It’s trade-show season again, and we have been speaking at conventions lately. I’ve been getting asked so many new and exciting questions about websites — namely, “What are the best (and most economical) options for building a new website?”
This question comes to me from businesses of all sizes — all from smart owners and operators realizing that their current platform doesn’t represent the value and quality of service that they offer their customers. It isn’t serving up an experience relevant to their brand offerings. Nor is it guiding Step One of their customer journey the way it needs to be.
When working with clients and directing them to the proper providers, we have an array of variables to consider in our industry. Here are some common questions that we ask to help target the right destination:
• Are you a pool builder exclusively, or do you also offer maintenance, cleaning and repair services, thus needing a way for clients to book and pay for their services online? Or perhaps you only offer pool service and need to showcase your processes and utilize an online method of payment.
• Do you sell spas, saunas, or swim spas? Do you want to feature those as your main products with individual models per page? Or would you rather only show the category of the brand you carry?
• Are you a retailer who does any of the above and also wants to operate an e-commerce store and/or offer customers the ability to order for delivery on your website?
• Are you a manufacturer simply looking to reach more business owners, dealers, retailers, or pool builders? What if you don’t want homeowners filling out your website forms requesting information?
All of these questions must be addressed to properly recommend the right type of platform, so it can combine with the corresponding SEO-optimized content to effectively reach your intended audience.
Regardless of your specific situation, any website you pay for should absolutely have the following key functions:
1. Easy updating. Prices, brands, products, and promotions change, so you’ll want the ability to quickly edit and update content in the future. The website should be designed without the need for a developer to make minor edits, such as adding promotions pages, blogs, products, landing pages, text, and images.
2. Responsive design. The final product should allow an enjoyable and engaging browsing experience on desktop and mobile applications alike for the end user.
3. Safety. The site should provide the appropriate level of security for the transactions you will facilitate online.
4. Interactivity and engagement. Your website should function as more than a static business card. It should incorporate interactive features, videos, sparkling graphics, and images that get people’s attention immediately. Make it easy for them to land on your site, and keep them excited to learn more about your products and projects. Ultimately, you want prospective customers to go deeper than your home page or store location page. They should walk away wanting to work with or purchase from your company. Your website should influence them
positively before you ever get the chance to say a word face-to-face.
5. Multiple ways to reach out. There should be a clear call to action and multiple points of entry throughout the site. This would include forms, popups, and buttons placed throughout, making it quick and easy for the client to send a question or request.
Different offerings will interest people from different audiences. Make it easy for them to find and request what they are looking for.
6. A full profile of your company. Your “About Us” page is more than just a company history or list of accomplishments and awards. It needs to clearly convey your mission and values, as well as your commitment to the work you do. It needs to communicate why you do what you do, as well as why individuals should work with you as opposed to the company down the street.
Make sure to include photos of the team members in your business. Also post owner videos, pictures, and a background story to create a personal connection.
7. Dedicated landing pages for each campaign and promotion. You want someone who clicked on a specific promotional ad, video, or social media post to land on the page that is relevant to that offer.
If they are directed elsewhere, the specific experience or offer they were looking for will be deflated. They will not be as interested in the unrelated content presented to them and therefore
less likely to fill out a form and convert.
8. Content that positions you as an expert. Host a blog where you share helpful resources. You can offer wellness information, value messaging about products, images, and videos, and even celebrate team triumphs such as awards, certifications, and reviews, “how to” tips, water-care tips and advice, testimonials, and project images. Your blog should be updated at least once a week with new content that is loaded with the SEO search terms and keywords you are trying to rank for.
9. High SEO ranking. We’ll address more about SEO later in an upcoming article. SEO-optimized content is an absolutely critical component to any website’s performance, no matter the online platform.
10. A living, evolving resource. Add to your website over time: new pages, posts, page sections, service area pages, landing pages, product features, plug-ins, images, and SEO. If you have a barrier to updating any of those things, you very likely need a new website.
FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION
In this guide, we will compare and contrast some of the most common website platforms seen in the pool and spa industry. Specific use cases help direct which platform will best fit your needs, but it’s helpful to have an overview of what typically works for different scenarios.
There are many ways to build a website, but a few platforms dominate small business sites, especially in the pool and spa industry.
WordPress
Globally, there are more than 472 million websites built on WordPress, and it is growing at the rate of approximately 10,000 new urls every day. It is the largest, fastest-growing website platform in the world, with almost half of all urls being built and hosted there worldwide.
Why? Because after 20 years in business, WordPress has captured 60% of the market share for content management — more than all the other platforms combined — boasting easy open source usability that pairs perfectly with more than 59,000 different plug-in options. You also have the option to use Elementor, a web page builder that allows you to break free from the restraints of a templated page, allowing excellent visual and text customizations.
