Planning
How to Create a Project Gallery for Your Pool Builder Website
A pool gallery works when a homeowner can find a project that looks like their yard, understand what went into it, and ask about something similar without going back to the menu. Eight projects presented properly will do more than sixty thumbnails.
On this page
How to Choose Projects for Your Gallery
Pick projects that cover the range of what you build, not the ones you are proudest of. A gallery of six spectacular custom builds tells a homeowner with an average yard that you are not for them.
Your gallery is doing a matching job. Somebody arrives with a specific lot, a specific budget and a specific idea, and they are looking for evidence that you have done something close to it. If everything you show is at the top of your range, most visitors conclude they cannot afford you and leave without asking.
Range matters more than volume. Spread across pool type, yard size, style and feature set, and each new project you add should cover something the existing ones do not.
- List every completed project you have usable photography of.
- Tag each one by pool type, yard size, style and standout feature.
- Find the gaps: the combinations you build regularly but cannot show.
- Choose the smallest set that covers the range, usually six to twelve.
- Put the rest aside rather than adding them for volume.
- Note the gaps you could not fill, and photograph them on the next build.
If you only have two finished projects with good photography, build the gallery for two. A thin gallery presented confidently reads better than a padded one, and nobody counts.
What Photos to Include for Each Pool Project
Four to eight images per project. A wide shot that establishes the whole yard, two or three that show the pool properly, one detail, and something that gives a sense of scale.
The single most common failure is a gallery of near-identical wide shots taken from the same corner of every yard. They blur together, and by the fourth project a visitor has stopped looking.
The second most common is shooting at the wrong time. Midday sun puts hard shadows across the water and flattens everything. Late afternoon, or the twenty minutes after sunset with the pool lights on, is where the photographs that get saved and shared come from.
The shots worth having
You are trying to answer three questions with images: what does it look like, how big is it really, and what is the quality of the finish.
- One establishing shot showing the pool in the context of the house and yard
- A water-level or low angle, which reads very differently from a standing shot
- The spa, water feature or tanning ledge if the project has one
- One coping, tile or decking detail, close enough to show the finish
- An evening shot with the lighting on, if the project has lighting
- Something with furniture or people for scale, where you have permission
Before and during
A photograph of the yard before excavation is worth taking every single time, and it costs nothing. Paired with the finished shot it is the most persuasive image a pool builder can publish, because it shows the transformation rather than the result.
A couple of construction shots also do quiet work: they tell a homeowner that the steel, the plumbing and the shell were real stages with real workmanship, not something that appeared.
Permission
Get the homeowner's agreement in writing before you publish photographs of their property, and keep it with the project file. It is a two-line email and it prevents the one conversation nobody wants to have later.
How to Write Useful Project Descriptions
Three or four sentences per project, covering what the client wanted, what the site made difficult, and what you built. Specific beats polished every time.
Most pool galleries caption projects with something like "Custom freeform pool with spa". That is a label, not a description, and it tells a visitor nothing they could not see.
The version that works names the constraint. A sloped lot, a narrow side access, an existing mature tree the family wanted kept, a budget that meant phasing the outdoor kitchen for later. Constraints are what make a project real, and they are what a reader recognises from their own yard.
What to include
Keep it to the things a prospective client is actually assessing.
- Pool type and approximate size
- The features that went in: spa, ledge, water feature, lighting, heating
- Materials for the surface, coping and decking, where you know them
- The problem the site presented and how you handled it
- The neighbourhood or general area, not the street address
What to leave out
The client's name and exact address, always. The price, unless you have decided as a matter of policy to publish project costs and the client has agreed. Adjectives that could be attached to any project: stunning, breathtaking, dream. They are filler and they read as filler.
Write these while the job is still fresh. A description written eighteen months later from a folder of photographs loses exactly the details that made it worth writing.
