Websites for trades.
// plumbers · electricians · builders · carpenters · garages · roofers
// free first draft · sites from £600 · hosting £25/mo
Most of your work comes from someone typing "emergency plumber Ivybridge" or "kitchen fitter Totnes" into a phone at half past seven. Checkatrade will take that call for a monthly fee and hand you a lead five other tradespeople are also ringing. A site of your own answers the same search, shows your own jobs, and puts your number on the screen with nobody in between.
I build the kind of site that does that job and then leaves you alone: fast on one bar of signal in a van, a page for each service and each town you cover so Google can match you to the search, photos of real work rather than stock, and a phone number and a form on every page. Nothing for you to update or patch. From £600, with most trade sites coming in around £800.
What a trade site has to do
Be found for the job, in the town
A page for each service you do and each area you cover. "Boiler repair Ivybridge" is a different search from "boiler repair Totnes", and Google treats them that way. One homepage hoping for the best does not rank for either.
Put the phone number first
On every page, at the top, tappable. Most of your visitors are on a phone with a problem, and the call is the conversion. A form for the people who would rather write.
Show real jobs
Your own photos: the finished bathroom, the rewire, the extension before and after. A trade site with stock photos of a smiling man in a hard hat says nothing. Send me what's on your phone and I'll sort it into galleries.
Carry the proof
Your Google reviews, your Gas Safe or NICEIC or Federation registration, your insurance, how long you have been trading. The things a nervous homeowner checks before they ring a stranger.
Load on a bad signal
Half of Devon is one bar. A site that loads in under a second on 4G is the difference between the customer waiting and the customer ringing the next name down.
// what one looks like
Built for businesses like yours.
Sites built for trades around here. Yours would start the same way: a chat, whatever you've already got, and a working draft within days.
// questions
The questions trades ask first.
- I'm already on Checkatrade. Why would I need my own site?
- Checkatrade sends you leads, and it sends the same lead to your competitors, for a monthly fee. Your own site is the thing people find when they search your name after a recommendation, and the thing that ranks for "electrician Newton Abbot" without a middleman. Most tradespeople end up with both; the site costs less than a year of the subscription and it's yours.
- I never have time to update a website.
- Good, because you won't have to. There's no login and nothing to maintain. When a price changes or you add a service, email me and it's done, usually in about half an hour. Most trade sites need a handful of changes a year.
- How do I get the photos to you?
- WhatsApp them, email them, or share the folder on your phone. However messy. Sorting and cropping them is my job, not yours.
Wherever you are: the towns I work in, and everywhere in between.