Website Checklist for Tradespeople and Local Service Businesses

We have reviewed hundreds of trade websites. Plumbers, electricians, roofers, landscapers, painters, heating engineers. The rules are the same across all of them, and most trade websites get these same things wrong.

This is the checklist we work through with every trade business. If yours is missing more than three of these, it is probably costing you jobs.

Phone number in the header, clickable on mobile

People looking for a tradesperson are usually in a hurry. Burst pipe. Dead boiler. Roof leaking. They want to call, not fill in a form. Put your phone number in the top right of every page. Make it clickable on mobile so they can tap to call directly.

If you are not comfortable taking calls all day, have an answering service. But do not hide the number. A website without a clearly visible phone number is the top reason trade businesses lose jobs to competitors.

Your service area on the homepage

"We cover Chippenham, Melksham, Corsham, and surrounding villages." That sentence, on your homepage, answers the question every visitor is thinking. "Do these guys even come to my area?"

If you try to rank for too broad an area ("covering the South West") you will rank for none. Pick four or five specific towns you actually want to work in. Name them.

Real photos of real work

Not stock images of smiling workmen. Not the manufacturer's product photos. Actual photos of jobs you have done. Before and after. Different types of work. Different kinds of properties.

Ten real photos beat a thousand words. They prove you exist, prove you do good work, and prove you turn up. Use your phone. You do not need a professional photographer.

Reviews or testimonials, with names

"Great service, highly recommended. J.S., Chippenham" is not a testimonial. Anyone could have written that. "Dan came out on a Saturday to fix our boiler when we were without heating. Back up and running in two hours. Fair price. Sarah Thompson, Trowbridge" is a testimonial.

Ask every customer for a Google review. Embed the best ones on your website. Include first name, last initial, and town. The specificity is what makes it credible.

Clear list of what you do (and what you do not)

"Plumbing services" is not enough. Do you do bathroom installs. Boiler servicing. Emergency repairs. Gas work. Underfloor heating. Leak detection.

Equally important: what you do not do. If you do not take on jobs under £200, say so. If you do not do commercial work, say so. If you only cover residential, say so. Every enquiry for something you do not do wastes your time.

Pricing indication, even if it is ranges

Most trade websites refuse to put prices on the site. That is a mistake. Customers who have no idea what things cost will waste your time calling for quotes you are never going to win.

Ranges are fine. "Boiler servicing from £85. Full boiler install from £1,800. Emergency callouts from £95." That filters the right customers in and the wrong ones out.

Certifications and insurance visible

Gas Safe number for gas engineers. NICEIC for electricians. FMB or NFRC for builders and roofers. Public liability insurance amount. Trustmark or Checkatrade status if you have it.

These are the things that separate you from the "lads with a van" who show up cheaper and disappear after the deposit. Make them visible, not hidden three pages deep.

Google Business Profile claimed and active

More important than your website for most local trades. Most of your jobs will come through Google Maps search, not from someone typing your website address.

Verify the profile, add your business hours, upload ten photos, and ask every customer for a review. Reply to every review, good or bad. This is the single biggest lever for most trade businesses.

Works on mobile first

Ninety percent of your website visitors are on phones. Yet most trade websites are built for desktop and barely tested on mobile. Buttons are too small. Phone numbers are images instead of clickable links. Contact forms require ten fields on a five-inch screen.

Open your own website on your phone. Try to find your phone number. Try to read about your services. Try to send a contact message. If any of that feels fiddly, your customers are having the same experience.

Social proof from recent jobs

A "recent work" or "projects" section, updated every month or two. Three or four recent jobs with photos, a one-line description, and the area. "Kitchen rewire in Corsham, completed April 2026."

This shows you are still working, still local, and still doing the type of job the visitor needs.

Fast loading pages

A site that takes more than three seconds to load loses half its visitors before they see anything. Biggest causes are huge uncompressed images, too many plugins, and cheap shared hosting.

Test your site with Google PageSpeed Insights. If your mobile score is below 70, you have work to do.

A contact form that actually works

Not every customer wants to call. Some want to send a message at 9pm after the kids are in bed. Have a simple form: name, phone, email, brief description of the job, postcode.

Make sure it actually sends to an inbox you check. Test it. Reply within an hour during working hours. Quick responses win jobs more than any other single factor.

The shortcut

If you get half of these right, your website will outperform almost every competitor in your area. If you get all of them right, you will start getting jobs from people who found you on Google instead of word of mouth.

We build trade websites with all of this built in as standard. Fixed price, two to three weeks from brief to live.