5 Steps to Improve Sales of Residential Construction Projects

People are Searching Online for Construction Solutions

We all recognize a gorgeous website when we see it: beautiful, professional and inspiring to keep on looking and see what it has to offer us. But that in itself doesn’t guarantee that people who land on your website, will actually buy something.

For many residential construction sites, the website is the gate to sales. Many potential buyers land on your website by accident because of Google, but it is the site itself that will convince them that your company is worth their time and effort.

Here are a number of examples that show you how often people search every month via Google for contractors and construction companies:

• “construction company”: 5,400 search commands per months
• “contractor”: 4,350 search commands per month
• “turn-key”: 4,400 search commands per month

Of course, it is not possible that one single construction company can be suitable for ALL those search commands. Usually, such a search command is combined with a location, such as ‘construction company East Flanders’, or ‘construction company Gent’. But even then, it still turns out that when people are searching for a contractor, they still frequently search online.

And on the internet, your website is the best way for prospects to find you and to ultimately contact you for your services.

Optimize Your Website to Sell More

Interested parties have landed on your website. How are you going to close the deal?

1. Understand Your Target Group

For starters, think about the age, gender, location and income the families have that you are going to work with.

These insights are the building blocks to create your brand and website.

Once you have decided who your target group is, you can start to determine the things that they like, where they like to go to, etc.

2. Create Goals

Your website has to be part of a larger marketing and business plan. Would you like to increase sales? By how much and by when? Would you like to increase your brand recognition? How do you find out it that has worked?

The answers to these two questions – ‘who is your target group’ and ‘what are your goals’ – will help you decide what will appear on your website.

3. Invest in a Gorgeous Website

Let’s take a look at a few attractive websites. Such as Plus Properties or Brookfield Residential.

These websites look smooth and professional – the chance that this is a free website that has been designed by the teenage son of the neighbor of the owner, is nil.

They have taken the time to choose an emanation which reflects their professionality.

Someone who lands on the website of Plus Properties is greeted immediately with high quality, professional pictures of a model home.

Opposite of that, Brookfiels Residential uses minimalism to their advantage – the visitor is shown a simple search screen immediately to input a postal code to get an immediate targeted offer that way. On top of that, the atmosphere of a warm family is clearly put on the foreground and the ‘contact’ button jumps in sight so that possible interested parties can get in contact right away in case of doubts and questions.

4. Blog As If Your Company Depends On It

It is one thing to have a website. It is quite a different story to be listed high on Google to lead potential buyers to a sale. Writing content is one of the best ways to jack up your Google ranking.

It doesn’t matter whether you write your content yourself or if you hire a writer for that. Make sure that your write for real people, not for a search engine. Write attractive content about things that your target group would be most interested in.

SEO, or search engine optimization (optimizing the findability of website by search engines), influences how you can find potential clients. Make sure that your articles contain search terms that could attract potential buyers. A few possible subjects could be:

• 14 examples of beautiful new constructed houses
• How do you choose the right construction firm?
• The 5 things you need to know before you buy a house

This can be a very long list. But what all these subjects have in common is that they are helpful and attract people who want to build a house or buy one. The more clicks and backlinks that you get, the more Google will recognize you as a valued source. You will then find your page ranked higher and more potential clients can find you.

5. Complete the Sale

After having taken the above steps, there are two more measures you can take in order to complete the agreement.

Start with being available.

Your contact information should be a part of the heading text (see the example above from Brookfield Residential); do not make it hard on your potential client by having them search all through your website in order to ask a question. Even better, offer the possibility for a live chat. We all know that when buying or building a house, there are a lot of questions involved. By offering a live chat, the client can figure out his project undisturbed, without being chased away by aggressive sales talks.

Finally, make sure your Call to Action is clear.

A Call to Action takes your potential client to the conversion funnel that can lead to a new contract in the end. This Call to Action can be a pop-up, a button or a short form on your website so that you can pick up the contact information of potential clients. Specific offers such as “Ask for a free quotation” or “Make an appointment with a design consultant” work better than generic action calls such as “Contact Us” or “Ask for More Information.”