Your decorative concrete business needs a great website because once a potential customer gets curious about how you can make their concrete beautiful, they may come looking for more information.

The problem is too many decorative concrete professionals are getting their websites wrong. Or worse, they don't have a website at all.

What do you want your website to do for you? Produce SALES. It's time to turn your website into an estimate setting, sales-producing machine.

Six Sections of a Website That Works 

You need six sections on your website to make it an estimate-producing machine. Let's start with...

Section #1: The Header

The first section on your website is your header.

Your header should answer these questions:
1. What do you offer?
2. How will it make your customer's life better?
3. What must people do to buy it or work with you?

For example, our website says, "Transform your concrete into something beautiful. Concrete is our canvas. SCHEDULE YOUR FREE ESTIMATE TODAY."

What do we offer? Decorative concrete

How will it make my customer's life better? It adds beauty

What do they need to do to work with me? Schedule a free estimate

Section #2: Negative Stakes

The next section of your website should paint the negative stakes.

What will life look like if your customer doesn't buy decorative concrete from you? What negative experiences are you saving customers from?

Our website says, "Concrete is everywhere, but it doesn’t have to be ugly."

The negative stakes is that they put up with ugly concrete. It's that simple.

Other negative stakes you could exploit are wasting time and money doing it themselves. I've come across plenty of do-it-yourselfers who don't prep the surface correctly or don't have access to the quality materials we have. Their efforts end in a mess, and they must hire us anyway.

Don't overcomplicate this. Just ask yourself the question, "What negative experiences am I saving my customers from?" and put one to three of those in this section of your website.

Section #3: Value Proposition

The next section of your website should communicate the value your products or services can deliver to a customer.

One great way to portray this is with a "value stack." List three specific benefits side-by-side.

On our website, we say, "Save time. Avoid costly mistakes. Finish well."

Save time. Hire a professional and get the job done, allowing you to invest your time elsewhere.

Avoid costly mistakes. You don’t know what you don’t know! Sidestep slip-ups by taking advantage of our expertise.

Finish well. Unfinished concrete looks…well…unfinished. Isn’t it time to complete the look?

These are all based on our experience with the customer. Are there different answers? Of course! There are unlimited ways you can add value to your customer. Choose three that fit your business and move on to the next section.

Section #4: The Guide

The next section of your website should position you as a trusted guide by displaying both authority and empathy.

How do you display authority? Include testimonials from previous customers, share how long you've been in business, and show examples of your work.

How do you display empathy? By including a statement that shows you understand your customer's pain.

On our website, we not only share testimonials but also choose to empathize with the pain point of time. We find many customers waste their time with contractors who don't show up or don't send an estimate even if they do show up.

This should lead straight into the next section...

Section #5: The Plan

This section of your website should show customers that working with you is easy and effortless.

On our website, we tied our plan directly to our empathy statement.

We say, "Your time is valuable. Here’s what you can expect."

Then, we have four icons with brief sentences telling them what our plan offers:
PROFESSIONALISM
VISUAL OPTIONS
DETAILED CONSULTATION
and an ON-SITE ESTIMATE

Section #6: Contact information

This section of your website makes reaching you easy for your customers.

Phone numbers, email addresses, your social media pages, and even an address if you have a showroom must be easily discovered by your customers.

Call To Action

The one thing I haven't mentioned is that you should have a clear call to action in each section. In our case, we want the customer to schedule a free estimate.

We can't sell decorative concrete over the phone (and we don't want to). If they could land on a page with nothing but a button that says "schedule a free estimate," and they would do it without any other sections, then that's all we need.

The purpose of ALL of those sections on your website is to get your potential customer to schedule a free estimate.

So, in the header, we have a button that says schedule your free estimate.
When discussing the negative stakes, we have a button that says schedule your free estimate.
When we share our value proposition, position ourselves as a guide, and lay out our plan, in each section, we have a button that says "schedule your free estimate."

It is clear what we offer, how it will make their life better, and what they need to do to work with us.

That's it. That's all you need. But you might be asking about additional pages.

Additional Pages

We have included additional pages on our website, but we're listing them as "extras" because they aren't necessary for a website that works. And for you, a website that works generates estimate appointments.

We have a page that details the features and benefits of decorative concrete and lists our decorative concrete services. This is for the customer who needs additional information before making a decision.

Pro Tip: Less is more

When you're explaining the features and benefits of decorative concrete, be sure to remember your audience. Less is more. And your customer is not an industry professional, nor do they want to be. They just want to know if decorative concrete is the solution they're looking for.

Another page we include is a portfolio page. We include a Facebook feed on our home page where folks can see that we are actively installing various new projects, but the portfolio page allows us to pick the best pictures in each of the categories we want to promote.

Finally, we offer an FAQ or frequently asked questions page. This is just a page to restate what we've put elsewhere on the site in a Q&A format. And to address common questions customers may have.

BONUS: Avoidable Mistakes You're Likely Making on Your Website

I've reviewed the six sections of a website that works and even threw in a couple of other pages you might consider. But as a bonus, here are three avoidable mistakes you're likely making on your website.

Avoidable mistake #1: Using too much insider language

Don't use acronyms or industry terms on your website (or on your estimates).

Let’s take the acronym CSP, for example. This stands for Concrete Surface Profile.

Instead of saying, "We want a CSP of 7 to ensure we can bond correctly." I would say, "We will prep the existing surface to ensure the new system has the right profile to adhere to it correctly."

Stick to using explanations for things a complete outsider to the industry will understand.

Avoidable mistake #2: Call-to-action buttons are not repeated down the page

I already talked about this as something TO DO. You will avoid this mistake if you include "schedule your free estimate" all the way down the page.

Trust me, you're not overdoing it. If you're lucky, they know they want to work with you and will press that button in the heading. But chances are, they need to make their way through the sections of your website before taking that step.

You won't know which section inspires them to schedule that estimate, so keep asking all the way down.

Avoidable mistake #3: The images do not relate to the product or back up the words you're using on the page

You're selling decorative concrete, not insurance. Don't use a photo of a laughing family, or dogs, or babies unless they are sitting on a concrete surface with a decorative application.

I know if you're starting out, you may not have images of your own, but see if you can borrow some images of decorative concrete from another professional to get you started.

So There You Have It

So, there you have it. Six sections you need on your website to make it an estimate-producing machine AND three common mistakes to avoid.

If you're ready to launch or re-launch your decorative concrete business, we'd love to be your partner for success, whether it's investing in our online course or opting for custom coaching.