What a trade website actually needs

The things a visitor is looking for

In the order they look for them, within about eight seconds:

• What do you do, and do you do the specific thing I need?
• Do you cover where I live?
• Does the work look decent?
• Has anyone else used you and been happy?
• Who are you — is there a face and a name?
• How do I contact you right now?

Photographs of your own work

Stock photography actively harms a trade site. Visitors have seen the same smiling man with a spanner on nine other websites and they read it as a business with nothing of its own to show.

Photos taken on a phone of work you have actually done, ideally before and after, outperform professional stock every time.

Your services in the words customers use

People search for the job, not the category: 'fix a dripping tap', 'extra socket', 'fence panel replaced'. List the jobs plainly rather than writing about 'comprehensive property solutions'.

A page for each town, and say where you stop

Cover the towns you work in individually, and be clear about how far you travel. Saying no to the wrong enquiries is as valuable as attracting the right ones.

What you can safely leave out

A sliding image carousel nobody clicks past the first slide of. A mission statement. A blog you will abandon in six weeks. Live chat you cannot staff. Every one of these adds work and reduces speed.

The bit most sites get wrong

What happens after the form is submitted. If it emails an address you check twice a week, the site is decorative. The enquiry needs to reach you immediately and land somewhere it will still be tomorrow.