Website Builder Awards

I Built a Construction Website. Here’s What Worked (And What Bugged Me)

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I’m Kayla, and I redid our family construction company’s website last spring. I didn’t just write the content. I picked the stack, set up the forms, and hit publish. Dust in my hair, laptop in my lap, field calls still coming in. It was a week.

You know what? It wasn’t perfect. But it did help us win real work. Let me explain.

Why I Rebuilt It

Our old site felt like wet drywall. Slow. Out of date. No clear call to action. The projects looked tiny when we do mid-size jobs. And our bid request form? It was a sad little email link.

So I set a six-week sprint. Goal was simple:

  • Show real work.
  • Make it easy to request a bid.
  • Help supers and subs find what they need fast.

We launched the week after Memorial Day. Busy season, I know. But that’s when folks are hunting for crews.

The Stack I Used (No Fluff)

  • WordPress with Elementor and ACF. I tried Webflow, but our estimator likes WordPress. He’s fast with it now.
  • Gravity Forms for RFQ and Careers. File uploads for plans and specs. Clean.
  • Cloudways on a DigitalOcean server. I moved off SiteGround after CPU spikes. That was a mess.
  • Cloudflare for caching and SSL. Fewer calls about “site not loading.”
  • Imagify for images. Most photos went to WebP. Drone shots got heavy. This helped.
  • Yoast for SEO. GA4 and Search Console for tracking.
  • ReCAPTCHA v3 and Akismet for spam. Bots hit hard the first week.

We also linked to tools our teams use:

  • Procore for client portal.
  • BuildingConnected for subs who want invites.
  • Workable for job posts. Indeed was sending junk leads.

Some specialty crews still advertise on classifieds boards to fill gaps between scheduled jobs. Since Backpage closed, many have shifted to this Backpage replacement site where you can post services or browse local listings in minutes—perfect when you need extra hands on short notice without the friction of bigger bid portals.
If your crew happens to be working the south side of Indy and needs a hyper-local spot to drum up small fill-in gigs, check out Skip the Games Greenwood—the board focuses on the Greenwood market, so you can scan or post urgent work leads without sifting through statewide clutter.

What I Built, Page by Page

  • Home: Big hero photo of our crane at dawn. Tagline said, “We build on time. We build with care.” Two buttons: “Request a Bid” and “See Projects.”
  • Projects: Filter by Healthcare, Schools, Retail, and Civil. Each project has size, schedule, GC/CM role, plus 3 key wins. I added a before/after slider for one school remodel. People loved that one.
  • Services: Plain language. Concrete, steel, interiors, site work. No fluff.
  • Safety: EMR number, OSHA 10/30 counts, and daily tailgate sheets. Our Safety Director cried happy tears. He did.
  • Careers: Trade roles up top. Office roles below. “We train. We keep you safe.” A quick form and a button for Workable.
  • Subcontractors: Prequal form with COI upload. Linked to BuildingConnected. A “Bid Calendar” block with dates.
  • Contact: Map, phone, and a big “Call Estimating” sticky button on mobile. A little old-school, but it works.

Color was navy, steel gray, and a pop of safety green. Clean, not loud. We kept the fonts chunky so it reads well on site.

Stuff That Worked

  • RFQ form. It let folks upload plans, pick project type, and share schedule. Leads felt serious. Example: “Renovation, 40K sq ft, start July 10, must keep ER open.” That told us a lot fast.
  • Project filters. GCs and owners liked choosing by sector. “Healthcare only, please.” Done.
  • Speed. Largest Contentful Paint stayed under 2.2s on 4G. Before it was 6s. Painful.
  • Mobile nav. Big thumbs, big buttons. Our supers said, “I can find it while holding my coffee.”
  • Spanish toggle. I used a light translation plugin. Not perfect, but better than nothing. Our drywall lead asked for it. He got it.
  • Schema markup. We added LocalBusiness and Project markup. We moved up for “commercial contractor near me.” No magic, just steady gains.

Stuff That Annoyed Me

  • Elementor bloat. Pretty, but heavy. I had to remove three add-ons I didn’t need. One broke the header on iPad. I still twitch thinking about it.
  • Hero video. I tried a short crane clip. It looked cool. It also killed load time. I went back to a still photo.
  • Spam. First week, we got 19 junk RFQs. ReCAPTCHA cleaned it up. Still, it wasted time.
  • SiteGround throttling. We spiked during a bid push. The site crawled. I moved hosts at midnight with a bag of chips and a bad mood.
  • Handoff. Webflow would have been faster for me, but my PMs needed WordPress. Training them took a Saturday and a box of donuts. Worth it, but long.

Real Numbers After Launch

Nothing fancy. Just honest shifts over 90 days:

  • Quote requests: from 1 a month to 6–8 a month.
  • Calls from mobile button: up 22% (tracked with a simple number pool).
  • Project page views: up 3x. Most traffic went to Healthcare and Schools.
  • Spam down 80% after tweaks.

We closed two jobs that came through the form. A small clinic build-out and a school ADA upgrade. Not huge, but solid.

Little Things That Mattered

  • Real faces. Crew photos beat stock photos. Mud on boots sells trust.
  • Field talk. I wrote like we speak on site. “We show up. We clean up. We hit the date.”
  • Job map. A simple map with pins helped locals say, “Oh, you built that gym.”
  • PDF one-pagers. Each service had a neat PDF. Owners loved sending those to boards.
  • Footer grit. Union badges, certs, and our EMR. People notice that.

What I’d Change Next Time

  • Start with content first. I chased the layout early. Should’ve outlined every page in Google Docs.
  • Trim plugins. I’d build the header and footer with theme tools, not a builder.
  • Better search. People typed “parking lot repair” and landed on “Site Work.” I can guide that better.
  • Stronger careers page. More day-in-the-life photos. A short video with our foreman would help.

Quick Tips If You’re Building One

  • Keep the RFQ form short. Ask what you need. Not more.
  • Show three great projects per sector. Don’t dump the whole yard.
  • Use WebP. Compress hard. Your phone users will thank you.
  • Put a phone button on mobile. Big, bright, and sticky.
  • Add a Spanish toggle if your crews use it.
  • Track calls and forms from day one.

If you want a deeper dive into proven methods, the folks at Optimind have a solid rundown of web design best practices for construction companies, and Seattle Web Design lays out five UX-focused best practices for construction websites that echo almost every win and headache I logged above.

Need More Real-World Examples?
While I was sketching our pages, I kept a stack of other trade-specific teardown posts at arm’s reach. Each one digs into wins, flops, and quick fixes that translate straight to the job trailer.

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