What do the top 100 engineering and construction companies put on their websites?

1. Presentation Title
Subtitle
Month, #, Year
Engineering and Construction
Websites: 9 Best Practices
What do top AEC companies put on their websites?

2. Engineering and Construction Website Best Practices
ANDY CRESTODINA
Co-Founder / CMO
SHAHIN DEJY
Business Development Lead
Welcome
AMANDA GANT
Director of Marketing

3. What do the top architecture,
engineering and construction firms
put on their sites?

4. Engineering and Construction Website Best Practices
The Data

6. Engineering and Construction Website Best Practices
Website Usability Study, 2004 vs 2016
source: NN Group

7. Engineering and Construction Website Best Practices
source: NN Group
Causes of User Failure

8. Engineering and Construction Website Best Practices
Which of these online frustrations
have you experienced in the last month?
source: Drift, 2020

9. Answer visitor questions

10. Questions to ask your
clients/customers…

11. Take me back to that moment when
you first realized you needed help.

12. What almost kept you
from hiring us?

13. What made you confident enough
to give us a try?

14. When evaluating options,
what was most important to you?

15. If you couldn’t work with us ever again,
what would you miss the most?

16. Questions to ask
your top salesperson…

17. What questions are you just sick
and tired of answering?

18. What should people ask you,
but they usually don’t?

19. What is the biggest number
you can get up to?

20. What is the A-ha moment
prospects have during sales calls?

21. Fill in this blank: people can work
with us even if they ______.

22. ABC Inc.

23. Engineering and Construction Website Best Practices
Take me back to the
moment when you
knew you needed help.
Well, it was the
liquidity event. I was
stressed about taxes.
Tax Strategies for
Liquidity Events
Marketing Client

24. Engineering and Construction Website Best Practices
Take me back to the
moment when you
knew you needed help.
We were drafting the
contracts and
needed a hand
Tax Strategies for
Liquidity Events
Marketing Client

25. Engineering and Construction Website Best Practices
Take me back to the
moment when you
knew you needed help.
We partner on contract
language and
administration…
Marketing Client
We were drafting the
contracts and
needed a hand

26. Engineering and Construction Website Best Practices
When evaluating
options, what was most
important to you?
Security was
the top priority,
then scalability.
Security
Marketing Client
Scalability

27. Engineering and Construction Website Best Practices
When evaluating
options, what was most
important to you?
A team that knows
documentation and
is good with drones.
Security
Marketing Client
Scalability

28. Engineering and Construction Website Best Practices
When evaluating
options, what was most
important to you?
…experts in detailed
documentation …
Marketing Client
…drones with hi-res
and thermal imaging…
A team that knows
documentation and
is good with drones.

29. Engineering and Construction Website Best Practices
What can you do now
that you couldn’t do
before?
I know all the docs
and contracts are
backed up forever
Your secure digital vault
contains all past
inspection docs
Marketing Client

30. Engineering and Construction Website Best Practices
What made you confident
enough to give us a try?
I saw you had done
a lot of projects in
our area
450+ industrial
inspection projects
Marketing Client

31. Engineering and Construction Website Best Practices
What is the biggest
number you can get up to?
We’ve inspected
10M square feet of
industrial projects
10 Million
sq ft inspected
Marketing Sales

32. Engineering and Construction Website Best Practices
Companies can work with
us even if _____?
Even if they have their
own inspectors!
…together with your
on-site inspectors…
Marketing Sales

34. Engineering and Construction Website Best Practices
source: Service Page Checklist
Checklist for
high-performing
sales pages

35. Engineering and Construction Website Best Practices
1. Short descriptive headline
2. Keyword focus
3. Quick visual credibility
4. Meaningful subheads
5. Answers to top questions
6. Short paragraphs
B2B Service Page Checklist
7. Testimonials / social proof
8. Strong supportive visuals
9. Faces of your people
10. Data and statistics
11. Clean, simple flow
12. Depth and detail (800+ words)
13. Compelling call to action

36. 1. Descriptive Homepage Headline
46% of AEC company websites
have descriptive homepage headlines

39. The Backyard BBQ Test
“So what do you do for a living?”

41. Is this the language the
audience would use?

42. Assumes that visitors know
what AEC means

43. Not descriptive… but obviously
they’re in construction

44. Just repeats the brand

45. Ah, that’s what they do!

47. Repeats the brand
all over the place!

48. Large text is unnecessary and vague
Small text is specific and meaningful

49. Large text is unnecessary and vague
Small text is specific and meaningful

52. “What does this company do?”
Results of 5-second test for orbitmedia.com
New Site Current Site

54. “What does this company do?”
Results of 5-second test for orbitmedia.com
New Site Old Site

55. 75%
50%
75%
50%
Scroll Heat Maps
source: HotJar

56. Engineering and Construction Website Best Practices
Most homepage visitors don’t scroll
Composite scroll heat maps for 10 lead gen
website homepages (desktop only).
On average 73% of homepage visitors
do not see any below-the-fold content.

