.
So how you present yourself online is more important now, than ever.
Having a professional website design team let loose on your online marketing means a creative expert building your brand and visually communicating all the right things to the audience you are after.
But what happens when a Trade and Construction business owner with no design experience creates their own website design?
Garish colours chosen that don’t match what is going on offline?
Mismatched, Crazy fonts used that can be hard to read on mobile devices?
Image files that are way too big uploaded that slow down the speed of your website?
Social Media icons advertised at the TOP of a website that help drive people away?
Low quality photos stretched to fill larger spaces?
All that go a huge way to helping you look amateur, unprofessional, unorganised, difficult for us to find what we’re looking for and ultimately… go back to Google to look at a competitors website instead.
❌ Bad news.
Here’s some interesting stats for you…
📈 According to online sources, it takes 0.05 milliseconds for us to form an opinion about your website as to if we stay and browse or leave.
Do you have the design skillset to capture a clients attention in 0.05 seconds?
📈 38% of people will stop engaging with a website if the content of layout is unattractive.
Yikes.
📈 75% of customers are said to admit to making judgements on a company’s credibility based on the company’s website design.
And that’s all just about the visuals.
📈 88% of customers are said to NOT return to a website if they’ve had a bad experience.
That could mean it takes ages to load.
That they didn’t find what they were looking for easily.
That your links and buttons didn’t’ work.
The list goes on.
3. SEO: Your lack of SEO knowledge will hold back the website performance of your construction marketing.
Let me explain it like this.
I’m no builder.
In fact, my DIY skills are pretty awful.
But.
If I was tasked with building some kind of house to stay in overnight, could I do it?
I guess.
I own a hammer.
There’s some wood floating about in my garage.
Loads of random nails in the toolbox.
I guess I could stick one of those waterproof picnic tarpaulin things we have on the ground.
That’ll keep things dry.
I could definitely make SOMETHING that resembles a house.
Or at least something that I can sit in.
Will it last the night with the wind and rain that’s coming?
Will it be a death trap once I’m inside?
I’m sure we can agree this house sounds awful.
It’s not even a house.
It's my version of something to keep me dry – if it even works.
It's going to look terrible with the random materials I cobble together and the lack of skills I have to masterfully create it.
Oh.
And my lack of electric tools (I literally only own a hammer) that means it’s probably going to take me weeks to get it up.
Moral of the story?
Just because I THINK I can, doesn’t mean I should.
Same goes with your Trade and Construction website.
In theory – yes – you can sit at a computer, set yourself up a free account (which will slowly mount up in costs as you try to unlock new things you need your site to so) on a website builder and ‘give it a go’.
But does that mean you should?
Can I call that monstrosity I cobbled together a house?
No.
Can you call your online website creations a house or a disaster?
Like building ah house, there is a lot that goes on underground and behind the scenes that we – as homeowners – don’t see.
The same goes for your website and SEO.
There’s so many foundations within the inner workings of the tech of a site that only the pros truly understand.
So whilst you might be able to cobble together the visuals of a website, like I did my ‘house’, there is so much I don’t know and that lack of knowledge will keep my house standing the test of time amidst all the weather conditions.
Plus it’s cold in there.
Plus there’s nails sticking out.
Plus there’s water dripping in…
Point made?
4. GROUNDWORK: Not uncovering your Ideal Client and creating your construction website for them.
Many Trade and Construction business owners jump straight into the ‘stuff’ when designing their own website.
What it looks like.
What photo will be put where.
What fonts and colours to use.
❌ Wrong.
When designing your Trade and Construction website, just like building a house, you need to start with the foundations.
By starting with pictures and visuals is like starting with the roof when you haven’t built any walls yet.
Pointless.
Discovering your Ideal Client is the single BIGGEST thing you will ever do in your Trade and Construction marketing.
⭐️ Ideal Client – Represents your perfect customer: The person who wants and needs EXACTLY what you offer and is willing and able to pay for it.
When you do all the groundwork on this, every single decision you make in your business and your marketing needs will be focused around them – and only them.
Your website included.
So if you haven’t’ done all the work on this to start with, your website is likely going to
❌ Attract the wrong customers.
❌ Put the RIGHT clients off… for good.
❌ Mean you need to redo all that hard work you’ve put into building your own website AGAIN…
❌ Waste of time, money, energy, sanity.
A GOOD, professional website and marketing agency will do all this ground work with and for you before diving into any part of the website build.
To make sure you absolutely NAIL your ideal client then check this out.
If I could tell Trades & Construction Businesses one thing about Marketing.
It's a game-changer.
5. YOUR COMPETITORS: They are using website professionals for their construction marketing.
You may decide to design and build your own website.
Totally your choice.
But we’ll put money on the fact that your competitors are getting the pros in to do it.
Maybe some of them.
Potentially all of them.
So, what does that mean for your business?
That you’re starting 10 steps behind.
If your competitors are using a professional company to design and build their construction website,
✅ Their design is likely to be more professional…
✅ …Which gives a better first impression.
✅ The website will be built with lots of the marketing industry tips and tricks…
✅ …Which means visitors will find what they’re looking for quicker and easier meaning the visitors stay on the construction website longer.
✅ This will tell Google that their website is a ‘Gooden’ and help move them up the Google rankings…
✅ Which will help their SEO – in the long term meaning they move up the ranks towards page 1 and are likely to get found when people search for that service.
