A tradie website that brings in work

A tradie website that brings in work does five jobs: it shows your licence and the area you cover, it proves you do the type of job the visitor needs, it makes calling one tap, it gives people an easy way to send details and photos, and it puts the message straight on your phone. It does not need to be big. Five or six well-built pages tend to serve a customer better than thirty thin ones, for electricians, plumbers, builders, painters, gardeners and every other trade in Australia and New Zealand.

Below is a page-by-page plan, in the order to build it, plus the part most tradies skip: making sure the enquiry reaches you while you are on the tools.

What a tradie website has to do

Someone with a blocked drain, a dead power point or a quote to compare looks at a few sites and picks one that seems real, local and quick to deal with. The site has to answer four silent questions fast: are you licensed, do you work near me, have you done this job before, and how do I reach you.

It also has to work on a phone held in one hand, because that is where many of these searches happen. If the number is hard to tap or the form takes five minutes, the visitor taps the next result.

Page 1: the homepage

Keep the homepage short and follow this order: your trade and area in the main heading, a tap-to-call button, your licence number, three to six services as links, three recent jobs with photos, two or three reviews, how it works, and a second call button. Our guide to homepage design walks through each block.

A heading like “Licensed electricians in the Hills District” does more than “Powering your future”. Say what you do and where.

Licence details: what to show and where

Show your licence or registration number where customers will see it, usually the header or footer of every page, and in full on the About page. Add the name of the licensing body so a customer can look you up.

The rules for licence numbers in advertising differ by state in Australia and by trade and board in New Zealand, and some require the number in any advertisement, including a website. We have not quoted a rule here because it varies with your state or country and your trade. Check your licensing regulator’s page on advertising before you publish. The same goes for any insurance, warranty or association logo you display: only show what you hold now.

Page 2 and onward: one page per main service

Give each major service its own page. A plumber might have blocked drains, hot water, gas fitting and bathroom renovations. An electrician might have switchboard upgrades, lighting, data and safety checks. This is how people searching for a specific job land on a page about that job.

For each service page, in this order:

1. A heading with the job and your area, for example “Hot water system replacement in Parramatta”.
2. Two short paragraphs: what the job involves, how long it usually takes you, and what the customer needs to do.
3. Photos of that type of job from your own work.
4. The brands or materials you commonly use, if customers ask.
5. A short list of questions you get asked, answered in your own words.
6. A call button and the enquiry form.

Write what you would tell a customer on site. If the job has a price range you are happy to share, say how it is set, for example by the hour, by the fixture or by the size of the area, and what changes it. Customers who see how you price are less likely to be surprised later, and you answer fewer calls that go nowhere. Do not copy text from another trade’s site; customers who compare two sites notice the same wording twice.

A page for where you work

Customers search by place as much as by trade, so the area page does real work.

If you cover several suburbs or towns, add one page listing the area you serve, with the main places named and a note on how far out you will travel. Add a separate page for a place only when you actually work there often and can show a job in it, with a photo and a sentence. Pages that repeat the same text with a different suburb name help nobody.

Make sure your Google Business Profile lists the same area, phone and hours as the site. Our guide to Google Business Profile covers it, and SEO for tradies shows how the pieces fit.

The work page: photos that prove it

A gallery is where a stranger decides you are real. Aim for photos of finished jobs, taken in daylight on your phone, with a caption: the job, the suburb and the month. Before-and-after pairs work well for renovations, painting and landscaping.

• Ask the customer before you publish a photo of their home, and avoid showing house numbers or anything that identifies them.
• Use photos of your own work rather than images from supplier catalogues.
• Resize before uploading. Large unoptimised photos make the page slow; see Core Web Vitals and website speed.

The about page: the person who turns up

Customers let tradespeople into their homes, so who you are matters. Put your name and photo, how long you have been in the trade, your licence details, the vehicle and uniform they will see, and what you will and will not do. Short and specific is better than polished.

The quote button that reaches a phone

This is where many tradie sites fail: the form looks fine but the message lands in an inbox nobody checks until Friday. Build the path backwards from your phone.

1. A tap-to-call button in the header of every page, and fixed at the bottom of the screen on phones.
2. A short form asking name, mobile number, suburb, type of job and a photo upload. Four fields get filled in; ten do not. A photo often lets you give a price range straight away.
3. An instant text to you when the form is submitted, with the name, number and job, so you see it between jobs.
4. An instant text back to the customer: “Thanks Sam, got your enquiry about hot water. We will call you by 5 pm today.”
5. A missed call text back, so a call you could not answer still gets a reply. See missed call text back for tradies.
6. A follow-up if they have not replied to your quote. Our guide on how many times to follow up a quote sets out a sensible rhythm.

If you send marketing texts, the rules on consent differ by country, so check them before you add anyone to a list. Our guide to SMS marketing rules in Australia is a start for Australian businesses.

Building it: platform and upkeep

A tradie site needs to be fast on a phone, easy for you to update with new job photos, and not break when a plugin updates. WordPress is a good fit if someone looks after it; a simple builder can also work if you only need a few pages and will manage it yourself. A site you cannot update becomes out of date, and out of date reads as out of business.

CentriWeb builds websites on WordPress for trades businesses and connects the enquiry form to the text and CRM steps above with automation. If you only need a plain five-page site, a good template and an afternoon of your own photos may be enough, and you can add the text-back later.

A launch checklist

• Licence number and licensing body shown on every page footer.
• Phone number is tappable and matches Google Business Profile.
• Every service page has your own photos and a call button.
• The form sends you a text and the customer a reply, and you have tested both.
• You have submitted a test enquiry from a phone and timed how long the message took to reach you.
• Reviews are real and link to the source where possible.
• The site loads quickly on a phone using mobile data as well as on your office wifi.
• Your photos have no customer details, house numbers or number plates in them.

For builders and trades: PreBuild is a CentriWeb partner that does this for residential builders and trades. It brings in homeowner enquiries, shows homeowners why they can trust you, and keeps in touch until the job is yours.