A photo of a finished building is not a reference
Construction sites have plenty of photos. What they lack is what turns a photo into evidence: what was built, for whom, how long it took and what was difficult about it. That is exactly what a client choosing a contractor is looking for.
The client checking you before signing decides
In construction, work is not won on a website. It is won in tenders, through contacts and through architects. The site comes later and at the most sensitive moment: when the client or their engineer is checking who to sign a multi million contract with.
The traffic reflects that. Most of the construction sites we measured have so few visitors that Google holds no field data on them. Low traffic does not mean the site does not matter: it means every visit is a serious one.
What we measured in this industry
The sample holds 32 sites from this industry and 32 of them were measured. The median mobile performance is 63 against 61 for the whole sample. 29 of the 30 measured sites fall short of ninety points, the line Google calls a good result.
Zoom on a phone does not work on 4 of the 31 sites whose pages could be fetched. On 2 of those the setting is not missing, zooming is disabled on purpose.
12 sites in the industry run on WordPress and 9 of them carry at least one outdated plugin. An outdated plugin is the most common way a company website gets compromised.
A typical site from the industry
One real measured site from this industry, without a name, address or town. Not a cherry picked extreme: it is the one sitting exactly in the middle of the industry results.
- Mobile performance
- 63
- Time to main content
- 13.7 s
- Home page weight
- 2.6 MB
- Findings in the scan
- 2
The three faults we saw most often
Not true of every construction site. True of most of the ones we measured.
References are galleries without facts
Twenty photos in a row with no town, year, scope or building type. The client cannot tell whether you have done a job like theirs. That is what they came for, and when it is missing they go to the contractor who wrote two lines under the photo.
Missing the documents they will ask for anyway
Trade licences, liability insurance, certificates and approvals. You will produce them in the tender regardless. On the site they work earlier and for free: they show the paperwork is in order and to hand.
The site says nothing about what the firm does not do
A list covering everything from foundations to roof looks like reassurance and reads as the opposite. A firm that states which jobs it turns down earns trust, because it shows it knows what it is good at.
We are booked two years ahead, the website can wait
This is the best possible moment. A site is built from finished jobs, photographs and satisfied clients, and right now you have them. In two years, when the order book empties, you will need the site immediately and will be building it from whatever you can recall.
References are collected during the build, not after it. Leave them for later and you end up with photos and no facts. Precisely the ones that prove nothing.
What pays off in construction
Features from our catalogue that turn photos into evidence. The ones with a live demo can be tried out.
Want to know how your site stands against the industry?
Measure your own siteFrequently asked questions
How many references should a construction firm publish?
Ten described beats a hundred photographed. Each needs a town, a year, the scope and one sentence about what was unusual. Ten of those carry more weight than a gallery of two hundred images.
Is search advertising worth it for a construction firm?
For contract building usually not, the work arrives by other routes. It makes sense for immediate needs, meaning emergencies, repairs or installations, where somebody is looking for a contractor right now and nearby.
Does a construction firm need a site if the work comes from tenders?
Formally no, practically yes. The evaluating committee and the architect will look you up, and a firm with no traceable work reads as a firm with no history. The cost is a fraction of one job.