What a construction website has to do
A construction website has one job: turn a person who has heard your name or found you on Google into a phone call or an enquiry form. Everything else is secondary. A commercial client checking you out before a tender wants proof you are legitimate and capable. A homeowner planning an extension wants to know you do that kind of work, in their area, and that you will turn up.
That means the site must answer four questions within a few seconds: what you do, where you work, what you have built before, and how to get in touch. If any of those are buried, people leave. Around three quarters of visits to trade websites in the UK now come from mobile, so all of this needs to work on a phone screen with a thumb, not just on a desktop in the office.
- A clickable phone number in the header on every page
- Your trading area stated plainly, with the main towns and counties you cover
- A projects or portfolio page with real photos of your own work
- Clear evidence you are a real business: registered company name, address, insurance and any genuine memberships you hold
Pages that earn their place
Small builders often try to fit everything onto a single page. That makes it hard to rank for anything specific. A better structure is one page per service you actually want more of, such as extensions, loft conversions, groundworks or commercial fit-out. Each page should describe the work, show two or three finished examples, and mention the areas where you do it.
Location pages help if you cover several towns, but only if they say something real about each place. Ten near-identical pages with the town name swapped will not rank and look cheap. A projects section with before and after photos, a short description of the brief, and the rough duration does more for trust than any amount of stock imagery of men in hard hats pointing at plans.
Reviews belong on the site too, ideally pulled from Google or Checkatrade rather than typed in yourself, because people know the difference. If you hold accreditations such as CHAS, Constructionline, Gas Safe or NICEIC, show the logos and link them to the register so a procurement officer can verify them in a click.
What it should cost and how long it takes
For a UK construction or trade business, a properly built brochure site with five to ten pages typically lands somewhere between 1,500 and 5,000 pounds from a specialist. Below about 1,000 pounds you are usually getting a template with your logo dropped in. Above 5,000 pounds you are paying for custom photography, copywriting, or more complex features like tender document libraries or client portals.
Ongoing costs are the bit people forget. Hosting, domain renewal, security updates and small changes will run to somewhere between 20 and 100 pounds a month depending on who manages it. Ask up front what happens if the designer disappears, whether you own the domain, and whether you can get the files. Plenty of builders have lost their site because it was registered in a former web agency's name.
Timescales depend mostly on how quickly you supply photos and text. A designer can build the site in three to six weeks, but if the photo folder never arrives it drags on for months. Get your project photos organised before you start, and take proper ones on the next few jobs: wide shots in daylight, finished and tidy, without vans or bins in the frame.
Mistakes that cost construction firms enquiries
The most common problem is a site that looks fine but says nothing specific. Phrases like quality workmanship and competitive prices apply to every builder in the country. Say what you actually specialise in, the size of job you take on, and whether you work for homeowners, developers, main contractors or all three. Being clear about who you are not for filters out the enquiries you do not want.
Slow sites also lose work. Huge uncompressed photos are the usual cause. Google measures page speed and so does anyone on a building site with two bars of signal. A well-built site should load in under three seconds on a mobile connection. Finally, check that the contact form actually delivers to an inbox someone reads. It is surprisingly common for enquiries to be quietly landing in a spam folder for months.
- Generic copy with no mention of specific services or areas
- Stock photos instead of your own projects
- No phone number visible on mobile
- Forms that go nowhere or ask for too much information
- A site that has not been updated since it launched, with a 2019 copyright date