A homeowner is comparing three landscapers for a back-garden job. She has the names. She types the first one into Google and lands on a Facebook page with two posts from 2022. Closes it. Tries the second. Bare website with stock photos of an American suburb and a service list of forty-three different items. Closes it. Tries the third. One page. Phone number at the top. Six real before-and-after shots from gardens she half-recognises. A line that says "Garden builds and patios across Edinburgh and the Lothians". Three short reviews underneath.

She rings the third one. Job booked.

That's what a trades website is for. It isn't a brochure, a CV, or a place to write essays about your craft. It's the five-second answer to one question: should I ring this person? Most of the trades websites I see fail because they try to do too much, not too little.

Here's the practical version. What actually wins jobs, what to cut, and where to spend your time if you're a one-man band who'd rather be on the tools.

Start With Why People Are On Your Site

By the time someone lands on your homepage they're already half-decided. They got your name from a neighbour, a Google search, or a directory. They've got a problem. They want to find out, quickly, whether you're the right person to fix it.

Your site has to answer four questions in the first five seconds:

If those four answers aren't visible without scrolling, the rest of the site doesn't matter. They'll click back to Google and try the next result. You never find out.

The blunt truth: nobody is going to read your site front to back. They're scanning for trade, town, phone number and proof. Everything else is decoration. Build the site around those four things first, then add the rest if there's a good reason.

What to Put On Your Site

This is the short list. It works for plumbers, electricians, builders, roofers, joiners, landscapers, decorators and just about every other trade. You don't need anything more than this on day one.

That's the entire job. If you can fit those onto one or two well-written pages, you've got a working trades website. The rest of this article is about deciding what to do beyond that, and what to leave alone.

What to Leave Out

The clutter list is longer than the keep list. These are the things I see on most trades sites that either do nothing or actively cost the business enquiries.

One Page or Lots of Pages?

This is the question I get asked most often by sole traders. The honest answer is: it depends on where you are.

For a brand new trade site, or for a one-man band who just wants to be findable, a single well-written page is enough. Trade, town, services, photos, reviews, contact. That page can rank in Google, take enquiries, and pay for itself within a job or two. There's no rule that says a website has to be five pages long.

Once you're getting steady local work and you want to climb in the local search results, splitting your highest-value services into their own pages helps. A page about "boiler installation in Edinburgh" can rank for boiler-installation searches in a way that a single page about "we offer plumbing services" never will. The same logic works for a kitchen fitter splitting "kitchen installation" out from "worktop replacement", or a roofer splitting "flat roof repair" from "new pitched roof".

The mistake to avoid is adding pages for the sake of it. A separate page per service only works if there's actually something different to say on each one. If three of them say the same thing in different words, Google will treat them as duplicates and rank none of them. There's a fuller breakdown of how local SEO actually works for trades if you want the longer version.

Photos and Reviews Do the Selling

If you take nothing else from this, take this: photos of your own work are the single biggest difference between a site that gets enquiries and one that doesn't. They beat clever copy, slick design and trust badges by a mile.

What works:

What to leave off:

Reviews are the other heavy lifter. Four to six recent, real reviews on the site is plenty. You don't need fifty, and a wall of generic five-star praise actually looks fake. One that says "turned up when he said he would, fixed the leak in an hour, charged exactly what he quoted" does more work than any line you could write about yourself. Getting reviews in the first place is its own job, and worth doing properly.

Should You Put Prices On Your Site?

The fear is always the same: if I put prices up, I'll get undercut, or I'll be tied to a number before I've seen the job. Both real concerns. Both fixable.

You don't need a full price list. What helps is a guide. "Boiler service from £85". "Small bathroom regrout from £180". "Day rate from £280". Make it clear it's a starting point, that the final figure comes after a proper look. Customers get something to compare against, you filter out the people whose budget is half your day rate, and the eventual quote is easier to talk through.

The site is the start of a quote, not the end of one. How you write the actual quote, after you've seen the job, is what wins or loses the work. The website's job is just to get you onto the shortlist.

Worth knowing: "I'd rather not put prices up, my work varies too much" is sometimes a genuine reason and sometimes a hiding place. If you can't put a guide range on a typical job, that's worth thinking about for your quoting too. Customers don't expect a fixed quote off a website. They do expect to know roughly whether they're in the right ballpark.

Keep It Live (Don't Build It and Forget It)

Most trades websites I see were built once, put live, and never looked at again. Phone numbers go out of date. Service areas drift. Photos from 2019 get dustier. The site quietly stops working without anyone noticing.

Once a quarter, run a five-minute check:

That's it. Five minutes a quarter to keep a site looking alive. The alternative is a tidy-looking page that quietly tells every customer it was built and abandoned. Building the site quickly is the easy part. Keeping it useful for the next three years is the bit that matters.

Questions I Get Asked About This

Do I really need a website if I get all my work from word of mouth and Checkatrade?

Word of mouth keeps you ticking over but it has a ceiling. The people who can't get a recommendation are searching Google instead, and they need somewhere to land that proves you're a real, working tradesperson. A simple one-page site is enough to fix that. Checkatrade and other directories work alongside a site, not as a replacement, because you don't own the listing or the leads on those platforms.

How many pages does a trades website need?

For most one-man bands, a single well-written page is enough to start. Trade, area, services, photos, reviews, contact details. Once you're getting steady work and want to climb in local search, splitting your top earners into their own pages helps. Don't add pages for the sake of it.

Should I put prices on my trades website?

You don't need a full price list, but a guide figure on common jobs gives customers something to compare against and filters out time-wasters before they ring. Always make it clear it's a starting point and that a final figure comes after a proper look at the job.

Should I have a blog on my trades website?

Only if you'll keep it up. A blog with three posts from two years ago hurts more than it helps. If you'd rather be on the tools, skip it. The pages that actually win you jobs are services, locations, and proof of work, not articles about the history of copper piping.

What's the most important thing on the homepage?

Trade and town in the headline, a tap-to-call phone number near the top, and proof you've done this before (a few real photos and a couple of honest reviews). Everything else is decoration. If a customer can't see those four things in five seconds, they're back on Google.