How to Organize Pools, Spas and Outdoor Living Projects
Group by what a visitor is shopping for, which is usually pool type or style, and let outdoor living sit as its own group rather than being mixed in.
A single chronological feed is the default and it is the worst option. It asks every visitor to scroll past everything to find the one thing relevant to them, and it makes your oldest work the last thing anyone sees.
Two or three groups is usually right. More than that and the grouping itself becomes a navigation problem, which is a strange thing to build on a page whose job is to show photographs.
- By pool type, where you build genuinely different things: freeform, geometric, lap, plunge
- By style, where your market shops on look rather than shape
- Outdoor living as its own group: kitchens, pergolas, fire features, full backyard builds
- Spas separately if you sell standalone spa work
- Renovation and resurfacing separately from new builds, because the buyer is different
Avoid grouping by year, by neighbourhood or by nothing. None of the three matches how anyone actually looks for a pool.
Image Quality, Loading Speed and Mobile Viewing
A pool gallery is the heaviest page on the site and it is viewed mostly on phones, often on cellular. Photographs straight from a camera will make it unusable.
A modern camera produces files far larger than any web page needs. Eight of them on one page is enough to stall on a mobile connection, and the visitor leaves before the images that were the whole point have rendered.
The fix is ordinary: resize for the largest size the layout actually displays, export in a modern format, and load images below the fold only as the visitor reaches them. None of this reduces visible quality, and all of it is done once at export.
- Resize to the largest dimension the layout will show, not the camera's native size
- Export in a modern format such as WebP or AVIF, with a JPEG fallback if the host needs one
- Give every image explicit width and height so the page does not jump as it loads
- Load the first image or two immediately and everything below the fold lazily
- Write alt text that describes the project, not a list of keywords
- Check the gallery on a phone on cellular data before you call it done
If you are handing photographs to whoever builds the site, send the full-resolution originals. Optimising is their job and they cannot recover detail from a file you already compressed.
How to Connect Each Project to an Inquiry
Every project should end with a way to ask about something similar. A gallery that dead-ends has spent its persuasion and collected nothing.
The moment somebody has just looked at a project close to what they want is the highest-intent moment on the whole site, and it is usually followed by a scroll back to the menu and a search for a contact page. That gap is where enquiries are lost.
The link does not need to be loud. A single line under each project, worded to carry the context forward, does more than a banner. "Ask about a pool like this one" is a different proposition from "Contact us", and it converts differently because it is.
- One clear route to enquire at the end of each project, not only at the bottom of the page
- Wording that references what they just looked at
- Where the form allows it, carry the project name through so you know what prompted the enquiry
- The phone number visible for the people who would rather call
If the form can record which project the enquiry came from, that is worth having. It tells you which of your work is actually generating conversations, which is more useful than knowing which page got traffic.
Frequently asked questions
How many projects should a pool gallery show?
Six to twelve, chosen to cover the range of what you build rather than to show volume.
Range beats quantity here. A gallery of only large custom builds tells a homeowner with an average lot that you are not for them, which is the opposite of what the page is for.
What photos should each pool project include?
Four to eight: an establishing shot of the whole yard, two or three of the pool itself, one detail close enough to show the finish, and something that gives a sense of scale.
A before shot taken at the same angle as the finished one is the most persuasive image a pool builder can publish, and it costs nothing but remembering to take it.
Should I publish prices with my pool projects?
Not usually, and never without the client's agreement.
A range or a starting point somewhere on the site is worth having, because it stops both sides spending weeks on a conversation that was never going to work. That is different from pricing each project publicly.
How should a pool gallery be organized?
Group it by what a homeowner is shopping for, which is normally pool type or style, and keep outdoor living as its own group.
A single chronological feed is the default and the worst option: it asks every visitor to scroll past everything to reach the one thing relevant to them.
Want the gallery built in rather than added later?
The pool builder websites we build are structured around project work from the start, with the enquiry path attached to each project rather than parked on a contact page.
