What a tradesperson’s website needs to get calls

A website has one job

Your website isn’t a brochure and it isn’t a work of art. Its job is to get the right person to pick up the phone. Everything on the page should help with that or get out of the way.

No site can promise you calls. A lot depends on your reviews, your area and who else is out there. What a good site can do is stop losing the people who already found you. Here’s what it takes.

The top of the page: what, where and a number

Picture someone standing in a flooded basement, holding their phone. They’ve got a few seconds of patience. Before they scroll, they need to see three things: what you do, where you do it and how to reach you.

Say it plainly. “Roof repairs and replacements in Etobicoke and the west end” tells them more than “Quality you can trust.” Put your phone number right beside it and make it tap-to-call, so one press of a thumb starts the call. Nobody wants to copy a number down by hand.

Most of your customers will see your site on a phone, so check it on yours. If the number is hard to find there, it’s hard to find.

Your services, in your customers’ words

List every service you want to be hired for, one by one. Use the words a homeowner would use, not the words on a supplier’s invoice. People search for “leaky faucet” and “furnace not working.” They don’t search for “residential mechanical solutions.”

This does two jobs. The person reading sees right away that you do what they need. Google also gets a clear idea of what you offer, and it needs that before it can show you for those searches. Say a little about each one, even a line or two. “Drain cleaning” is okay. “Drain cleaning for kitchens, bathrooms and basement floor drains” is better.

The towns you work in

Spell out the towns and areas you cover. People want to rule you in or out fast, and a painter who doesn’t say where they work gets skipped. Google pays attention to this too.

Only list places you’ll really drive to. Naming a town you never go to just wastes your time and theirs.

Proof you’re the real thing

People can’t see your work before they hire you, so give them something to go on.

Real photos are the best thing you can add. They don’t have to be pretty. Phone pictures of real jobs beat glossy stock shots. Stock photos are fine to start with, but swap them out as you go. A photo of you or your crew helps even more, because a stranger is deciding whether to let you into the house.

Say you’re licensed and insured if you are. Say what your warranty covers. Add your real Google reviews if you have them. If you don’t have many yet, leave that part out for now. Never write your own.

A way to reach you when you can’t pick up

You’re on a roof and you can’t answer. So give people a short contact form: name, phone and what they need. That’s plenty. Every extra box gives someone one more reason to give up.

Tell them when they’ll hear back, then do it. The fastest way to waste a good website is to let messages sit for three days. This part isn’t about the site at all. It’s on you, and it matters as much as anything above.

What you can leave out

You don’t need a long company history, a “Welcome to our website” headline, a video that starts on its own or a pop-up asking for someone’s email. None of it helps the person with the leak. A simple site that opens fast on a phone will do more for you than a fancy one that doesn’t.

If you want to see all of this with your own business on it, that’s what the free draft is for. We build it with your trade and your towns, you open it on your phone, and you only pay if you love it. It won’t fill your calendar by itself. It gives the people who find you a clear way to call.