Whilst your website lingers on page 252.
📝 SIDE NOTE.
I am not saying that EVERY web design or marketing company will solve all the problems online for a Trade and Construction company that use them.
And just because your competitors are buddying up the pros doesn’t mean they will be on the first page of Google any time soon.
Not true at all.
A lot depends on the Agency they work with.
However.
If they are partnering up with an web design or marketing agency, they are VERY likely to know a lot more tips and tricks about the online world than you.
So it’s unlikely you’re going to get ahead with your construction website design when you’re building your website part-time (or as and when you can) as your focus is running your sites and dealing with customers.
6. SUPPORT: Lack of support for your construction website when things go wrong.
When you work with a professional web design marketing agency, they are responsible for getting your all-singing, all-dancing website that they have designed and built for you online for the world to see.
And depending on the contract you have with them (if they are hosting your Trade and Construction website too) they are responsible for ensuring your website STAYS online.
Should there be internet glitches – which do happen – they are at the end of the phone for you, to jump onto it and sort it out FOR you.
Without you lifting a finger.
When you work with a website design marketing agency (like us) you have a knowledgeable team you know (and have already worked with) at the end of the phone if there’s questions or problems.
❌ When you build your OWN website, you do not have a personal team at the end of the phone to help support you with any construction website issues.
Perhaps you are using the likes of Wix or Go Daddy – who may offer email or live chat support.
But how helpful is that if you are not particularly ‘techy’?
And you have to go back and forth for HOURS to fix a problem.
You’re already busy.
What if the thing they are explaining to you, you just don’t understand?
Or they have an outage and THOUSANDS of their customers are trying to contact them to get their websites back online or there’s a serious privacy breach?
What kind of personal service do you think you will receive?
How quickly before you can speak to someone directly?
Will they give you a direct call?
No. Unlikely.
What if the system you used to build your site gets hacked and all content disappears for all their customers… And you must start all over again?
Working with a professional agency, these guys should have back-ups for your website.
Meaning should something go down, they have everything stored elsewhere to get things back up and running quickly.
Would you know how to do all that when building your own website?
It’s like anything.
You don’t appreciate SUPPORT or insurances or something UNTIL IT GOES WRONG.
Let me tell you.
In the website world – there are a LOT of opportunities for things to go wrong.
Leave it to the pros who know how to handle it best. 👌🏽
7. SKILLS: Do you have the 5+ marketing skillsets to create a high-quality construction website?
To build a high-quality website there is a lot more to it than just setting up a few different pages and adding some words and pictures.
Let me explain.
When we build websites we bring in experts for all the following to ensure every box is ticked for our client’s website fundamentals:
✅ DESIGN.
Only once the Ideal Client has been established our pro designers create layouts of all the pages needed and graphics to help explain services and how the business operates.
By giving the right first impression visually to the type of clients specific to what the Trade and Construction business are after, will the website hold the attention and spark the interest of the right kind of potential new clients.
✅ DEVELOPMENT.
Once the design phase is nailed, our development team work with the developers on how to build the pages to make sure the website has a quick loading speed, the right pages have been included within the design and there are links and buttons in the right places to take customers exactly where they need for more information.
✅ SEO.
Our SEO team start working with our developer to ensure the website has an SEO set up – meaning that in the future should our clients decide to use a monthly SEO strategy their website has everything it needs in the foundations to give it a head start.
We will then come back to the SEO team once out website is up and running for monthly on-going work on projects that need it.
✅ COPYWRITING.
Now we know the exact pages we need for our Trade and Construction website, we can work with our copywriters to create text for every page.
Not only will this text be written with the ideal client in mind, but will also include specialist keywords (identified by our SEO team) to help Google identify our Trade and Construction website as helpful for those specific topics.
✅ PHOTOGRAPHY & VIDEO.
Almost ready to go live, our designers work with our photographers and video production teams to capture before/afters, case studies and testimonials from clients to use inside of the new web design.
All of which captures ideal clients and ideal projects ONLY – so that our Trade and Construction clients attract more of the work they want from the clients they love.
Every one of these skills is executed by a different member of our team who ONLY does that particular skill all day everyday i.e.. Video.
To make for a super high quality web design.
Are you confident that your skills in each of the fundamentals of building a brilliant website are up to scratch?
If not, then you need to avoid building your own construction website if you are looking to grow your Trade and Construction business.
⬇️ Honesty Hour: Why You Need To Avoid Building Your Own Construction Website:
1. TIME: To design, build and maintain your construction website.
2. APPEARANCE: Design can damage your brand.
3. SEO: Lack of knowledge will hold back the website performance.
4. GROUNDWORK: Not uncovering your Ideal Client.
5. YOUR COMPETITORS: They are using website professionals.
6. SUPPORT: Lack of support when things go wrong.
7. SKILLS: Do you have the 5+ marketing skillsets to create a high-quality construction website?
🛠 Need a little more help nailing your Trades and Construction Website?
Course you do.
First. Let’s work out where you are with all things Marketing.
Got 3 minutes?
Take our Trades Quiz to discover how you score with all things ‘Off The Tools’.
We have heaps of tips, tricks, and hacks for your Trade and Construction business in our cheat sheets, videos and ideas waiting for you on the other side… i.e., your results page.
So, you can improve your score. And NAIL your Trade and Construction business.
Nice.