Three quotes are sitting in your inbox. One is suspiciously cheap, one is eye-watering, one is somewhere in between, and all three describe roughly the same thing using words you didn't choose. You've got no way to judge them, because nobody has told you what a trades website is actually for.
It has one job. Turn a stranger who's already searching for your trade into a phone call. Everything on the page either helps that or gets in the way, and a fair bit of what gets quoted gets in the way.
A phone number you can tap is the most valuable thing on the page
Most people who find a tradie's website are on a phone, standing in the room with the problem. They want to ring you, not read you.
So the number goes in the header of every page rather than only on the contact page, and it's a real tap-to-call link, not text they have to copy out. It's written as text too, never baked into an image, because a number inside a picture can't be tapped and can't be read by Google either.
If you can't answer between 7 and 3, say so on the page and say when you do ring back. A tradie who says "I'll call you back after 3" beats one who simply doesn't answer.
Your service area belongs in words on the page, not only on a map
An embedded map with a pin on it tells Google very little and tells a customer in Tomakin nothing. Write the suburbs out: Batemans Bay, Catalina, Batehaven, Surf Beach, Long Beach, Maloneys Beach, Malua Bay, Broulee, Tomakin, Moruya. People search their own suburb name, and they look for it on the page before they ring.
Only list what you'll actually drive to. Putting Narooma on the page when you won't go past Moruya buys you a phone call you have to knock back.
If you want to see what that looks like finished, the web design Batemans Bay page on this site writes its own suburbs out in full, and every other town page here does the same.
Photos of your own work do more than any design decision on the site
You've got better photos on your phone right now than anything a stock library will sell you. The switchboard you rewired in Batehaven. The retaining wall at Maloneys Beach. The hot water unit that was worse than the customer let on. Before and after, taken on a phone, slightly crooked, obviously real.
Two rules apply. They have to be your jobs, and there has to be a photo of you in there somewhere. People are letting a stranger into their house, and a face does more work there than a tagline.
Your licence number belongs on the page, not in the glovebox
If you're licensed, put the number in the footer and next to the quote form, along with the insurance you carry. In NSW a customer can check a licence on the Fair Trading site in about thirty seconds, and the ones who check are usually the ones spending real money.
It's the cheapest trust you'll ever buy, and it costs nothing but the typing.
A quote form should ask about the job, not the life story
The form needs a name, a mobile, a suburb, one box for what's wrong, and a photo upload. That's all of it.
Every extra field costs you completed enquiries, and the photo upload is the one that earns its place, because a picture of the leak or the meter box lets you quote or triage without driving out there. Leave "how did you hear about us" off it. You can ask that on the phone.
What are the five golden rules of a tradie website?
A number you can tap in the header, the suburbs you drive to written as words, your licence number on the page, real photos of your own jobs, and a form that asks about the job. Everything above this line is those five, explained.
Five things you can safely refuse to pay for
- A rotating slider on the homepage. Nobody waits for slide two, it slows the page down, and the only slide that matters is the first one. Use that one and skip the rest.
- An autoplay video header. Big file, eats a customer's mobile data, plays muted anyway, and it pushes your phone number down the screen.
- Live chat. You're up a ladder. An unanswered chat window is worse than no chat window, because it looks like nobody's home.
- A blog you're never going to write. Two posts from 2024 sitting on your site reads worse than no blog at all. It's only worth having if you'll genuinely answer the questions customers ask you.
- Custom illustration and a mascot. Good work, and we draw logos, but none of it makes the phone ring. It can wait until the site's paying for itself.
Four pages carry most trades. The rest earn their place
Home, services and contact covers a trade working one patch, and the towns you drive to come on top of that. That's why our starting site is up to six pages, rather than four: the four you always need, plus room for two of the suburbs you actually want to be found in.
A bigger site adds copywriting, separate service area pages, review integration and analytics, and the quote says what that costs. That's worth paying for when you're chasing several suburbs against real competition, or you've got four or five distinct services that each need their own page. Most trades don't need it in the first year, and that's still true when saying so loses us the bigger job.
Speed matters more than looks when someone's on one bar
Test the site on your own phone, on mobile data, parked somewhere with ordinary reception, not on the office wifi. If the phone number isn't visible and tappable within about three seconds, the design doesn't matter, because they've gone back to the results page and rung the next bloke.
Heavy image files, video, chat widgets and tracking scripts are what turn those three seconds into eight.
Ask these five questions before you pay a deposit
- Is the domain registered in my name, on my email address?
- Do I get every login at handover, including hosting, domain, Google Business Profile and analytics?
- Who owns the files once it's paid for?
- How many changes are included, during the build and after sign-off, and what's the hourly rate after that?
- What does it cost me to change a price or add a service in six months?
For the record, our answers are: the domain is in your name, the Google Business Profile has you as its owner, and the hosting login stays with us because we do the hosting. You own the files on final payment. Changes are unlimited within scope while the site is being built, two are included in the 30 days after sign-off, and after that it's quoted work. Small changes are covered by a care plan if you want one.
Send us your list of services and the suburbs you cover, and we'll tell you what it would take and what it costs before you commit to anything.