6 Principles Of Good Building Product Website Design

With the vast majority of customers turning to the internet to search and find businesses, it’s essential to have a good, solid website design. 

Web design can make or break the user experience, and ultimately determine whether or not people will return to your building product website.  

That's why it's important to understand the principles of good building product website design and to apply them to ensure your site is built to convert traffic into customers.

Why You Need Good Web Design 

A well-designed website can make all the difference in attracting and retaining customers. It can showcase your building product expertise, services, and past projects. It’s a platform where your customers connect with your building product brand.  

In today's digital age, a construction website can be considered as their online shop window, and just like any shop window, it should be visually appealing and easy to navigate.  

A website interface also helps to build trust, and credibility and establish your building products business as a reputable and reliable one.  

A poorly designed website, on the other hand, can be detrimental to your company's reputation and can drive potential customers away. This is why investing in improving your website design is so crucial. 

1: Your Construction Website's Purpose 

Users will be coming to your construction website for answers to problems they’re facing. Whether that’s looking for security solutions for their construction site or hygienic flooring for kitchens – your site will need to answer their problems. 

Having a clear and concise purpose on all pages of your website can enhance user engagement.   

Here are the core purposes common to all websites: 

• Problems solved with your products/services 
• Showcasing past projects and the technical difficulties your product/service helped overcome  
• Generating leads 

2: Simplicity Of Your Construction Website 

When thinking about how to improve your construction website's usability and user experience - simplicity is the best approach. Here are some strategies for designing for simplicity. 

Using The Right Colours For Your Building Product Brand 

The use of colour can greatly impact the way your building product brand is perceived by customers. By carefully selecting a colour palette that aligns with your building product brand, you can increase your brand awareness by creating a recognisable visual identity. 

To achieve the most effective results, it’s recommended to limit your colour selection to a maximum of five hues. Using complementary colours can create a visually pleasing and cohesive look, which can increase customer engagement and create a positive user experience. 

Construction Websites: The Power Of Imagery 

Visual elements, such as photography, illustrations, videos, and graphics, play a crucial role in communicating the message of your building product brand.  

These images should effectively express the personality and essence of your company. Since most of the information we consume online is visual, it’s important to use high-quality images to make a strong first impression and establish credibility in the minds of visitors. 

F-Shaped Pattern Reading On Your Website 

The F-shaped pattern is a widely observed behaviour among website visitors, where the majority of attention is focused on the top and left regions of the screen.  

This pattern is consistent with the natural way people read and scan text in Western cultures (left-to-right and top-to-bottom). A well-designed website will take this into account and align the layout and content to match the reader's natural scanning pattern. 

Grid-Based Layout For Construction Websites 

Grids facilitate the organisation of both content and design. The grid layout makes the page look neat and aligns the elements on the page.  

Grids are used in web design to understand where to position elements on the website. These rules combine margins, spacing, and columns to create a comprehensive, unified foundation for the page's content. 

Whether or not grid lines are visible on the website itself, their underlying framework and structure aid in controlling both the ratios and proportions between each piece as well as the overall layout of the page or screen. 

3: Incorporate A Visual Hierarchy  

Visual hierarchy is a key tool in construction website design, allowing users to understand where to focus their attention.  

By arranging elements in order of importance with techniques such as size, colour, imagery, contrast, typography, whitespace, texture and style – you can direct visitors' attention to the focal point.  

This serves both practical and aesthetic purposes as well as making it easy for visitors to identify important information quickly. 

4: Content Is King 

Both great design and content are found on an efficient website.  

Great content may attract and influence visitors, turning them into clients by using language that addresses their pain points with understanding and solutions, yet is also compelling.  

Specifiers are looking for easy-to-find technical information and downloads. Things like:  

• Technical drawings 
• Datasheets 
• BIM objects 
• Certifications 

• Accreditations 
• Case studies which showcase best practices and context for products and solutions 

5: Ensure A Quick Load Time For Your Website 

A website will lose visitors if there’s a long load time. Nearly half of website visitors anticipate that a page will load in two seconds or less, and they may leave if it takes more than three seconds.  

Optimising Picture Sizes 

Whilst images on your building product website are great, large photos can also increase loading times. 

Compressing and optimising your photos is one of the simplest techniques to speed up page loading. Your pages will load more quickly if you minimise the "weight" of your photos by reducing their file sizes. You can do this using a variety of image optimization plugins, like WP Smush. 

6: Is Your Construction Website Mobile Friendly? 

Nowadays architects and specifiers are browsing on their phones or on tablets.  

It’s crucial to think about designing your construction website with a responsive layout so that it can adapt to various screen sizes so you’re not losing customers with a poor mobile website. 

There are several methods to achieve this:  

Responsive Design 

Your construction website adapts to the screen size, whether you’re just changing the size of your desktop tab, or browsing from a mobile or tablet. 

Dynamic Serving 

Depending on the device they are viewing the site from, visitors are shown a different, purpose-built version of the site 

A Mobile App 

In some situations, creating a totally original app for your mobile audience makes the most sense (however, in that case, you should also make sure your website is up to date for those who don't want to download it). 

Conclusion 

Although there are many elements to a great website design, these 8 principles can help your building product business and give users a positive experience. 

If you’re in the market for a new website, why not speak to an expert directly? 

We can help you in reaching the objectives for your brand by creating a specifier-friendly, lead-generation website that works as an additional salesperson.