You've just finished a job. Good work, fair price, happy customer. They tell a neighbour. The neighbour searches your name online.
What do they find?
If the answer is nothing — or worse, an old Facebook page with three posts from 2021 and a profile picture that's slightly blurry — you've lost that lead before you even knew it existed.
This is the reality for a lot of tradespeople in the UK right now. The work is there. The reputation is there. Word of mouth has kept things ticking. But that only goes so far, and the people who can't get a recommendation are just Googling instead — and finding someone else.
I build websites for tradespeople. A plumber I worked with recently had been trading for over a decade, brilliant reviews on Checkatrade, never short of work through word of mouth — but his website hadn't been touched since around 2018. It was cluttered, hard to navigate, and looked terrible on a phone. We rebuilt it from scratch: tidied up the layout, made it properly mobile-friendly, and rewrote the content to target his local area. After it went live, he started getting calls from customers who'd found him on Google — people he'd never have reached through word of mouth alone. He ended up ranking highly in local search results for his area, which he hadn't expected at all. And when he spoke to new customers, a few of them specifically mentioned the website — said it looked professional and was easy to use. That was one of the reasons they chose him over someone else. That's the website doing exactly what it should.
Here's what I've learned about what actually works.
The First Five Seconds
When someone lands on your website, they've already made a decision about whether to stay within about five seconds. Not five minutes. Five seconds.
They're not reading your about page. They're not checking your prices. They're just getting a gut feeling — does this look like a proper business, or does it look dodgy?
A clean, professional website gives people that reassurance instantly. It signals that you take your work seriously. That you're not going to disappear halfway through a job. That you're the kind of tradesperson who shows up when they say they will.
The trades that do well online aren't always the cheapest or the most experienced. They're usually just the ones that look the most trustworthy at first glance.
Worth saying plainly: people won't ring you to find out if you're any good. They'll decide that from your website in about five seconds — and if it doesn't feel right, they'll click back and try the next result. You never find out. The work just doesn't come.
Most of Your Customers Are on Their Phone
Think about how people find a tradesperson these days. They're usually in the middle of a problem. Boiler's gone. Tile's cracked. Fence is down after the wind. They grab their phone and search — they're not sitting at a desk.
Over 70% of local service searches in the UK happen on mobile. If your website looks broken on a phone — text too small, buttons that don't work, images that don't load — those people are gone within seconds. They'll find someone whose site actually works.
The plumber I mentioned earlier had exactly this problem. His old site looked okay on a desktop but was a mess on a phone — tiny text, a contact form that was almost unusable with a touchscreen, images that crawled. When we rebuilt it, the focus was on cleaning up the layout and making it genuinely easy to use on mobile. He didn't have to do anything differently — the enquiries just started coming in from people who'd found him on Google. A couple of them told him directly the website was one of the reasons they picked up the phone.
A mobile-friendly website isn't a nice extra. For a trade business in 2026, it's the baseline.
What that actually means in practice:
- Text big enough to read without zooming
- A phone number you can tap to call directly
- Images that load quickly on a mobile connection
- A contact form that works with a phone keyboard
- Navigation that doesn't require a mouse to use
What Actually Gets You Enquiries
A website that looks nice but doesn't generate leads is just an expensive brochure. The goal is enquiries — people picking up the phone or sending a message. And for most tradespeople, a lot of those leads are going elsewhere because they're only on Facebook — which has real limitations for getting found on Google.
The trades websites that generate the most leads tend to have a few things in common.
A click-to-contact button at the top of every page
Sounds obvious, but you'd be surprised how many trade websites bury their contact details at the bottom. Whether it's a phone number, a WhatsApp link or a simple contact button — make it visible, make it clickable, and put it at the top. The easier it is to reach you, the more enquiries you'll get.
Real photos of your work
Stock photos of a generic kitchen or a random person in overalls do nothing for you. Real before-and-after shots of your actual jobs — even taken on a phone — are worth ten times more. People want to see what you can actually do, not what some American stock photo model can do.
Genuine reviews
A handful of real customer testimonials on your site will do more for enquiries than almost anything else. If you've got Google reviews, even better — link to them or pull a few onto the page. People trust other people far more than they trust a business talking about itself. One genuine review saying "turned up when he said he would, tidy job, fair price" will do more for you than a paragraph you wrote about how professional you are.
A clear list of your services
Don't make people guess what you do. List it clearly. Boiler installation. Emergency callouts. Bathroom fitting. Whatever it is — say it plainly and say it early.
