The surprisingly simple reason people are leaving your website, and how to 2x the leads to your construction business in 2023
It’s no secret that people go to Google for everything. We research cars, schools, parenting styles, best vacation spots, and where to find the best plumber in our area.
Before a potential client ever picks up the phone to call you, they’ve already been to your website, read reviews on your company, and asked friends and family who they would recommend for the services they’re looking for.
Having an effective online presence is absolutely crucial for the success of any businesses, including those in construction.
But did you know that the human brain processes visuals faster than any other form of data? We remember a whopping 80% of what we see and just 20% of what we read.
There is no way to engage with your audience with just text-based content on your website. You need to incorporate visuals with text on your website to attract potential consumers.
Images that accurately represent your construction business are a great way to show your customers who you are, what you offer, and what they can achieve by working with your company.
Choosing the right images for your construction website is extremely important if you want to appeal to your dream clients. From your logo to portfolio photos of your previous projects, all the visuals play a significant role in connecting with the people who land on your website.
Your construction website images can be the difference between booking a new client or them leaving your website and never coming back.
Here is everything you need to know when choosing the best images for your construction website.
How to dramatically increase website conversions by choosing the right images for your construction website
1 - Make a good first impression (or lose them for good)
Let’s be honest, most of us don’t have the best attention spans. With the rise of social media, we’ve all gotten used to getting our information in super short snippets.
Well, the same goes for how we browse websites. According to Nielsen Group, the average user decides if they want to stay on your site within 10-20 seconds.
Humans also process images 60,000 times faster than text!
If you’re not using effective headlines and attention-grabbing images from the second they land on your website, they might just decide to bounce.
So how exactly can you use images to connect with the people on your website?
USE REAL HUMAN FACES ON YOUR WEBSITE
By using real people in the images on your website, you’re giving your website users someone to relate to.
SHOW VALIDATION FOR WHAT IT’S LIKE TO WORK WITH YOU
People want to feel safe when making buying decisions. If your users are unsure about the services, you offer or the price point for those services, they’re not likely to do business with you.
It’s the same reason we all read reviews before eating out at a new restaurant or buying a product on Amazon.
But when your users can see other people who have used your services and are raving about how great it was, that builds trust and security.
If your website has pictures of happy clients or video testimonials explaining how worth the investment it was to work with your construction company, it’ll convince others to want to work with you, too!
CHOOSE PHOTOS RELEVANT TO YOUR INDUSTRY
This may seem obvious, but make sure you choose website images relevant to the services you offer.
The images on your website should clearly show what you do without the user having to read a single word.
Whether you’re in roofing, home renovations, plumbing, custom home building, or any other sector of construction, pick images that obviously represent the services you offer.
USE QUALITY IMAGES
We’ll go into this in more detail later in this post, but if you want to avoid scaring people away from your website immediately, make sure the photos you use on your website are quality images.
Nothing breaks a website design and user experience more than having lousy, poor-quality, blurry, or outdated photos. Trust me, people will exit your website as fast as they came if your images suck.
2 - Make sure your images are the right size for your website
Before uploading photos to your site, make sure they’re the right size. This is important for a couple of reasons…
SIZE FOR THE LAYOUT OF YOUR WEBSITE DESIGN
I’m not talking about a simple stretch and pull technique to fix a picture inside your website template or layout. But different image resizers can help you achieve the right size without distorting the image’s original quality.
If you need a photo for a wide banner section of your website, you’ll want a quality horizontal-oriented photo. If you use a vertical picture, it’ll send up stretching, losing its quality, and probably not highlighting the section of the image you’d like the user to see.
By picking photos that complement the layout of the different sections of your website, they won’t require a lot of changes to adjust.
Although there is no universal sizing for website images, there are some photo sizing guidelines you can follow. A general guideline of what to expect in most cases can help you take/choose appropriate options. Resizing and scaling properly makes sure you don’t lose the quality of the photo. Plus, the finished product looks powerful and professional instead of sloppy.
COMPRESS YOUR HIGH-RESOLUTION PHOTOS
High resolution photos are larger files that take a much longer time to load on your website. Not only does this hurt SEO, but it gives a negative user experience. The website visitor will lose patience and interest if they have to wait for all of your photos to load, no matter how great your images are.
Use a quality image compressor to get your photos to the correct compression without losing its quality. This frees up the website from all that unnecessary burden.
3 - Use your own photos and skip the cheesy stock images
You basically have two options for images on your construction website:
Stock images on the internet (free or paid)
Your own images
The best way to portray your business is by taking real pictures, specific to your company.
My recommendation? Hire a pro.
It’s an investment but hire a professional photographer. I can guarantee you; it WILL pay off.
A professional can work with you to get the best shots for your website, social media platforms, and other marketing materials. They will take shots of your team, equipment, and most importantly, you at work.
These professional images automatically build trust, because site users know that you take your business seriously.
These real photos have a better chance of engaging website visitors and reducing the amount of times they leave your website. Companies that focus on delivering tangible results prioritize updating the image gallery on their website regularly.
If people like what they see, nothing can stop them from picking up the phone and hiring you.
Add as many real pictures as you prefer but avoid compromising quality over quantity. Design pictures in a way that does not look off-putting or damage the structure of your website’s theme.
Can’t hire a professional photographer yet? That’s ok!
