Plain answers about websites, brands and marketing for small businesses, from Jack and Carly in Somerset.
A website for tradesmen has one job: turn a search into a phone call. Your customer isn't browsing. Their boiler has died, the fuse board is tripping, or the bathroom finally needs doing. They're on their phone, they're local, and they want proof you're real before they ring. A good tradesman's website shows your trade, your area, your work and your reviews on a fast page with a phone number that dials when tapped. With us, a five page site like that costs £995, or £95 a month, plus VAT.
We build websites for tradespeople, including Horler Electrical Services in Bath and JR Renovations in Trowbridge, and the bar in this sector is low. A lot of the competition is a quiet Facebook page and a Checkatrade profile sitting among six others. This article covers what the trades customer does before they call, why your own site beats renting a profile, the things that turn searches into booked work (job photos, reviews, service-area pages, click-to-call), what a website for tradesmen costs, and a short checklist to hold any web designer to.
How people find a tradesman in 2026
Hiring a tradesman is unlike almost any other purchase. It's urgent, local and proof-hungry:
- Urgent. Nobody plans to need an emergency plumber. A big share of your enquiries start with a problem that's happening right now, which means the search happens on a phone, and the winner is whoever looks credible and is easiest to call.
- Local. "Electrician near me", "roofer Taunton", "boiler repair Wells". Search engines fold location into almost every trades query whether the customer types a town or not.
- Proof-hungry. Every homeowner has heard a cowboy story. Before ringing a stranger to let them into the house, people look for photos of real work, reviews from real neighbours, and qualifications they recognise.
And increasingly, the "search" isn't a search at all. People now ask their phone's assistant or an AI chatbot "who's a good emergency electrician near me?", and the AI answers with two or three names. Those names come from businesses with clear websites, complete Google profiles and consistent reviews. We've written about how AI now does the searching for you. For trades, the short version is this: if a machine can't verify what you do and where, it won't recommend you.
Do tradesmen need a website if they have Facebook and Checkatrade?
Yes. Both are useful, but neither does the job of your own website:
- Facebook is rented ground. The algorithm decides who sees you. Your best reviews and job photos sink down a feed within days. And a Facebook page doesn't appear when someone Googles "plasterer in Frome", which is where the customers who don't already know you are.
- Checkatrade and similar directories put you on a shelf next to your competitors. You pay to appear in a list where the customer's next tap is another firm. Directories can be a fine source of leads, but every job that arrives through your own site is a job you didn't share a shortlist for.
- Neither is yours. Prices change, policies change, profiles get suspended. Your own website is the one asset in your marketing you actually control, like owning the van instead of hiring one.
The strongest setup is all three, pointing at each other: directory profiles and Facebook for presence and social proof, your own website as the hub that ranks, converts and belongs to you.
Photos of real jobs beat everything
Nothing on a website for tradesmen works harder than honest photography. Not the logo, not the strapline: photos of work you've actually done.
- Before-and-after pairs are the gold standard. A knackered bathroom next to the finished one tells a story no paragraph can.
- Organise by job type. Rewires, fuse board upgrades, EV chargers: a customer with a specific problem wants to see you've solved that exact problem.
- Caption everything. "Full rewire, three-bed semi, Glastonbury" helps the customer trust it and helps Google place you. Plain text captions are also exactly what AI assistants read.
- Take them properly. Daylight, tidy site, wide shot plus one detail shot. Thirty seconds per job, and your website improves with every van-load of tools you pack away.
Stock photos of a smiling model in a hard hat do the opposite of what you want. Customers can smell them through the screen.
Reviews: get them, show them, answer them
Reviews are the deciding vote in almost every trades enquiry. Treat them as a system, not a hope:
- Ask at the right moment: the job's done, the customer's pleased, you're packing up. Send a text with a direct link to your Google review page before you've left the postcode.
- Concentrate them on Google first. That's what shows next to your name on the map, and what both search engines and AI assistants weigh most heavily.
- Pull the best ones through to your website, with first names and towns. "Mark, Bridgwater" is worth ten anonymous five-star widgets.
- Reply to every review, including the rare rough one. A calm, professional reply to a complaint reassures future customers more than another five-star does.
Service-area pages: be findable in the next town over
Your homepage can only rank convincingly in one place. If you work across a patch, say Taunton, Bridgwater and Wellington, each main town deserves its own page. Done properly, a service-area page has:
- Your trade and the town in the page title and heading ("Electrician in Bridgwater");
- Genuinely distinct content: jobs you've done there, how quickly you can attend, anything local worth saying;
- Photos and reviews from that area;
- The same clear phone number and contact route as everywhere else.
