Contractor Websites - Professional Design Layout & Colors

Design should be implemented with usability in mind. Not all visitors will be as web savvy as you’d like, create easy navigation and links to all your pages. Keep it simple. Remember this is a website that your potential clients will visit, so don’t have it look like your teenage son designed their own MySpace page.

Colors should be inviting, not blinding. Use colors to emphasize your brand, product or content. Don’t overpower the visitor with colors. Use colors to make text pop without being distracting or hard to read. People will always feel more comfortable reading light text on dark background. Until the day you pick up your newspaper and it is printed on black paper with white lettering, then you can do that to your website.

Images should be friendly and relevant to your site. Images of people work better than objects and clip art rarely has a positive effect. Make sure your images can load within a reasonable amount of time, you don’t want to lose visitors because a single image caused an incredible amount of load time, or worse froze the visitors browser.

A Relevant Page Name

Again, not so interesting as the importance of content or design, but it’s a necessity to get your target traffic to your page to see or read the goods.

It’s better to have straightforward page name showing in the URL than names with ? or other symbols and numbers. For example, a search engine will go to www.yourdomain.com/about us.htm it will only go to the ? in www.yourdomain.com/aboutus?094837 . You want search engines to find your pages. You also want humans to be able to read your names. Keep it simple and clean. Taking it a step further name your pages after the specific keywords, that are on that page, i.e. chicago_remodeling.htm, etc. The more keywords that you put within the page name, will help with the optimization.

Burlington Plumber

We have recently launched a new site, for St. Cyr Plumbing and Heating, a Burlington plumbing and heating company. St. Cyr Plumbing and heating offers emergency plumbing services as well as furnace repair, drain cleaning and heating services to homeowners in Vermont.

A Relevant Title Tag

As uninteresting as this may sound your page title holds a lot of weight. If you’re unfamiliar with a page title it is the name appearing in the blue bar across the top of the page. If your says something like “Untitled Document” or “Index” I’m talking to you.

Page titles should be different for every page in your site. They should clearly and accurately describe your page, and you should try to use keywords in the page title. For example “Los Angeles Replacement Windows“, “Pasadena Plumber“, etc. You should always include your main service area and the specific service in your title tag. Also do not keep the same Title Tag on every page of your website. It should change so it clearly defines what is on that specific page. Search engines display the title of your page on their search result pages. The catchier and more accurate your title the better the chance you’ll hit target traffic. In regards to meta tags some Meta tags are useful while others are not. Search engines are relying more and more about what is on the website than what the tags are telling them. The description tag is used by some (but not all) search engines. The same goes for the keyword tag. In my opinion, the only tags you should concentrate your efforts on are the Title tag and the description tags.

The Contact Page

Your potential and current clients need an easy way to get in touch. Have a clearly marked link for contact information and include every avenue you receive communication through. Telephone and fax numbers (both local and 800), physical addresses, etc. all should appear on this page.

One thing is important, please make sure to have an online submission form to make contact. Potential clients may not pick up the phone to call you, or even email you if you provide an email address. But most of them will fill out an online submission form. If you are going to have an email address on your website, please make sure that it matches the one on your domain. It is very unprofessional to have a YAHOO or HOTMAIL email address for your business. For emergency service companies, i.e. plumbers, HVAC, electricians, please make sure to have your telephone number on every single page.

Top Ten Things Every Contractor Website Should Have

In the past two months, our company has done over 200 website analyses of contractor websites. While almost any contractor can have a web site these days it’s much harder to have a good website. From design aspects to readable content, to simple search engine optimization and navigation many sites that we have seen have fallen flat.

Before you even begin the website process, you need to ask yourself, WHY? Why do you want to have your website. I have dealt with many clients, and each one may have different reasons. Do you want your website to be used simply as a gallery of your work? Do you want it to generate new leads and possible customers? Do you want to display ongoing projects? These are questions you need to ask before you even decide on getting a website. We will discuss each thing throughout the upcoming week, to give enough time for each contractor to focus on their own website.

« Previous Page