The great thing about technology today is cameras (including phone cameras) are getting better and better. Find a friend who does photography on the side and has a good camera or snap some pictures yourself. These can work fine, especially for smaller sections of your website like employee photos.
If you do go the route of taking the photos for your website yourself, just make sure you follow the guidelines given in the image resizing tips mentioned earlier, so they are sized properly for your website.
Let’s chat about a few more things…
Can’t I just use stock photos on my construction website?
Listen, the web is way different than it was when the internet first launched.
People can spot a cheesy, staged stock image from a mile away. And it won’t bode well for your conversion rates when they see it. (Not to mention, it’s highly possible that your competitor is using the same image. Not a good look for either one of you…)
But I get it, when you’re just starting out, you need to start somewhere.
Many websites offer royalty-free images at an affordable price to emphasize your business and services. They also have a very high-quality result that makes your website look professional.
If you decide to use stock photos for your construction site, be smart about which ones you choose (even if you have to pay for the right stock photos). Avoid using unreal pictures to represent your work. Instead, choose candid photographs or vectors to portray an authentic view.
Here are a few reputable stock photography agencies I’ve used for clients in the past.
CREATIVE MARKET
Creative Market is an amazing marketplace of designs by independent creators and includes over 3 million unique fonts, graphics, themes, photos, and templates for your website.
UNSPLASH
Unsplash is one of the top premium stock photo websites out there. The majority of the content includes high-quality, free photos. You can use them easily for any subject without giving attribution. With over 240k content creators, Unsplash is constantly growing and has plenty of options to get started.
PIXABAY
Pixabay is one of the largest and growing stock photo platforms providing free images for people worldwide. The image quantity is massive, and the quality is impressive. The database contains illustrations, music, pictures, sound effects, videos, and vectors. It is a good-quality website that can add great value to your construction website.
SHUTTERSTOCK
Shutterstock is another great website to access top-quality stock photos. It contains thousands of images, vectors, 3D models, videos, and templates at an affordable price. You will also find an image resizer to adjust your chosen images according to your website’s format.
How do I optimize the pictures on my construction website for SEO?
In addition to making sure your images are sized properly for your website (which we talked about earlier), you’ll want to optimize all of the photos on your website for search engines.
Just uploading a picture isn't enough. You must optimize it enough for a better user experience. Doing this will improv your website speed and also improves your website’s ranking.
Proper image optimization can make your website look more attractive to potential customers, but when optimizing the pictures, consider the following things:
USE THE CORRECT FILE EXTENSION
Most users use a PNG or JPG file extension to upload website pictures. What’s the difference?
PNG is a superb-quality picture that comes with lossless compression. Their size can be reduced without degrading the image quality. However, PNG has a bigger file size, so it may weigh down your website if you have too many of these.
JPG files are much smaller in size and contain compressed image data. They have a lower range of compression without quality loss, making them a format you don’t want to resize too much and lose quality.
Besides these two, you can also use GIFs, which are average-quality animated images. Website owners only prefer them when using animations on their websites.
NAME YOUR IMAGES PROPERLY
This may sound weird, but you want to make sure to name your images when uploading them. You’re renaming the file to represent what the image is showing.
For example, the right file name for the image below should be ‘construction workers on site’ instead of the default file name ‘image-80zZ1s24Nag.jpg.’
When you start naming your images correctly, Google will understand and display them when someone searches for similar keywords.
Tip: Keep a file name between three to eight words for best results.
You can also use the primary keyword as part of your file name. But make sure it is relevant to the picture, to avoid negative penalties from Google.
OPTIMIZE IMAGE ALT TAGS
Sorry, guys. I’m getting all technical on you with some of these tips, but I want you to have as much information as possible to make your website efforts a success.
Google loves accurate descriptions. It also loves alt tags.
Alt tags are a short sentence that defines your pictures. These alt tags (also called alt descriptions or alt text) help website crawling bots understand and interpret the image to ensure that it matches the description. It ranks on search engines based on keywords and descriptions.
Alt tags also make your website content inclusive to everyone. People with disabilities and visual impairment use screen readers to read the alt tags so they, too, can understand what images are on your website.
Let’s revisit the picture of construction workers on site I added above.
The correct alt tag for this photo would be something like 'two construction workers reading a blueprint while on the site.'
When writing alt text, avoid writing long paragraphs. Those will be hard to recognized for Google algorithms. Ideally, it should be around 140 characters. However, be descriptive enough so the audience understands your visual properly in case they fail to load for some reason.
There is a dedicated space in all modern website building platforms like Wordpress, Squarspace, and Wix to make it easy to manage your image alt tags.
As a construction business, the right visuals on your website matter a lot more than you might think.
The right images will dramatically increase your conversion rates, landing you more jobs every single month.
Follow these tips to ensure you have the best images for your construction website:
Whether you use stock photos or real ones, they should be relevant to your construction business's services.
When possible, hire a professional to capture the photos for your construction website and portfolio
Optimize your images for search engines by using appropriate file extensions, file names, and alt tags. This will help rank your website higher on the SERPs.
Compress the images to help your website load faster, leading to reduced bounce rates.
If needed, scale and resize the images to fit your website’s template well.
Want to increase your construction website conversion rates and scale your biz?
Learn how website strategy can put more money into your pocket with a free consultation today!