We at the Get Smart Group love WordPress websites, because they are easy to build and edit. There are a lot of ways to expand the functionality of the site using plug-ins (just don’t use too many!). Also, the site performance is great, meaning you won’t be penalized for slow loading. It features SEO-rich options and plug-ins that can help your site rank in both traditional and AI search results. Plus, you can pair it with e-commerce options and other functionalities. With both desktop and mobile views, you’ll have a website that works well.
In more than 95% of cases, we recommend WordPress for our clients’ websites, unless there is a compelling reason to use an alternative. This is especially true if forms that feed leads into your CRM system or SEO rankings are a priority.
Wix
Wix is a popular website development platform primarily aimed at individuals who want to build their own sites. It has some good templates, is affordable, and easy to use. You can get a website up and running with just a few hours of work.
As with any website, however, you still need to write the content, source images, and have a general idea of how you want the site to flow.
For businesses, however, Wix’s limitations become apparent. Once your template is chosen, it is very hard to change or customize. There are few options to generate leads via forms, and website tracking is limited. If you need e-commerce options, you will want to research higher-paid tiers, especially if your business wants to offer online product checkout or delivery.
And if national or local SEO rankings are on your mind, look elsewhere. The technical and organic SEO limitations are significant. If you’re a service-only company or just sell one product, Wix is an okay place to start. But as your business grows, you’ll want and need the expanded functionality for more robust solutions.
Wix websites cannot be exported, so keep that in mind. You may have to completely start over with another platform in the future, depending on the platform you want to use, if your site cannot be migrated.
E-COMMERCE
Are you only operating an online store? In that case, there are a couple of options for e-commerce-first tools that primarily focus on the shopping experience.
Popular tools include Shopify, Magento, BigCommerce, and WooCommerce, the latter of which is a WordPress plug-in. Let’s look at a few of these in more depth.
Shopify
While there are many options out there, Shopify is a leader in small-business e-commerce. Much like Wix, this platform offers a ton of templates, and you can get a passable e-commerce store up and running within a few hours.
The entire site is product- and cart-driven, meaning that most pages center around a specific product you’re selling. When a product is set up, you can add just about anything to a cart. You can sell both physical and digital products through a Shopify site, though more advanced shipping options may require additional plug-ins. With Shopify, you’ll find a decent developer base,
but they do use a proprietary coding language for website design. So unless you’re willing to shell out the big bucks, you’re stuck using their basic template.
Overall, if you’re just looking to set up a standalone online store, Shopify isn’t a bad choice.
WooCommerce
WooCommerce is a well-known e-commerce option that is unique as a WordPress plug-in. This means you already need to have a WordPress site, and then you can “bolt on” WooCommerce and add e-commerce functionality to your site. Adding onto an existing site helps immensely with SEO and leaves you with only one website to update.
Everything happens from within the WordPress dashboard.
Other benefits of WooCommerce include a large developer base, good plug-ins to make it even better, and an open API that allows you to create custom connections. For example, we’ve built a custom web marketing connector between WooCommerce and several leading pool and spa POS systems.
Other Solutions
There are a few other approaches to e-commerce that are more limited in scope, so I’ll touch on them briefly. If you only want to accept payments and nothing else, you can set up a simple PayPal or Stripe page on your website. These are fairly easy to do and allow you to accept credit cards and digital payments online very simply.
There are also hybrid solutions, such as the HubSpot CMS (content management system). Several platforms offer CRM or project management tools that are then bundled with a CMS.
If you’re heavily invested in a platform such as HubSpot, their website-building tools are worth a look, though we don’t implement many of those. These hybrid platforms tend to be too limited in their functionality for most businesses.
KEEPING YOUR SITE UPDATED
I want to touch on a content concept when it comes to websites for the pool and spa industry.
You carry a lot of products from various manufacturers. Those products or product updates can change quite a bit from year to year. There have been many attempts to
make the process of updating your website easier, and they all fall short of just doing it manually when the time comes. Some manufacturers will provide you with an
iFrame, an HTML inline frame, which is basically a website within a website that represents products that the manufacturer offers. We highly advise against using those
tools for a lot of reasons, including negative SEO results, subpar mobile experiences, and duplicate content, which also negatively affects SEO.
Simply put, take the time to update your site as products change, and add researched SEO keywords each time you do.
This is a great time to have a professional who knows how to rank for SEO search terms update your pages. This will not only keep your website current, but also add ongoing SEO value to your site, which is a very good thing to do regardless.