Getting Found on Google — What Actually Matters
Most trade leads online come from local search. Not someone browsing — someone with a specific problem, in your area, right now, reaching for their phone.
They're typing things like "plumber in Sheffield" or "emergency electrician near me" or "roofer Doncaster" — and Google is trying to work out who to show them. Your website is a big part of how it makes that decision.
The basics aren't complicated: your site needs to say what you do and where you do it — not just in the footer, but written properly into the page. A page that says "boiler installation and repairs across Sheffield and South Yorkshire" will do better than one that just says "we offer a range of plumbing services."
It also helps to set up a Google Business Profile if you haven't already. If you want more help getting your site to rank locally, we offer SEO for tradespeople as a separate service. It's free, takes about 20 minutes, and gets you into the map results — which often sit above the normal search results and get a lot of clicks.
The other thing worth knowing: local trades search isn't as competitive as people assume. In most UK towns there are only a handful of tradespeople with a half-decent website. That's not a high bar to clear — and once you're over it, the leads tend to come.
Realistic timescales: most sites I build start picking up local traffic within 3–6 weeks. You might get your first enquiry from Google within a fortnight — or it might take two months, depending on your area and how many competitors have a decent site. What I can say is that every site I've built that's been live for six months is generating something.
Which Trades See the Best Results
Honestly? Almost all of them. But if I had to pick the ones where a basic website makes the biggest difference quickly, it's plumbers and electricians — because people search for them urgently. When your boiler goes at 7pm, you're not scrolling Facebook. You're Googling "plumber near me" and calling whoever looks legit.
Roofers and builders tend to see slightly slower results because people take longer to decide — they'll come back to your site a few times before calling. Which means you need to look good enough that they actually come back.
Landscapers and decorators benefit massively from photos — their work is visual and people want to see it before they pick up the phone. A site with a proper gallery of real jobs does a lot of the selling for you.
The one thing I'd say to any sole trader: you're often up against larger companies with slick websites and marketing budgets. But those sites are often generic and impersonal. A small, honest site that shows real work and sounds like a real person can absolutely outperform them in local search — I've seen it happen.
It Works While You're on the Job
The thing I keep coming back to: you can only answer your phone when you're not on a roof, under a sink, or pulling cable through a wall.
A website doesn't have that problem. It's there at 9am when you're already on a job. It's there at 11pm when someone's panicking about a leak. It takes the enquiry, shows them your work, gives them enough confidence to get in touch — and you pick it up when you surface.
Over months and years, that quietly adds up. The tradespeople I work with who've had a decent site for a while often struggle to remember what it was like before — the work just comes in more steadily and they worry less about where the next job's coming from.
Most sites pay for themselves off a single job. For a plumber, that could be the first callout. For a builder, it might take a month. Either way, the maths isn't complicated.
Questions I Get Asked a Lot
A few things that come up almost every time I speak to a new customer.
How much does a trades website cost?
It varies more than it probably should. Some agencies charge thousands for a trades website — and while you do generally get what you pay for, you don't need to spend that much to get something that works. At Get A Trades Website, a single-page site starts at £99 and a full multi-page site is £299, both one-off payments. If you want a fuller breakdown of what different price points actually get you, this article goes into the detail. No monthly fees unless you want hosting and ongoing updates included.
Do I need to write the content myself?
Not in full. You provide the rough details — your services, the areas you cover, a bit about your business — and Gary shapes it into something that reads well and works for SEO. Most customers send over a few bullet points. The less polished the better, honestly — Gary does the rest.
How long does it take to go live?
It depends on the package. The One Page site (£99) is built within 48 hours of receiving your details. The 3-page Starter (£199) takes around a week, and the 5-page Professional (£299) around 2 weeks. If we're hosting it, it can go live just as quickly once built. If you're using your own hosting or an existing domain, DNS changes can add a day or two on top. Either way, it's fast compared to waiting weeks for a traditional agency.
Will it show up on Google?
Not immediately — anyone who tells you otherwise is selling something. But every site I build is set up properly for local SEO from day one: the right page titles, your location written into the content, a sitemap submitted to Google. That foundation matters. Most sites I've built start picking up local traffic within a few weeks, and it tends to grow from there as Google gets more confident about what the site is.
What if I already have a website?
Depends on the site. If it's just outdated or not mobile-friendly, it might be worth a refresh rather than starting from scratch. If it's on a platform that's hard to update or costs a lot to maintain, sometimes it's cleaner to just start fresh. Get in touch and I'll have an honest look — I'm not going to tell you to rebuild something that doesn't need rebuilding.