OPE daily

To continue developing electronic landscapes for the OPE industry, here are some ideas for landscapers, loggers, fence builders, and other service companies to help design a website.

Where to start?

Listen, there are a million-and-one ways to design and layout, but in the interest of getting the ideas rolling I will describe the elements from my personal taste and you can apply whatever works for you. Let’s start from the home page, also called a splash page. This is most likely the first page people will see, and it is the page your root domain will point to. This page is intended to describe your site to your visitors as well as to search engines and bots. That is, it will contain aesthetic elements for human visitors and keyword and content elements for search engines to read and categorize.

Now, hopefully you already have a great logo to work with as your website should reinforce your brand image. Your logo should be prominently displayed in the header along with a menu. I prefer horizontal menus, but vertical menus can be incorporated as well. We’ll come back to the menu a little later, but after the header/menu should be the body that contains the description of the business and why the customer is here.

It is important to note that you have about eight seconds to grab your readers attention. This isn’t the time to skimp on marketing or get long-winded about technical jargon. Your splash page should be nice looking, easy to understand, and engage the reader to get them to look further into your site. Showcase your specialties and qualify your prospects by segmenting your services. Do you cater to commercial and residential? Have these categories prominently positioned for people to follow deeper. Do you offer free (anything) bids? Display a link for readers to inquire more. The point is to get them into the site and to quickly help them find the information they need.

Menus 

This brings us back to your menu. Your menu(s) should tell readers where they can go and where they are currently. Everything on the site should be within one or two clicks from anywhere on the site. Make use of quick links menu, probably positioned above the header, so the site visitor can get to the “home” page, “contact” page, and “sitemap” page with one click. These reference pages help customers navigate, but aren’t big marketers. The main menu should contain the links for specific categories or unique information that has brought the visitor to you in the first place. Common menus include:

• About us: which explains who you are and where you started. This is a great place to distinguish yourself and your philosophies that will set you apart from your competitors.
• Services: what you do and if possible what it may cost. Here is where your list of offerings will be listed along with explanations of what those services mean to your prospect. Don’t just say “we aerate lawns.” Let the customer know why they need to aerate their lawn and why you are the one to do it. Don’t forget to cross promote your services. Explain when and why to thatch and top-dress and overseed. Discuss fencing and outdoor lighting. Remind them that complete landscaping adds value to their home rather than depreciates it.
• Portfolios: are great for service industries. The old axiom “a picture’s worth a thousand words” still holds true. Before and after photos and even real-time projects sell ideas to people. They may be looking for lawn maintenace and realize how wonderful a walking path would look. They may need a deck built and realize how great trees and other living fences would help. Let work you’ve already done continue to sell.
• Tips/How to’s/Links: sometimes it is helpful to have “free” information for potential customers. They may not need your services right now, but you are giving relevant information that you can parlay into sales later. Here the goal is to connect with prospects. Explain what different fertilizers do, or how to care for a damaged tree, or offer tide tables and weather almanacs, perhaps a zone map and recommended flowers. This is information that can help them now, and if worded correctly and sincerely will help them reach out to you when they truly need your help.

Closure

The site should be enclosed with a footer. This gives the page an end point, but also contains some good information. It can serve as another location for contact information, another set of quick links to legal information, copyrights, sitemap, and other information that may be necessary if not marketable. It is a position for sitewide support information.

Above and Beyond

While the above ideas are the meat and potatoes of your site, there are always other ways to engage your clients. Making use of flash, ajax, dynamic html, and other scripting languages you have the opportunity to display and interact with visitors like never before. You can build an interactive “create your own yard” program that allows people to design basic landscapes on your site. Display weather forecasts for the visitor’s location. Simply having an updatable news section that is tied into an email newsletter or rss feed is a great feature. I have seen some landscapers add secure payment services so their clients could pay invoices online. The sky is the limit here, and you are only prohibited by your own imagination.

This is a good start to understanding the aesthetic side of website design. I will undoubtedly edit this post a number of times as this isn’t nearly all there is to know but again, it’s a good start. We haven’t even touched on coding, SEO, or security. This is just to begin the thought process of designing to sell. Your site less about how great you are, but how you benefit your clients. Why do they need you to remove their tree? Why pick you to take care of their lawn. Your site has to sell benefits of dealing with you.