Your customer is standing in a flooded laundry, or looking at a cracked driveway, or sitting with a builder’s plans and a list of trades to call. They’ve searched on their phone, they’ve found three businesses, and they’re deciding which one to ring. That’s the whole moment a tradie website exists for.
So the test for every element on the site is simple: does it help the right customer call you, or does it get in the way? What passes is a short list: a tap-to-call number, your trade and towns in the first screen, a page per service, your licence number, real job photos, reviews, a short quote form and fast loading on a phone. Most of what makes tradie websites expensive fails that test.
What it needs
These are in rough order of importance. If your current site is missing anything from the first half of this list, fix that before spending a cent on anything else.
1. A phone number you can tap
On a phone, your number should be a big button at the top of the screen that dials when tapped. Not an image of a number, not buried in the footer, and not only on the contact page. Ideally it stays visible as people scroll.
Test it on your own phone today. A surprising number of tradie sites we check have a number that looks right but isn’t set up to dial.
2. What you do and where, in the first screen
Within a few seconds, a visitor should know three things: your trade, the towns you cover, and how to reach you. “Licensed plumber in Ballina, Lennox Head and Alstonville. 24/7 emergency callouts.” That sentence does more work than any slogan.
3. A page for each main service
If you do hot water, blocked drains, bathroom renovations and gas fitting, each of those needs its own page. People search for the specific job, and a page that’s clearly about that job is far more likely to show up and convince them. One long list of services on the homepage does neither.
Each service page should say what’s involved, roughly what to expect on timing, the areas you cover for that work, and a clear way to book or ask for a quote.
4. The towns you service
List them in plain text, not just in a map image. If there are a handful of towns you really want work from, they may justify their own pages, but only with genuinely local content. Pages that copy the same paragraph with a different suburb swapped in don’t help and can hurt. We explain the difference in location pages that aren’t spam.
5. Your licence number
It builds trust, and in NSW it’s not optional. The NSW Government’s building trade advertisements guidance says the licensee’s name or registered business name and the licence number must be shown in all advertising, and it lists internet advertising among the media covered. Put the licence number in the footer of every page at minimum. Our article on showing your licence number on your website in NSW covers the detail. (General information, not legal advice.)
While you’re at it, add your ABN and mention your insurance. They’re small details, and customers do look for them.
6. Real photos of real jobs
Your own photos beat stock every time, even if they were taken on a phone. Customers want to see your work, your vehicles and your face. A finished bathroom you tiled, a switchboard you upgraded, the crew on a real site.
Take a quick before and after on every job worth showing. Over a year that becomes a gallery no competitor can copy.
7. Reviews
Google reviews are what most customers trust, so show them. Either embed a selection or link straight to your Google profile, and keep that profile active, because it drives local search as much as the website does. A couple of written reviews on each service page, with the customer’s first name and town, are worth more than a separate testimonials page nobody visits.
8. A short quote form
Name, phone, suburb, what the job is, and an optional photo upload. That’s it. Every extra field is a reason to give up. Send the enquiry to a mobile-friendly inbox that someone checks, and reply the same day.
9. Speed on a phone
A tradie website gets used on a phone, often on patchy mobile data out of town. It needs to load fast on 4G. In our experience, the biggest culprits are huge uncompressed photos, video backgrounds and cheap hosting.
What it doesn’t need
These are the things we see tradies paying for that rarely bring in a single job.
Homepage sliders. Rotating banners slow the page down, and almost nobody waits to see slide three. One strong photo and a clear headline wins.
A blog you won’t update. A blog with three posts from 2022 makes the business look closed. If you won’t post regularly, don’t have one. Put the effort into service pages instead.
A long company history. A short “about us” with a photo of you and the team is valuable. Six paragraphs about the founding year isn’t read.
Chatbots and live chat. If nobody’s monitoring it in real time, it’s a broken promise. Your customer would rather call.
Animations and parallax effects. They look impressive in a sales demo and make the site slower and fiddlier on a phone.
A Facebook feed widget. These often break, slow the page and show your least relevant posts. Link to your page instead.
Stock photos of smiling tradies. Customers can spot them. They’d rather see your ute.
A huge site. Most tradies need a homepage, a page for each main service, an about page, a gallery or projects page and a contact page. That’s often under ten pages.
What a typical tradie site looks like
For a local plumber covering a handful of towns, a solid site might be:
- Home: what you do, where, a tap-to-call button, three reviews, three job photos
- Service pages: emergency plumbing, blocked drains, hot water, gas fitting, bathroom renovations
- Areas: one page listing every town, with optional dedicated pages for the two or three biggest
- Recent jobs: a gallery with short captions (suburb, job, what you did)
- About: who you are, licence, insurance, a team photo
- Contact: phone, quote form, hours, emergency details
That structure suits most trade businesses, and you can see a finished example in the site we built for iFlow Plumbing in Ballina. Some trades have their own quirks. We go into those in websites for electricians and websites for plumbers.
Frequently asked questions
I get enough work from word of mouth. Do I still need a website?
Probably, because word of mouth now usually ends in a Google search. Someone recommends you, and the customer looks you up before they call. If they find nothing, or an old site, the recommendation loses some of its power.
Can I just use a Facebook page?
It’s better than nothing, but you don’t control it, it’s hard to find on Google for specific services, and plenty of people don’t use Facebook. A small site plus a Google Business Profile does more.
How long does a tradie website take?
A simple one can be live in under a week once you’ve supplied photos and details. A larger site with several service and location pages usually takes a few weeks.
Check yours in five minutes
Open your site on your phone. Can you tap to call from the first screen? Is it clear what you do and where? Is your licence number there? Are the photos yours? If any answer is no, that’s your first job.
To hand the whole job over, our websites for tradies work covers the lot, and tradie.agency is our fixed-price trade website service, starting with a $1,000 + GST one-page site live in five days. If one of those five questions got a no, its free site check is a quick second opinion on the rest.