What doesn't work: twenty identical pages with the town name swapped out. Search engines learned to ignore those years ago. Three or four honest pages for your real patch beat a fake fifty every time.
Make the phone ring: click-to-call and fewer taps
Remember the buyer: standing in a cold house, phone in hand. Every extra tap loses jobs.
- Make the phone number a button, visible at the top of every page, that dials when tapped. It is the most valuable single feature on a tradesman's website.
- Keep forms tiny: name, phone, what's the problem. Nobody describes a leak in twelve fields.
- Say when you answer ("calls answered 7am to 7pm") and what happens if you can't ("leave a message, we call back the same day").
- Show your certifications where thumbs can see them: Gas Safe, NICEIC, TrustMark and friends, near the phone number, not buried in a footer.
- Speed matters. A site that takes ages to load on a 4G signal is a site that never got seen. It's one reason we build on our own CMS rather than piling plugins onto a template, and why our care plans keep sites fast after launch instead of letting them silt up.
Our page on website design for tradesmen covers what we build for trades and names the trade businesses we look after.
How much does a website for tradesmen cost?
Our prices for tradespeople are the same as for everyone else, and they are on our websites page:
| Website | Pay once | Pay monthly |
|---|---|---|
| 5 pages | £995 | £95 a month |
| 10 pages | £1,795 | £169 a month |
| Larger sites | from £2,995 | from £279 a month |
All prices are plus VAT, with no setup fee. Pay once and the first twelve months of hosting and care are included, then care plans start at £29 a month. Pay monthly and the care is included in the price; the plan runs for twelve months, then rolls on.
For most sole traders and small firms, five pages is enough: a homepage, your main services, a gallery of real jobs, reviews and a contact page. If you cover several towns and want a proper page for each, or you offer a long list of services, ten pages gives you the room. As a rough test, if one extra boiler swap or rewire a month would cover the monthly fee, the sums usually work.
Website for tradesmen checklist
Whoever builds your site, check it does these before you pay for it:
- Your trade and your main town in the page title and the main heading.
- A phone number at the top of every page that dials when tapped.
- Photos of your own jobs, captioned with the job and the town. No stock photos.
- Google reviews shown on the site, with first names and towns.
- Certifications such as Gas Safe, NICEIC or TrustMark near the phone number.
- A page for each main town you cover, written properly, not copied.
- A short form: name, phone, what the problem is.
- Opening hours, and what happens if you miss a call.
- Loads quickly on a phone with a weak signal.
- You own the domain, and you can take the site with you if you leave.
Common questions
Is a Facebook page enough for a tradesman?
It's a good start, but it's rented ground. Facebook decides who sees your posts, buries your reviews and photos in a feed, and doesn't rank for searches like "electrician in Yeovil". A simple website you own, with your services, area, photos and reviews on one fast page, catches the customers a Facebook page never sees.
How many photos of my work should I put on my website?
Quality over volume: aim for 15 to 30 good, honest photos organised by job type, and add to them as you go. Before-and-after pairs are the strongest. Take them in decent light on a tidy site, and caption each with what the job was and roughly where. Captions help customers and search engines alike.
How much does a website for tradesmen cost?
With us, a five page website for a tradesman costs £995, or £95 a month, plus VAT. Ten pages is £1,795 or £169 a month. Pay once and the first year of hosting and care is included; pay monthly and care is included for as long as you are on the plan. If one extra job a month covers the fee, the sums usually work.
Do service-area pages actually work?
Yes, when they're real. A genuine page for each main town you cover, with distinct content, local jobs you've done and reviews from that area, ranks for "your trade + town" searches you'd otherwise never appear in. Copy-pasted pages with just the town name swapped don't work and can hurt you.
How do I show up when someone asks an AI for a tradesperson near them?
AI assistants recommend businesses they can verify: a clear website that states your trade, your towns and your qualifications in plain text, a complete Google Business Profile, and a steady flow of genuine reviews. It's the same groundwork as local SEO. Done properly, you get found in both places.
Want a website that brings in jobs?
We're Bare Creative: Jack and Carly, a two-person studio in Somerset. We build fast websites for tradespeople on our own CMS, handle the local SEO and AI-search groundwork, and stick around afterwards so it keeps earning. If your website isn't bringing in booked jobs (or you haven't got one yet), get in touch. We'll give you a straight answer on what's worth doing.
Related services: Websites for trades, Web design, Websites for construction firms.
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