Your website
Your website has one job.
Get someone who needs the work doing to pick up the phone and call you. Everything else on it is decoration. I build sites for tradies and local service businesses around that one job.
In short
What should a trade website actually do?
A trade website should tell someone within seconds that you do the job they need, in the area they live, and then make calling you one tap away. It should load fast on a phone on poor signal. Everything beyond that is decoration.
The problem
Most trade websites fail for boring reasons.
It is rarely the design. It is almost always one of these four, and all of them are fixable.
It takes too long to load
Someone standing in a flooded laundry will not wait eight seconds. They go back and tap the next result.
The phone number is buried
If they have to hunt for it, or pinch and zoom to tap it, you have lost them. It should be the easiest thing on the page.
It does not say where you work
People search with a suburb in mind. If your site never names the places you cover, it never answers their actual question.
It talks about you, not the job
Paragraphs about passion and quality workmanship. Nothing about whether you do the specific thing they need doing.
What you get
What is actually in it.
- Built for a phone first
- Most of your customers will find you on a phone, often outdoors, often in a hurry. That is the version I design first, not the one I check at the end.
- Your number where a thumb lands
- One tap to call, one tap to message. On every page, not just the contact page.
- A page for each job worth having
- The work you want more of gets its own page, written the way a customer would describe it. That is also how people find you in the first place.
- The places you cover, named
- Your suburbs and towns spelled out properly, so a search with a place in it has something to match.
- Words that sound like you
- I will ask what you actually want to be called for, then write it plainly. No paragraphs that could belong to any business in the country.
- Set up so Google can read it
- Titles, headings, page structure and the technical bits done properly at launch, so the work to get you found later starts from a clean base.
- Everything in your name
- Domain, hosting, analytics, Google Business Profile. Yours, not mine. If you ever want to walk away, you take the lot with you.
How I build it
Four steps, and you know where you are at each one.
- 01
We talk about the work
What you do, where you do it, which jobs you want more of, and which ones you would rather stop getting.
- 02
Words and structure first
What the pages are and what they say, before anything gets designed. Get this wrong and no amount of styling saves it.
- 03
I build it
Designed around your content rather than dropped into a template, checked on real phone sizes as it goes.
- 04
Launch and handover
Old links redirected so you keep whatever you have already earned, forms tested, and a walkthrough so you can make small edits yourself.
The honest bit
A new website on its own will not make the phone ring.
A brand new site with nothing behind it is a very tidy business card that almost nobody sees. Getting found on Google is a separate job, and I will tell you upfront whether you need it.
It also will not fix slow quoting, an unanswered phone, or prices the market will not pay. I would rather say that on the first call than take the money and watch it change nothing.
Questions
Things people ask me.
How much does a website cost?
It depends on how many pages you need and how much of the writing falls to me. You get a fixed price in writing before anything starts, and it does not move unless you ask for something extra and agree the cost first.
How long does it take?
Usually a few weeks rather than a few months. The part that slows projects down is almost always waiting on photos and information from your end, so the more you have ready, the faster it goes.
Will I be able to update it myself?
Yes, for the everyday things like text, photos and prices. I walk you through it at handover. Anything structural you can send to me, and it is usually quicker that way.
Do you use WordPress?
Sometimes. I build WordPress sites, including Elementor, and I also build simpler fast sites where that suits the business better. The right answer depends on who needs to edit it and how often.
I already have a website. Can you fix it instead?
Often, yes. Send me the address and I will tell you honestly whether it is worth fixing or whether you would spend less starting again. Either way you get a straight answer before you spend anything.
Will I lose my Google rankings if you rebuild it?
That is what redirects are for, and it is why I map old pages to new ones before launch. Rebuilds lose traffic when old links are dropped without redirects. That step is not optional on any site I build.
Do I have to sign a contract?
No lock-in. A website is a one-off piece of work with a fixed price. If you want ongoing help afterwards we agree what that covers and what it costs, and you can stop it whenever you like.
Let’s talk
Send me your website, or tell me you haven’t got one.
Either way you get an honest answer about what I would do first, usually within one business day.