The first impression is very important, especially regarding your construction website. It takes online users or customers just a few seconds to form their first impression of your website. And once they make a judgment from what they see, it is hard to change it.
The design of your website is one important criterion for determining its online credibility, even above its overall functionality and accuracy. Your website’s design also provides a strategic advantage and changes the user’s behaviors and attitudes.
If you want to boost the online credibility of your construction website, then this blog is for you.
What Is the Connection Between Your Website’s Design and Credibility?
Simple. Website credibility is the direct, natural result of your purposeful web design. And it does two things:
- It demonstrates your expertise to online users visiting your website.
- It instills a sense of truth in your organization.
Your website design plays a huge role in convincing your visitors that your website can be trusted and your business is reliable. But the real thing is people do care now about website design and are naturally drawn to appealing ones. Whether aware or not, everyone reacts to visuals. Designs that are modern, aesthetic, and professional tend to foster trust. Meanwhile, a poorly designed website may make someone doubt your credibility and legitimacy.
When improving website credibility is your goal, it only shows how important it is for your business to invest in aesthetic web designs.
Boost Your Website’s Online Credibility with These Design Tips
1. Improve Your Site’s Loading Time
When adding content to your construction website, ensure it loads quickly and that photos, scripts, videos, and something else would not bog down the overall loading time. Many people will stop engaging with your website if the images will not load or will take too long to load. The same general rule applies to your other website content, too.
Users will never dare to wait more than five to six seconds for your content to load.
2. Focus on on-site navigation, user experience, organization
Website navigation can relay your reliability to website visitors. Your website can become more credible if the information is easier for users to find and relevant to what they care about. So, be sure to focus on the user experience when you are designing your website, and this is to make sure that it provides an overall feeling of trust and transparency.
3. Use web design elements and logos that geared toward your target audience.
The logos and color schemes on your website significantly affect the perceived value of your construction business. Since your business is more professional, pick the right colors. In construction, yellow, blue, and green are the best color combinations. These design elements you opt to include in your website should match the overall value and sentiments you want to convey to your target audience.
4. Include trust icons on your homepage
Your construction website should display notable security icons, logos, and trust seals from reputable entities on the homepage, particularly if it processes payments or any sensitive customer information. If your website does not display any seal of security or trust, your site may receive a lower credit rating.
Today, people look for trusted logos to figure out if the website is trustworthy or not. So, better be sure to include trust icons on your official homepage.
5. Highlight customer and influencer reviews
Many people today look and read online reviews to check out the credibility of the business and its services and products. Therefore, be sure that your latest testimonials and best reviews are easy to find and easy to read on your website. You can best highlight them in an animated window with top-quality images and outline them in noticeable text boxes on your homepage and relevant service pages.
6. Focus on blogging
Blogs are part of your website. Although they are not a web design element, they play an integral role in your credibility and website ranking. A blog section on your website is a perfect platform to wow your visitors with your industry expertise and insights. This is the concept at the very core of content marketing.
And by showing off that you have a greater understanding of the ins and outs of your industry via content, you become a more credible selection of your target customers. Awesome, right? But how can we get started with credibility-enhancing content? Here are a few ideas for beginners like you.
- Content that asks for nothing in return: In other words, it is not just a veiled sales pitch.
- Content that aims to solve common issues: This is proof that you understand your niche.
- Content that links back to other credible sources: A good example is other leading blogs in your niche.
- Content backed up by real-world data: Ensure you back up your points with real statistics. And never try to mislead your clients by manipulating stats to validate your point.
- Content free from basic errors: Always be careful with grammatical and spelling errors in your content.
7. Add photos of your staff and people.
Another factor that can improve your website’s credibility is adding photos of you and your people. Not only it positively affects the credibility of your site, but also it can increase your conversion rates. Why? Because people will trust more if they can guarantee that the people behind the operations are real ones.
Pick the best photos of your people. It can be photos during an event, gathering, or during the completion of the project.
8. Stop Auto-play of Animated Ads and Videos
Visitors do not like blinking ads and meaningless pop-ups that will not get off the screen when they visit a website. They will also think that the website is less credible if they cannot find the details they are looking for. Also, if your plan is only to sell your services, your website visitors will instantly figure it out.
Be careful on this part. This type of tactic may slow down your website’s speed.
9. Provide information for warranties, guarantees, and returns
Be honest and transparent with your service warranties and guarantees on your construction website to build trust with your target prospects. New customers will feel more confident in availing of services from your website when they know what service guarantees you offer, including how you process returns.
Offering guarantees are very effective because they transfer risks away from your customers. This is where trust is built up and established right after.
10. Do not be afraid of white space.
Whitespace is a crucial design element that can help you break up the page and increase readability. White space refers to some areas around elements on the page that are empty and lacking visual items or content. White space plays an integral role in the design process as well as the positioning of the website elements.
While more whitespace can dictate what specific sections are separate and lead the eye, less white space can direct which elements are supposed to be related to one another because of their proximity.
11. Implement CTAs or Call to Action
Once your web visitors land on your website, either your homepage or blog section, you have to guide them to sections on your website that can help nurture them to conversion. The majority of people are lazy. Thus, make this easier for them at least. Lead them in the right direction so they do not struggle to find what they are looking for.
Placing CTAs is one of the best ways to level up your web design. Put the CTAs in the right areas, like the top right of your navigation or down sections that often require actions. The bottom of your web pages is also an ideal area to place CTAs. We suggest you be more strategic in placing these CTAs.
12. Build Backlinks
There are several truths about what helps your website rank in search engines. As a matter of fact, Google is very particular with a mobile-first design, top-notch security, fast page speeds, user-friendly navigation, expertise, and credibility, which are all mentioned above. But among other things, Google is also looking for high-authority website links back to your construction website.
Building up backlinks relevant to your construction business gives your brand recognition and authority within your industry. In conclusion, the importance of link-building for your business is very high.
Is Your Website Design Making the Right Impact?
Your website is one of your company’s most powerful tools to attract more leads. Your website needs a great, appealing web design to make it more effective. While an excellent website involves more than just a design, online users and clients expect an attractive visual layout.
So, if you are looking for web design and development services, ConstructionMarketing.io is happy to help. Here at our agency, we have a team of web design experts who are proven to have done amazing projects in web designing. We maintain the high integrity and quality of our services, with a guarantee of bringing great online success to your construction business.