57. Visual Prominence
That Guides their Attention

65. 2. Social Icons In the Header
26% of AEC company websites
have social icons in their headers

78. Source: Where’d They Go? Tracking Exit Clicks Using GTM

79. Source: Where’d They Go? Tracking Exit Clicks Using GTM

80. Source: Where’d They Go? Tracking Exit Clicks Using GTM

81. Source: Where’d They Go? Tracking Exit Clicks Using GTM

83. Source: Where’d They Go? Tracking Exit Clicks Using GTM

84. Source: Where’d They Go? Tracking Exit Clicks Using GTM

89. 3. Fullscreen Looping Homepage Video
41% of AEC company websites
have full-screen homepage videos

90. Engineering and Construction Website Best Practices
source: NN Group
Causes of User Failure

91. 4. Homepage Title Tags
17% of AEC company websites
have “home” as the title of their homepage

92. “Home Page” doesn’t indicate
relevance for anything…

95. <title>Home</title>

96. 5. Slideshows and Carousels
79% of AEC websites still use slideshows

98. Seven slides on a
very short page

100. source: Do Rotating Sliders Help or Hurt?

101. Slideshows were invented to
prevent stabbings in
conference rooms

106. 6. Descriptive Navigation Labels
…not just what we do, services, products.
6% of AEC websites
do not use descriptive navigation labels

110. Engineering and Construction Website Best Practices
Generic navigation labels, common to millions of websites.

111. Engineering and Construction Website Best Practices
Descriptive labels that indicate relevance
to search engines and visitors

112. Engineering and Construction Website Best Practices
Simple dropdown with few options

113. Engineering and Construction Website Best Practices
Mega dropdown with lots of options

114. How are visitors using
our navigation?

122. Engineering and Construction Website Best Practices
1. Any small links getting clicked a lot?
2. Any big buttons getting missed?
3. Are calls to action effective?
4. What gets clicked the most in the main nav?
5. What never gets clicked in the main nav?
5 Questions to ask your Navigation Summary

123. 7. People Pictures and Bios
Most AEC websites do not
show their team up front

128. Make a page per person

131. Getting outranked by
LinkedIn…

134. Outranking LinkedIn!

135. Engineering and Construction Website Best Practices
Source: Personal SEO Tips

139. 8. Supportive Evidence
Are there testimonials, client logos, statistics?
13% of AEC websites
feature evidence on the homepage

140. Must be legit!

142. Ranked by who?

143. Data about a project
adds credibility

144. Scannable.
Credible.

145. Are all four of these of
equal importance?

146. “trust seal”

147. As-seen-in logos
Video testimonials
Reports and case studies
Statistics and data
Fill your pages with evidence…

148. 9. Specific Calls to Action
…not just contact us, learn more, click here
11% of AEC websites use specific CTAs

149. This is not really a call to action

150. Engineering and Construction Website Best Practices
BENEFITS COSTS

151. Engineering and Construction Website Best Practices
RETURN INVESTMENT

152. Engineering and Construction Website Best Practices

153. Engineering and Construction Website Best Practices

154. Engineering and Construction Website Best Practices

155. Engineering and Construction Website Best Practices

156. Engineering and Construction Website Best Practices

157. Engineering and Construction Website Best Practices

158. Engineering and Construction Website Best Practices

162. Putting it all together

163. Engineering and Construction Website Best Practices
source: Google UX Playbooks

164. Engineering and Construction Website Best Practices
source: Google UX Playbooks

165. Engineering and Construction Website Best Practices
source: Google UX Playbooks
% of AEC firms
doing it “right”
46%
59%
21%
11%
13%

166. Engineering and Construction Website Best Practices
source: Google UX Playbooks

167. Engineering and Construction Website Best Practices
source: Service Page Checklist
Checklist for
high-performing
sales pages

168. Engineering and Construction Website Best Practices
1. Short descriptive headline
2. Keyword focus
3. Quick visual credibility
4. Meaningful subheads
5. Answers to top questions
6. Short paragraphs
Service Page Checklist
7. Testimonials / social proof
8. Strong supportive visuals
9. Faces of your people
10. Data and statistics
11. Clean, simple flow
12. Depth and detail (800+ words)
13. Compelling call to action

169. Thank you.
Reach out anytime.
Andy Crestodina
Co-founder / CMO
773.353.8301
andy@orbitmedia.com

170. “People looking for me are
searching for what?”

171. “Which page on my website is
relevant for that phrase?”

172. “Is this page one of the ten pages
on the internet for the topic?”