3 Website Design Must-Haves for Professional Pool Builders
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The Content Team,
HALSTEAD.
There are numerous challenges that come with owning and marketing a swimming pool design/build firm— navigating weather, and seasonality, permitting, finding skilled laborers that are also reliable..the list goes on. The need to drive leads consistently is always on the to-do list as most firms that have been around the block can tell you, marketing is an always-on effort if you want to be a leader in your service area. But driving leads is relatively easy—driving the right kinds of leads for the projects you want to build day-in-and-day-out often proofs to be more challenging.
Thankfully, there are more tools at a professional marketer’s fingertips today with digital, than ever before. But still many pool builders struggle to secure the foundation of any marketing system—a properly performing website. Or as we call it as HALSTEAD…a website that works.
See, there are three types of websites. There are the crazy-looking, outdated and poorly branded websites that are just plain terrible. Yes, there’s still some of those out there in the pool building community.
Next, there are what we call shell sites. These are websites that look pretty good and appear to function pretty solidly from a user experience standpoint, but they are not built for marketing performance. Lack of forms and click-to-calls, improperly placed calls-to-actions, no landing pages built to convert paid traffic at a high percentage, and a lack of back-end structure necessary for pool builder SEO performance. These types of sites are very common.
Lastly, there is a marketing-ready pool builder website that is ready to perform, ready to serve as the rock solid foundation for your digital marketing system. Stunning to look at on the front end with lush photography and videos, proper case studies, pages that outline your processes and pricing, pool options, professional copywriting that sets you apart from the competition, and more. These are the sites we build at HALSTEAD, and these type of site is exactly what any pool builder looking to run a proper marketing system needs. Google Ads, Facebook and Instagram Ads, SEO, even offline sources like EDDM—yes, a proper site can handle—and convert—from all these efforts.
1. Pool Builder Website Must-Have #1: Professional Photography & Videography.
All design/build construction companies (especially pool builders) are in one of the most visual industries out there. Potential customers need to be inspired by your work. They need to visualize your projects in their backyard, before an excavator bucket ever hits the dirt. They need to explore design style options, they need to understand your capabilities, and they need to see if your approach and style matches their needs. Most importantly, your prospects need to feel emotionally connected to your pools and the surrounding landscape work. Spending $200k on a pool is a lot of money, regardless of the overall home's value. The most effective way to increase your chances of winning more projects is to increase the trust and connection factors the homeowners feel right from the first impression—which is almost alway the website.
A foundational way to allow prospects to visualize the possibilities you can make a reality is through lush photos and videos. While photos used to be enough, videos are not essential. Without professional photos of your work, you really cannot build a website worthy of the products you are selling. Selling a luxury product without showing it in a luxurious manner is just plan silly. And showing still photos alone does not bring the projects to life like one of your competitors likely is doing. Without interviews, drone fly-throughs, and cinematic motion video that connects emotionally to the viewer, you are leaving winning strategies behind.
2. Pool Builder Website Must-Haves #2: Case Studies.
Gone are the days of dumping a bunch of random photos in a gallery called “our work.” Even if they are professionally shot photos, homeowners today expect more—quite frankly, they deserve more. Leave those random close-up pictures for a whimsical gallery called “glimpses”, and/or pepper them through as blog images and call-to-action designs. Take the time to build out proper case studies for at least a handful of your best projects so your prospects can fully understand the scope of the magic your team creates. Perceived value leads to better understanding of higher rates, and perceived value comes from over-explaining what you do. Select only the best still photos, include a 60-second video of the project with interviews, and literally tell the story of the project with professional copywriting. Bundle it up beautifully and professionally in a proper project case study page on your website. Now, that’s how you display your work.
3. Pool Builder Website Design Must-Haves #3: Process and Pricing Pages.
It used to be the general popular opinion in the pool building industry that sharing pricing upfront or on a website was a no-no. Never “scare” the customer away with those big numbers. Well, that has officially changed. See, the outdoor living industry has grown up! The space has exploded with bigger projects, more educated customers, more competition, and a better overall shopping experience for prospects. For pool builders with proper digital marketing that has afforded them the luxury of a steady stream of inbound leads, weeding out those weeds by prequalifying digitally is a must-do practice. Today’s consumer wants to understand how much poolscapes cost, so they can properly budget, and better understand just how far that budget will go.
The way we do this at HALSTEAD for our leading pool builder clients is with what we call project packages. We work with out client to carve out some project price ranges from small, medium, and large—or good, better, best is your prefer—and paint the picture of what a project in that price range would include.
The other element that is often under-utilized on pool builder websites is process communication. What can the customer expect from you and your team? What is the first step? How long does each phase typically take? Customers who are spending $300k for a backyard escape are often professionals themselves—they want to know more about how things will go, and they are more than capable of following along on the journey.