Trades websites
Websites for tradesmen, built to bring the phone to life
A trades website has one job and it is not to look impressive. It is to appear when somebody in your area searches for what you do, tell them in five seconds that you cover their town and do their job, and make it effortless to contact you from a phone held one-handed in a kitchen doorway.
- From £249
- Ranks for the towns you cover
- Bookings reach you on site
How people actually find a tradesperson
Almost nobody searches for a trades business by name. They search for the job and the place, on a phone, usually while the problem is happening. Boiler not firing, drain blocked, tile off the roof after a bad night. The results they see are decided by proximity, by the Google Business Profile and its reviews, and by whether the website says anything that proves you actually work in their town.
That third part is where most trades websites fail. They are perfectly decent sites that could be describing a firm anywhere in the country, which means they give a search engine nothing to attach to a place and give a customer nothing to trust. Naming the towns, the estates, the kinds of property and the jobs you actually do is not decoration. It is the ranking signal and the reassurance in one.
The other half of it is speed and clarity. A customer with water coming through a ceiling has no patience for a slideshow. Phone number reachable from anywhere on the page, the towns you cover visible without scrolling, and the whole thing usable on a poor signal.
What goes into any build we do is covered on our page about web design in Nottinghamshire.
Common problems
What trades businesses tell us about their current site
If two or three of these are familiar, the site is costing you work rather than winning it.
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It only comes up when somebody searches your business name.
Pages built around the trade and the town, with genuine local content rather than a list of place names.
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Enquiries arrive while you are up a ladder and go cold.
Missed call text-back and automatic acknowledgement, so nothing waits until the evening.
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It takes four seconds to load on a phone in a customer's house.
Built mobile-first with images sized properly and speed measured on real connections.
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The contact form goes to an email address nobody checks.
Enquiries routed to a phone, a job system or a shared inbox that is actually watched, with delivery monitored.
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You cannot add a photo of last week's job without ringing somebody.
A site you can update from a phone, with training included.
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Whoever built it has stopped answering.
We host and support what we build, so there is one number afterwards.
What we put on a trades website
Chosen because it wins work, not because it fills a page.
- The towns and postcodes you cover, written out properly rather than as a comma-separated list nobody reads
- Your actual jobs, with photographs, because a real installation beats any stock image ever taken
- Accreditations and registration numbers where you have them, since Gas Safe or NICEIC is the strongest trust signal on the page
- A phone number that is tappable from every screen, and a form that works with one thumb
- Clear pricing signals, even if it is only a call-out fee or a starting figure, because silence on price loses enquiries
- Reviews shown on the site rather than left sitting on a profile page nobody visits
- Emergency and out-of-hours arrangements said plainly, since that is what a panicking customer is looking for
- A Google Business Profile set up alongside, which for a trades business does more ranking work than the site itself
Proof
RPH Home Services
RPH is a plumbing and heating business covering Nottinghamshire. Before the rebuild, every job began with a phone call in working hours, so the boiler that failed on a Sunday evening became somebody else's job by Monday.
The site now takes bookings around the clock against genuine availability, with the job type setting the length of the slot. The phone still rings, and it now rings about the jobs that actually need a conversation.
Read the RPH Home Services case study
The profile does more work than the website
This is an inconvenient thing for a web company to say and it is true, so we say it before taking the work. For a local trades business, the Google Business Profile and the reviews attached to it will move the map pack faster than anything we can do on the site.
So we set the profile up properly as part of the build, and we will tell you plainly that asking every satisfied customer for a review is worth more than another two pages of content. The website's job is to convert the person who has already found you, and to give the profile something credible to point at.
- Profile categories, services and photographs set up at launch
- Reviews shown on the site as well as on the profile
- A habit of asking, which is the part that actually moves it
Covering several towns?
That is normally the right target for a trades business, and it needs a page per area carrying genuine content about that area rather than one page with a list of names on it. The list approach stopped working years ago.
It is more work and it is the only version that holds up. Tell us which towns actually produce your work and we will tell you which of them are worth a page.
Get in touch
Talk to us about websites for trades
A few lines is enough. We will tell you straight whether we can help, what it would cost and how quickly we can be there. No hard sell, and no follow-up sequence if you decide against it.
- We reply within one working day
- A straight answer, including when it is no
- Free process review available, before any money changes hands
Would rather just ring? 01623 354250, Mon–Fri, 9am–5:30pm.
Frequently asked questions
If the answer is not here, ask us. You will get a straight one, from someone who does the work.
Mon–Fri, 9am–5:30pm
How much does a website for a trades business cost?
Ours start at £249 for a five-page starter site and £499 for a brand-led business site. That is a fixed price agreed up front with the first year of hosting included, and the site is yours outright rather than rented monthly.
Will it help me get found in the towns I cover?
That is what it is built for. It needs a page per area with real content about that area, plus a properly set up Google Business Profile. Be wary of anyone promising rankings across twenty towns from a single page with a list of names on it.
Can customers book jobs online?
Yes, where that suits your work. For plumbing, heating, servicing and inspections it removes a lot of phone tag. For work that needs a survey first, an enquiry with the right questions on it is usually the better answer, and we will say which fits.
I am on the tools all day. Who updates the site?
Either you, from a phone, with training included so adding a job photo takes a minute. Or you send changes to us on a care plan and they go on the same day. Most trades clients start with the first and move to the second.
Do I need a website if I get work from word of mouth?
Word of mouth still ends up on Google. Somebody is given your name and immediately searches it to see whether you look real, and what they find decides whether they ring. A site that loads fast and shows real jobs converts recommendations that would otherwise go cold.
What about the enquiries that arrive while I am working?
That is the biggest single leak in a trades business, and it is fixable with missed call text-back and automatic acknowledgement. It usually recovers more work than anything else on this page.