For trades businesses
Most trades businesses do better work than their website suggests. This page describes what a website for a working business actually has to do – and what it costs.
The starting point
A homeowner needs a roofer, a landlord needs an electrician, a family needs a heating engineer. All three do the same thing today: they pick up the phone, type in the trade and the town, and open two or three results side by side. Within seconds they decide who gets the call.
The four jobs
A trades website does not have one job but four – and the fourth is almost always forgotten.
Someone searching for "roofer" plus a town gets a mix of map results, directories and business websites. To show up there you need two things: a well-kept Google Business Profile and a website that states unambiguously which service it offers in which area.
The directories have big budgets. What you have over them is specificity: a business that names its actual services and its actual service area wins exactly the searches that fit it.
A trades job means a stranger comes into the house, works there, and afterwards hands over a four-figure invoice. Before that decision, the customer looks for evidence that they are making the right call.
What counts as evidence: faces instead of symbolic images, photos of finished work, qualifications and certifications, insurance cover, the year the business was founded, a named contact person. What is striking is how often exactly this is missing – while every business has it.
The path from interest to enquiry has to be shorter than the customer expects. On a phone that means: calling with one tap. On a computer: a form with few fields that does not ask for a CV.
An honest note about response time helps. Someone who knows they will hear back within a day is more likely to write – and less likely to call your competitor in parallel.
This job is usually overlooked, although in many businesses it has become the most expensive one. Anyone applying for a position – or whose parents have a say – looks at the website first.
A page with open positions, real photos from the business and a short description of how the work is done costs little and reaches an audience that adverts barely reach any more.
Checkable
FindYourGolfClub is my own product – but it is not a trades reference, and I will not sell it to you as one. What you can check for your business is this instead:
171 KB, 12 requests, fully loaded in under half a second – hand-built, in seven languages, no template. Anyone promising speed should be able to show it on their own site.
The free website check measures your homepage in about thirty seconds – speed, mobile use, ways to get in touch, findability, legal essentials. You can try it right now, without signing up and without leaving your address.
If you want, you see a free design draft of your homepage before you place an order. If you do not like it, you owe nothing. That is the most honest reference a young business can offer: you see the work before you pay.
The structure
Five to seven pages are enough for most businesses. More pages do not mean more enquiries – clearer pages do.
At the top, in one sentence: who you are, what you do and where. Directly below it, the way to an enquiry. Then the services at a glance, two or three reference photos, trust markers and the answers to the most common questions.
One page per core service – not as a bullet list, but with what customers want to know: what is included, how it runs, roughly what it costs, how quickly it can happen. These pages are at the same time what Google finds for the matching searches.
Finished work with a photo, a location and one sentence about the task. Before and after works best. Ten good examples beat fifty arbitrary ones.
Who works here, how long the business has existed, what you stand for. With photos of the people, not stock images of hard hats.
Even when nothing is open: a page that shows how the work is done at your place, and that you can activate in five minutes when you need it.
Phone number as a link, a short form, address, directions, opening hours. Plus the legal pages – mandatory, and a trust signal.
Always included technically
Your time investment
Around two hours spread over two to four weeks: describe, supply content, approve. The copy comes out of what you tell me – you do not have to write anything.
Investment
Fixed project prices that are settled once the scope is clear. For most trades businesses the middle package fits.
A complete business website with roughly five to seven pages, custom design, service and reference presentation, SEO basics and a contact form. Plus hosting and care for €44 a month.
That is the scope with which an established business appears in full – including a vacancies page.
Business Plus (€1,240) pays off if you want to present several locations or trades separately: up to three additional location or service pages for local search, copywriting for every page included, and two rounds of feedback.
For a one-person business the compact package from €480 is often enough.
All prices are final prices; no VAT is shown (small-business scheme under Art. 53.º CIVA, Portugal). The full overview is with the packages on the home page. Not sure which package fits? Start a project.
Free website check
Enter your address and see straight away where your home page stands on speed, mobile use, ways to get in touch, findability and legal pages. No sign-up, no obligation, no call-back.
Common questions
Yes – that is what the free website check is for. If you want, I will send you a detailed assessment of your site afterwards. It costs nothing and commits you to nothing.
If you want, yes: before you place an order you receive a non-binding design draft of your homepage – free of charge and without signing anything. If you do not like it, that is where we stop, and you owe nothing.
A compact presence starts at €480; most trades businesses land on the Business package at €760. On top of that comes ongoing care from €32 a month. You get the fixed price once the scope is clear – and it does not change afterwards.
A full order book is a good moment, not the counter-argument. Being busy means you can pick your jobs – but for that the website has to attract the enquiries that are worth having. And today it is the first place many applicants look.
No. With the care package I handle hosting, backups, technical upkeep and smaller changes – you write an email. If you would rather maintain it yourself, the site is handed over in full at the handover price; either way it belongs to you.
Two to four weeks until it is live. Your own effort is about two hours: describe once what you do, supply the content once, approve once. I draft the copy from what you tell me.
Yes. Domain and email addresses stay, and the move is prepared so that nothing goes down.
Phone photos of real work are almost always better than bought stock images. We go through them together and sort out what holds up. If professional photography is worth it, I will say so – and if it is not, I will say that too.
Yes. The work runs entirely digitally and in writing, so you do not have to keep an appointment free. You have the same contact person throughout – the person who builds the website – and replies usually come within one working day.
Write to me briefly about what it is about – I will tell you honestly what your current website is worth, what is worth doing and what is not. Free of charge.
Free and non-binding. If you want, you see a design draft of your homepage first – if you do not like it, you owe nothing. Payment only comes after that: 30% when you place the order, the remaining 70% after your approval and before the site goes live.