Websites
A contractor’s website has one job: make a stranger confident enough to ask you for a price. It does not need to win design awards. It needs to show, quickly and on a phone, that you do the kind of work the visitor needs, in the place they live, and that reaching you is easy. This page walks through contractor website design the way a builder walks a site: what goes where, what holds weight, and what is decoration.
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Want a proposal for a new or rebuilt contractor website? Send the form with your trade and service area.
Why the website carries the rest of your marketing
Almost every other piece of marketing ends at your website. Your Google Business Profile links to it. A Google ad sends the click to one of its pages. The lettering on your truck, your yard signs and the card you leave with a homeowner all point there, because that is where people go to check you out before they pick up the phone. If the site is slow, out of date or confusing, it quietly cancels what the rest of your spend bought.
Google Ads makes the point in its own terms. One of the three parts of an ad’s Quality Score is landing page experience, which Google describes as how relevant and useful your landing page is to people who click your ad. A clear page about the exact job you advertise is part of how ads are judged, not just how visitors judge you.
The pages a construction website needs
Most contractor websites are too thin in the wrong places and too long in others. A home page that lists twenty services in one paragraph, a gallery with no words, and an about page about the founder’s first truck. What works better is a simple structure where each page answers one question.
| Page | What it is for | What it must hold |
|---|---|---|
| Home | Telling a visitor in seconds what you do and where | Your trade in plain words, your service area, your best photos, a way to ask for a quote |
| One page per service | Matching each job people search for | What the job involves, how you do it, photos of that job, questions owners ask about it |
| Service area | Showing where you work | The towns and counties you really cover, written out, with real work in each where you have it |
| Projects | Proof that you have done this before | Your own photos with the job described: what it was, what you did, what changed |
| About | Making the company feel real | Who runs it, how jobs are run, what a customer can expect from first visit to final walk-through |
| Contact or quote | Turning interest into a lead | A short form, your phone number, your business address and hours |
Service pages are where jobs come from
A homeowner who needs a deck rebuilt and one who needs a basement finished are different people searching for different words. One page that lists both is a weak answer to each. A page per service lets you describe the work properly, show photos of that work and answer the questions people ask about it, such as how long it takes, what permits it usually involves where you work, and what the homeowner needs to decide. That is also what Google’s guidance asks for: content created to benefit people, not to manipulate rankings.
Area pages need real content, not a town name swapped in
Many contractor sites have one page per town, each a copy of the last with a new name. Google’s spam policies describe this directly as doorway abuse: having multiple domain names or pages targeted at specific regions or cities that funnel users to one page. If you want pages for the places you work, give each one something true and specific: jobs you have done there, the kind of housing or building stock you see, local details that would not make sense anywhere else. If you have nothing specific to say about a town, list it on your service area page instead.
Photos: your own work beats anything else
In construction the work is the product, and photos are the closest a visitor gets to seeing it before they hire you. A gallery of your own jobs, sharp and well lit, with a sentence or two on each, does more than any stock picture can. Before and after shots of the same angle are especially clear. Get into the habit of photographing every finished job in daylight, and ask the customer before you publish photos of their home.
- Describe each project. What the job was, what you did, the materials, anything unusual. Words help visitors and search engines understand the photo.
- Keep faces and addresses out. House numbers, license plates and customers’ faces do not belong on your site without permission.
- Size the files for the web. A photo straight off a phone can be many times larger than the page needs. A good designer resizes and compresses every image.
- Label stock photos honestly. If you use a stock picture on a page, never caption it as your own job.
Built for a phone first
Picture who is looking at your site: a homeowner standing in a wet basement, a property manager between meetings, a general contractor on a site looking for a sub. Many of them are on a phone. On a small screen the questions are the same, but there is less room to answer them. The phone number should be one tap away, the quote form should fit the screen without pinching and zooming, and the first thing visible should say what you do and where.
Speed belongs here too. Heavy sliders, autoplay videos and oversized photos make a site slow on a phone connection, and people leave slow sites. Whatever part speed plays in search, treat it first as a matter of not losing the visitors you already have.
Quote forms that people finish
The quote form is where a visitor becomes a lead, and many contractor sites make it hard. A form that asks for fifteen fields, a budget range and a project start date before it will send scares people off. Ask for what you need to call them back: name, phone, email, what the job is and where. Anything else can wait for the first conversation.
- Test the form yourself from a phone regularly, and make sure the email arrives.
- Send each request to someone who will answer it promptly.
- Show a plain thank-you message that says what happens next.
- Keep the form short enough that it fits on one phone screen.
Who should own the site
This is the question contractors most often forget to ask, and the one that costs the most later. The domain name, the hosting account and the website files should be in your company’s name, with logins you hold. Some website companies rent you a site on their own platform and keep the domain. That can be fine while the relationship lasts, but if you leave you may lose the site, the address people know and the search history built up behind it.
Ask before you sign
Who registers the domain, in whose name? Where is the site hosted, and do I get the login? If we part ways, what do I take with me? The right answer is: everything, in your name.
What to ask a contractor web designer
Whether you hire a freelancer, a web shop or a full marketing agency, the questions are the same. Google publishes a list of questions for anyone hiring an SEO, and several apply to a web designer just as well. Ask for examples of previous work, ask what their experience is in your industry, and ask whether they will share every change they make to your site.
- Can I see sites you have built for contractors, and can I click through them on my phone?
- Will the domain, hosting and site files be in my name?
- Will each of my services get its own page, written about my work?
- Who writes the words, and do I approve them before the site goes live?
- How will you handle my project photos?
- Where will quote requests go, and how will we test that they arrive?
- What happens after launch: who updates the site, and how do I ask for changes?
Mistakes that cost contractors work
- No service area on the site. Visitors and search engines cannot tell where you work.
- Everything on one page. One long page for every service answers no search well.
- Stock photos of other people’s jobs. Visitors notice, and it makes your own work look absent.
- A broken or buried form. A lead that never arrives costs as much as no lead at all.
- Reviews copied onto the site with no source, or written by staff. The FTC’s rule on consumer reviews bans fake reviews and testimonials, and a business’s own managers posting reviews of it without saying so.
- A site you do not control. If you cannot log in, you do not really own it.
A website is only one part of the picture. Once it is solid, the next steps are usually contractor SEO, so the right pages show up in search, and local SEO for contractors, so your Google Business Profile does its share. For the checklist version of this page, read our article on contractor website must-haves.
Ready for a better site? Send the form and an independent agency that builds contractor websites can prepare a proposal.
Questions owners ask
What should a contractor website include?
A clear home page that says what you do and where, one page for each service, a service area page, real project photos with descriptions, an about page, and a short quote form with your phone number and address.
Do I need a separate page for every service?
For the services you most want to sell, yes. Each page can describe that job properly, show photos of it and answer the questions people ask, which a single list of services cannot do.
Should I make a page for every town I work in?
Only when you have something true and specific to say about each one. Google’s spam policies treat near-identical city pages that funnel visitors to one page as doorway abuse. Otherwise list the towns on one service area page.
Who should own my contractor website?
Your company. The domain, hosting and site files should be registered to you, with logins you hold, so you keep the site if you change designers.
Can I use stock photos on a construction website?
As scenery, yes, but your own project photos do far more to win work. Never caption a stock photo as a job you did.
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