A website builder for contractors

Credentials come first

Licence number, the body that issued it, the states or counties it covers, and whether you carry insurance and for how much. Customers inviting somebody into their home check this, and a site that answers it removes a hesitation before it forms.

State them precisely rather than generally. Fully licensed and insured is a phrase every competitor uses and none of them evidences, while a number somebody can look up is a fact. Our page on credentials covers the wording.

Keep them current. A lapsed registration displayed on a website is a serious matter in most licensed trades, and nothing will remind you that the page still says it. Nothing here is legal advice.

Photographs of real jobs

This is the strongest material a contractor has and it accumulates by itself. Ten minutes at the end of a job produces evidence no competitor can copy, and no answer engine can invent. A site with fifty real photographs beats a beautiful template every time.

Before and after pairs are the most persuasive and the most regulated. Our page on before and after photos covers the rules, including why altering one side of a comparison is a deceptive practice.

The builder needs to handle image weight properly. Our page on page speed covers why, and a gallery page is where contractor sites most often become unusable on a phone.

Coverage and call-out charges

Name the towns and counties in text, say where the boundary is, and say whether there is a call-out charge and whether it applies to a quote. Those answers prevent most of the wasted visits a contractor absorbs in a year.

Say which days you are in which areas if that is how you work. It turns a scheduling constraint into useful information rather than a source of frustration for both sides.

Our page on coverage pages covers the shape. One accurate coverage page beats twenty near-identical town pages, which is a temptation some builders actively encourage.

What a contractor site must carry

The list below is what a customer checks before calling somebody to their property. Missing items do not produce questions; they produce a call to the next contractor on the list.

• Licence number and the issuing body
• Insurance, and what it covers
• Photographs of completed work, with permission
• The towns and counties served
• Whether a call-out or estimate is chargeable
• Emergency availability and realistic response time
• A phone number in text, tappable on a mobile

Emergency work needs its own page

Somebody with water coming through a ceiling is not reading a service page. They need the number, the hours, the area and the realistic response time in the first screen, with nothing else in the way.

Our page on emergency pages covers the shape in full, including why the number must be text rather than sitting inside a graphic.

Promise only the response you can make. An unmet promise in an emergency produces a complaint rather than a disappointment, and it is the fastest route to a review you cannot remove.

Editing from a van

Contractors update their sites between jobs or not at all. A builder that is awkward on a phone is a builder where prices, hours and coverage quietly go stale for two years.

Test the editing experience on the device you will actually use. Our page on online builders covers why that matters more than any feature comparison.

The same applies to photographs. If uploading a picture from a phone at the end of a job is easy, it happens; if it needs a desktop session, the gallery stops growing in month two.

What to publish about price

You do not have to publish a price list and you do have to address the question. What determines the cost, what a typical job involves, and what makes a quote go up answers what people actually want to know.

Be careful about the difference between a quote and an estimate. Our pages on quote requests and estimate requests cover why, and the distinction produces real disputes.

Whatever you publish must be current. Our page on pricing claims covers the wording that creates obligations you did not intend. Nothing here is legal advice.