Your landscape company’s website is your most valuable digital real estate, so it pays to invest time planning and implementing a landscaping website design that converts. Here are 5 essential must-haves for your site.
1. Keep it simple.
Choose a template that’s clean, uncluttered, and offers plenty of white space. Flashy website designs can take a long time to load—and nothing is more frustrating to a prospect than being forced to wait when they want answers now. In fact, some studies suggest the average attention span has shrunk to a mere 8 seconds. Simple designs and condensed images load more quickly, so the prospect is less likely to feel bored and frustrated enough to hit that back button to return to search results and find a different landscape company.
The other advantage of keeping landscaping website design simple is that it allows you to focus on your unique value proposition—that singular quality that makes your company a better choice than the competition. For example, maybe your business uses the Equipter RB3000 self-propelled landscaping trailer to keep job sites cleaner and boost efficiency. Flashy site graphics, busy designs, and overly-wordy content detract from that message, making it more likely the prospect will miss that critical differentiator.
2. Make calls-to-action (CTAs) stand out.
The call-to-action is your way of directing the landscaping customer to the next step. It might include directions like, “Call for a free estimate,” or, “Download our free spring lawn care guide.”
Prominent buttons and forms are clear ways to indicate a CTA, but you can also include them within the content as hyperlinks.
3. Add easy-to-find contact information.
This is a must-have on any website, but small businesses sometimes neglect it. And if you’ve ever visited a site where you couldn’t find a contact phone number or email, you understand just how frustrating it is.
At minimum, make the contact page part of your landscaping website design’s main navigation menu. Depending on the site layout, you may want to add additional points of contact in the footer, sidebars, or as part of the call-to-action within the content itself.
4. Place the most important information “above the fold.”
This term originally described articles printed on the top half of the newspaper, which was the portion visible when the paper was folded. In website design, “above the fold” describes the content that’s immediately visible on the web page; in other words, the reader doesn’t need to scroll down to find it.
Make it easy for the prospect to take action (i.e., decide to hire you, request a free quote, log into an online account, etc.) by putting the important information on any one page at the top.
5. Use high-quality photos.
Images are an ideal way to showcase your talents, so the quality of the photos you include on the website will matter. To get the most effective digital imagery, it's wise to invest in a professional photographer with experience in properly photographing outdoor environments. If a pro is out of the picture because of the budget, you may be able to find low-cost help with a college-level photography student or even a new photographer.
Do you have zero budget for great pics? Don’t despair. Many cell phone cameras are capable of taking high-quality photos you can add to the landscaping website design. Professional photographers recommend taking pictures during the “golden hour,” which is the first hour after sunrise and the hour immediately before sunset, to take advantage of ideal natural lighting.
Starting or sprucing up your landscaping business's website is just one way of improving your marketing tactics. Equipter's landscaping business articles offer even more insight on how to land more customers and even improve worker morale.