You have decided to get a website. Now you are staring at a blank page wondering what on earth goes on it.
Good news: for a trade business, the answer is simpler than you think. You do not need ten pages and you do not need clever writing. You need to answer the handful of questions every customer has before they ring you.
The four pages that do the job
Most trade websites need four pages. Some need three. Very few need more.
Home. What you do, where you work, and how to contact you, all visible without scrolling. If someone lands here and cannot tell within five seconds that you are a plumber covering their town, the page has failed.
Services. A plain list of the work you take on. Boiler repairs, bathroom installations, emergency callouts, whatever it is. This page quietly does a lot of your Google work, because it is where the words customers actually search for live.
Our work. Photos of real jobs. This is the page that wins you the job, and we will come back to it.
Contact. Phone number, email, areas covered, and a short form. Nothing else.
If you want a fifth, make it an About page. People like knowing who is coming to their house.
What every page needs
Your phone number, visible at the top. Not buried in the footer. Most trade enquiries are phone calls, and on a mobile a tappable number turns a visitor into a call in one touch.
The areas you cover. Name the towns. Not “Cheshire and surrounding areas”, but the actual places: Wilmslow, Alderley Edge, Macclesfield, Knutsford. It stops calls from the wrong side of the county, and it is one of the simplest things you can do to show up in local searches.
What makes you a safe choice. Years trading, accreditations, insurance, guarantees. A customer letting a stranger into their home is looking for reassurance, and most trade websites forget to give any.
Photos matter more than words
If you do one thing properly, do this. A gallery of real jobs beats any paragraph you could write about quality.
They do not need to be professional photographs. Phone pictures are fine, as long as they are well lit and in focus. Before and after shots are the most persuasive thing you can put on a trade website, because they show the problem the customer currently has and the result they want.
Get into the habit of taking two photos on every job. In a year you will have a gallery your competitors cannot match.
What to leave off
A few things that take up space and do nothing:
- Stock photos of other people’s work. Customers can tell, and it undermines everything else on the page.
- Long paragraphs about your passion for excellence. Nobody reads them. Say what you do and show what you have done.
- Prices, usually. Most trade work is quoted per job. A rough guide is helpful, a full price list invites people to compare you on a number rather than ring you.
- A blog you will not write. An empty blog with one post from two years ago looks worse than no blog at all.
Write it like you talk
The most common mistake on small business websites is sounding like a brochure. “We deliver bespoke plumbing solutions tailored to the client’s requirements” tells a customer nothing. “We fix boilers, replace bathrooms and sort leaks, usually same week” tells them everything.
If you would not say it standing on someone’s doorstep, do not put it on the page.
Before you publish
Three checks that catch most problems:
- Look at it on your phone. Most of your visitors will. If the text is tiny or the number is hard to tap, fix it before anything else.
- Ring the number on the page. You would be amazed how often it is wrong.
- Send the form to yourself. Make sure the enquiry actually lands in an inbox you check.
Then get it found
A website nobody sees does not win work. Once it is live, the next job is making sure it turns up when someone local searches. Our guide to getting your trade business found on Google covers the five steps that matter.
If you have not started yet, you need a domain name and a website builder, and our guide on builder versus designer will help you decide whether to build it yourself.
Stuck on any of it? Have a look at our small business website FAQs or get in touch and we will give you a straight answer.