Assisted Innovations

🏗️ 3 Website Mistakes Holding Back Construction Businesses in Northeast Ohio 👷♂️ In the construction industry, first impressions matter—and in today’s digital world, your website is often the first thing potential clients see. Unfortunately, many construction businesses miss the mark when it comes to their online presence. Here are three common mistakes I see (and how to fix them): 1️⃣ Outdated or Unprofessional Design Your website should reflect the quality and professionalism of your work. If it looks like it was built 10 years ago, potential clients might assume your business is outdated. A clean, modern design can make all the difference. 2️⃣ Lack of Local SEO If you’re not optimizing for terms like “contractors in Cleveland” or “construction companies in Akron,” you’re missing out on local customers actively searching for your services. Local SEO is a game-changer for visibility. 3️⃣ No Call-to-Action (CTA) Does your website tell visitors what to do next? Whether it’s “Request a Quote” or “View Our Projects,” a strong CTA can turn a casual visitor into your next client. 🌟 Fixing these issues doesn’t just improve your website—it helps grow your business. If you’d like to dive deeper into any of these points, let me know! I’m always happy to share insights. What challenges have you faced with your website? Let’s discuss in the comments! 👇 #Construction #WebDesign #SEO #Contractors #NortheastOhio #IndustryTips

I just heard a story that is so much more familiar than it really should be. She is a young founder, and recently switched to a new developer. Turns out the prior developer was basically a person that outsourced all of the work. And they didn't even remotely try to offboard a client. During a couple of very stressful days -> she discovered that her domain was in the account of one of their random outsourced workers. It was looking like she was going to have to rebrand and get a new domain - but she got lucky and the person responded to her reach-out on the domain privacy email. It was a good outcome -> but it shouldn't have been that risky. As a business owner - I don't want to have any part of my web presence in the control of ANY other person. That means that the hosting and domain for my website(s) are in an account I control. No-one gets my login, and they get limited access. And I insist on this being the case with my clients as well. It is very rare that anything of my client's is in my name - and those instances are always temporary to get through a deadline. Once past the crunch - we talk about moving it back into their control. I wish that all development teams would work this way.

It's Monday! But it's a special Monday. The Monday after Cleveland GiveCamp. This year 10 (yes, 10!) Non-Profits received help from close to 100 volunteers over the course of a weekend. Websites were built and optimized. Application processes were streamlined. A complex map solution was built. Our fearless leader was there - putting out fires and making sure that all 10 got over the finish line. It was quite a weekend. Long hours, low sleep. A small price to pay to see 10 Non Profits head home, better off than they were on Friday.

$10k to move the secondary navigation from a sidebar to a horizontal top bar? Yes. We just heard that from a prospect. They are tired of spending thousands of dollars every time they want to make what appears to be a fairly minor change. Now - depending on how the site is built - moving the secondary navigation from the side to the top might be a moderate deal. But it probably shouldn't be. In the current WordPress Full-Site-Editor - you can just edit the Header pattern and add a Navigation block. You can even add your basic styles - and as long as you don't need anything fancy and custom you will be good to go. Job done. If you need it to change based on the page you are on - you could have someone build out a custom navigation block (or maybe just find a plugin that gives you that kind of block). OR you can just edit the page templates yourself. It's a bit more manual - but it would do the job. This isn't a $10k job. It is something that you can handle internally - or possibly pay a developer for 1-2 hours of their time to take care of it. Even if they need to build out a custom block - you're looking at maybe 4-5 hours if they know what they are doing. If you are spending far too much money on development, and want some help reworking things so you can manage it easier -> reach out: https://lnkd.in/giargXA6

It's funny how much things change in just a few years. I'm working on a website right now that was built the way I used to build sites -> with a bunch of customized fields and layouts set up as kind of blocks so you could build pages out and have a good amount of configuration. This was what I would have considered the gold standard maybe 5 years ago. But right now I am seeing just how limiting it was! New layouts required a bunch of field and template changes, possibly new template files altogether. The short of it -> managing sites like this require a developer. Today I consider the gold standard for WordPress development to be a FSE theme with some custom blocks for layouts that need to be locked down. The new blocks I just spent half a day building out could all have been built off-the-cuff with native blocks in the current editor. Basically - with a properly built FSE theme -> my client wouldn't have had to hire me for this project. And that is a good thing.

"Everything is huge!" "The cover image takes up the entire screen, and pushes the content off the screen!" "We need to make everything smaller!" What happened? Did the developer just not understand the designs? Sometimes this is the case. But not this time. This time the developer did a pixel-perfect recreation of the designs. But why didn't they catch the size disparities during the design review? Typically during a design review - the designer shows the design zoomed out to show off the entire page design. The client looks at it in this zoomed out state and loves it. Neither are thinking about the fact that it won't look like that at 100%. Some newer design tools fix for this - giving you the option to pull up a 100% view of the page to get the feel of the design as a web-page -- but there are still plenty of designers that deliver a flat image or PDF, which leads to this problem. As a client - you need to demand better from your designer. Ask to be shown the design "as a user." Don't approve it until you have a good feel for how it will look for your end-users. If your developer is good at replicating designs - you won't have these problems that cause frustration for everyone: 1. You - the client - in delays from rework during testing, and possible additional costs if you are paying hourly, or if your developers consider this a change of scope. 2. The developers - from extra development time they didn't plan for. If your team isn't steering you towards thinking about your designs from the user's perspective - you may be having more problems than just these small annoyances during testing. Assisted Innovations is focused on the experience of everyone involved with your website. From the end-user, to the site administrator, to the ease of development.

