Do General Contractors Need a Website?
If you want to compete in the construction industry, you NEED a website. Whether you’re focusing on residential or commercial clients, you can not compete without a website.
Here are a few of our favorite reasons FOR building a website:
- You can showcase your previous work.
- Before and After photos are HUGE right now for securing new clients. They want to be able to see what kind of changes your team is capable of before hiring you.
- You’re able to display testimonials from prior clients to help instill trust in potential clients. People have heard horror stories of bad contractors, and part of your job as a good general contractor is to help assure them that they’re in good hands hiring you.
- You not only can, but should be optimizing the website to rank higher search engines to help bring in new potential clients. This process is called SEO, and is one of the most powerful marketing methods available right now. It can be expensive if you’re hiring an SEO agency, but is good SEO worth it? Absolutely!
Any off website marketing you’re doing, whether it be organic/paid social media, paid search ads, etc. is amplified significantly with a good website. You have to make sure that you’re getting traffic to your website, and that the website is set up to handle that traffic and convert them.
How Do I Make a Website?
First you have to understand that there are a few parts to a website.
There’s “hosting” which is what keeps your website online.
Then there are “platforms” which sometimes include hosting, but are usually what you create the website on.
Some popular options include:
- Squarespace
- Wix
- WordPress.org
- WordPress.com
Squarespace, Wix, and WordPress.com are all platforms that have hosting built in, so they’re pretty easy to use.
Our recommendation however is wordpress.org. It’s a free website building platform that 455,000,000 websites use already.
With a WordPress website, you can start building the website right after you set hosting up. There are some things that you can do to make your job easier.
Our recommendations are:
- Buy a theme. They’re about $30 – $60 on themeforest.net and you’ll get a preformatted template that you can build upon AND you get some support from the developers.
- Use a 3rd party builder like Elementor or Divi. It makes your life a lot easier. Trust us.
- Look into taking advantage of the thousands of free plugins on WordPress to accomplish what you need.
How Long Does it Take to Build a Website?
If you’re planning on building a website, you can find a theme, set up hosting, and plug in your content in about a day.
If you’re looking for a professional team to build your website, expect it to take anywhere from a few weeks to a couple of months depending on the complexity of the website. Some websites will not need to change much once your core pages are built out, but some websites are more fluid and require constant updates, like WedNav, a website dedicated to giving couples the guides they need to plan their own weddings.
How Much Does it Cost to Build a Website?
If you have some time to learn how everything works, you can set up a free wordpress.org website, buy a theme, and pay for a year of hosting for under $100.
If you plan on paying for a professional to build your website, the price depends on what you want your website to have, but can range from $500 to $15,000 on average.
Is it Worth Hiring a Professional?
The answer is pretty simple.
You should consider doing it yourself if:
- You enjoy learning
- You’re up for a little bit of hard work
- You have free time to work on the website
- You are on budgetary constraints
You should consider hiring an agency if:
- You can afford to
- You don’t care for dealing with it hands-on
- You’d prefer to continue working on what you’re good at
- You want it done right the first time
Learn More About How to Grow Your Website Today
Whether you’re looking to create your first website, upgrade an existing website, or stumbled here for another reason – our professionally trained SEO specialists at Get GC Clients have what it takes to start getting your General Contractor business the traffic (and new clients) it deserves!