Lesson learned. We are about to deploy a new site. Does the site work? Heck yeah. Is it stable and performant? Indeed. Will it give the client the ability to manage their site and content easily? Yep. Is the client happy with Assisted Innovations? Yes. So what is the problem? This site should have launched a few months ago. How did that happen? The client took responsibility for the design phase, and contracted a designer that took a really long time getting that portion finished. They sent designs in one page at a time when they were finished. To help with timeline we agreed to start moving on the site with the design portions that had been delivered already. The original launch date came and went without all designs being finished. On top of that - pieces of the site needed to be reworked once the last of the designs came in. You might be thinking -> "but - that isn't your fault. The designer delayed things!" And you would be correct. But there are still lessons here. 1. Don't put down an end date when there are significant pieces outside of your control. 2. Don't start working with partial designs. How would this have helped? 1. The client would not have had an end date in mind. Nothing to be disappointed about (even if they realize that the delay is happening because of another contractor) 2. Expectations would have been set that you weren't even starting until you had everything you needed. No date to hit, nothing, until you have what is necessary. 3. Rework is avoided by having all of the designs when you start - so you can plan things out accordingly. 4. If you are working straight hourly, this helps to keep costs down. If you are working on a flat cost - this helps to keep your profitability up. 5. Stress goes WAY down. When the client doesn't have the idea that the site is late already (regardless of how the delay happened) - there isn't any pressure to deliver on an expedited timeline. It would have been easy to write this one off as a "the designer failed and it delayed the project." But that doesn't help everyone find success. Assisted Innovations is always looking for success. For our clients. For ourselves. For our workers. For our client's customers. To do that we have to recognize lessons where they are - even if it would be simple to just cast blame elsewhere and move on. If your developers aren't working for your success - reach out.

Your website is an investment. When it comes to real estate, or the stock market - people have no problem talking about these as investments. They see that the money they are putting it is being put to work. You can make good investments - where the money is working to create more money - or bad investments - where the money is losing value. Either way - it is an investment. Not a cost. Your website is the same. You are making an investment in your business and your brand. For some this is obvious. They have an eCommerce website that actually directly drives revenue. There are many of these where the website is their main driver of revenue. For others it is less obvious. They probably have a mostly static informational site. But even there - the website is an investment. It may not directly drive revenue - but it is an face for the world to see. They can house information there that your clients need. They can advertise themselves and drive prospects and clients to reach out. It can be a center of internal information for their employees. There are so many things that your website can do for you beyond directly driving revenue. ... The problem is - many of these same companies see their website as a cost; as a burden. They know that it is necessary to have, but they want to spend as little time and money on it as possible. They don't want to invest in themselves. This is a mistake. Time to start treating your website as an investment. What can it do for you? If you want to find out - Assisted Innovations can help you answer that question.

I was talking with a prospect last week. "The development shop that manages my site just randomly closed their doors today. The owner just showed up and fired everyone." The worst part: "I don't have access to my source code, or the license for the CMS they used to build the site. I don't even know how long it will be before the hosting goes away." Ouch. The harsh reality is this kind of thing isn't even uncommon. One of our current clients came to us because their developer just disappeared. No-one knows where they went. They were lucky because they had enough access to be able to take over 99% of the things on the site, only having to replace a few pieces of functionality that were driven from accounts they didn't have access to. This prospect got lucky as well. One of the developers that had just been fired reached out with their source code and license, offering to help them migrate it. But either of these could have ended disastrously just as easily - with the path forward being to generate a static copy of the site while rebuilding. Lots of time and money spent to fix a problem that could have been avoided. Assisted Innovations won't purchase things on your behalf. It's your website. For many it is your sales channel. We'll help walk you through how to purchase what is needed, but at the end of the day it is YOUR account, not ours. We'll show you how to give us access without sacrificing your ability to own it. And yes - that includes the code repository. If we have to shut our doors suddenly one day - you will already have the access you need to get a new developer onboarded. Our goal is - and will always be - the success of our customers. Can your current development agency say the same? How devastating would it be if they just stopped responding to calls and emails?

How do you get a new product line on your site? Or update your prices? What does it take to create a new page that has multiple columns and looks good on mobile? "I call my developer" It doesn't need to be this way. With all of the tools available today - your developers should be setting you up with a framework that you can use to create content. You shouldn't be calling them unless there is a problem, or if you have a big new feature that you need. This is the founding principal of Assisted Innovations. Your success is what matters. That means a website that helps your clients work with you. It also means a website that helps you work with your clients. And makes it simple to update. Your success. If you need help - reach out to Ross (ross@assistedinnovations.com).