A website for contractors and home improvement businesses
Homeowners want to know whether you are licensed and insured, what you have built, where you work and how to ask for an estimate. Build the site around those four answers and cut whatever does not serve them.
Show your license and insurance where people will look
A homeowner who is about to let a stranger into the house, or onto the roof, wants proof before making a phone call. Put a short strip near the top of the home page with your license and insurance status. Repeat the essentials in the footer of every page: business name, license number, state and phone number.
Licensing rules are set state by state and sometimes city by city. The same goes for which trades need a license at all. Many states also require the license number to appear in advertising. Ask your state's contractor licensing board whether that covers your website, and assume it does until you hear otherwise.
This article is not legal advice. Outside the United States the names differ, but the idea carries over. Show whatever registration, trade qualification or insurance your country uses.
Describe insurance in plain words. Name the coverage you actually carry, such as general liability and, if you have employees, workers' compensation. Do not print policy numbers or paste the certificate itself. A line such as "Certificate of insurance available on request" does the job, especially with an email link next to it. If you are bonded, say so and add one sentence on what that means for the customer.
Keep every claim current. A license or policy that lapsed while the site still advertises it does more harm than silence. Some contractors also link to the state's public license lookup. That lets a visitor check the number personally and tells them you expect to be checked.
Build a project gallery that answers questions
A wall of attractive photos with no words leaves visitors guessing. They want to know what the job was, how large it was and where it took place. A homeowner with a similar house looks for something close to their own situation.
Give every project a short caption built from the same four facts:
- The type of job, for example a bathroom remodel or a new deck
- The town or neighborhood, never the street address
- The month and year it was finished
- One sentence on what the homeowner wanted and one on what you did
Show real jobs instead of stock images. Ask the homeowner before you publish photos of their home. Keep house numbers, license plates and family pictures out of the frame.
Show the full range of your work. If you handle small repairs as well as large projects, include both, or visitors will assume you only take one kind. Group the projects by service, so a person who wants a new roof can look at roofs.
The look of the site matters here too. For hoensch-klima.de, the website of a refrigeration, air conditioning and heat pump company in Moers, Germany, we chose a plain-spoken, modern design. A technical trade is judged on whether it seems to know its work, and a calm, orderly page supports that impression.
Say where you work, in plain words
Write your service area as a sentence a person can read: the county, the towns and roughly how far you drive from your shop. People search with a town name. Before they call, they need to know whether you will come to them at all.
List the towns on one service area page and give each core service a page of its own, such as roofing, remodeling, decks or siding. Skip near-identical pages for every town. Our guide for plumbers and HVAC companies explains when a town page earns its place.
Your Google Business Profile should match the site. If customers do not visit a shop of yours, set the profile up as a service-area business, which lets you hide the address. Write your business name, address and phone number the same way everywhere.
Google's Business Profile help center explains the setup. Our guide to setting up your Google Business Profile walks through it.
Ask whoever builds your site to add structured data (JSON-LD) that names your exact business type, such as GeneralContractor, and lists the towns you serve. It does not lift rankings by itself, but it helps search engines read your details correctly.
Make the estimate request easy to finish
The form is where an interested homeowner either finishes or gives up. Keep it short and ask only for what you need to send a first reply:
- Name and phone number. Add email if you answer email faster than calls.
- Street address or ZIP code, so you can tell whether the job is in your area.
- Type of job, as a menu of the services you really offer, with "Other" at the end.
- A few lines describing the work, with an optional photo upload.
- The best way and time to reach the person.
Promise only a reply time you can keep. Under the button, say what happens next: "We reply within one business day, visit the property if needed and send a written estimate."
Put the phone number beside the form and make it a tap-to-call link on phones. The words on the button count as well. "Request an estimate" tells people more than "Submit", as our guide to website copy that converts explains.
Forms fail silently. Once a month, send yourself a test request and confirm the message arrives. Answer real requests the same day when you can, because the form is only as good as the follow-up.
Reviews belong near the form too, but only real ones from a platform where customers wrote them. Our guide on getting more Google reviews shows how to ask without filtering.
If you want a hand with your site
For an outside view of your current site, start with the free website check.
The guides overview lists more articles for other trades.
Frequently asked questions
Do I need a separate page for every service?
For your core services, yes. A roof replacement and a gutter repair raise different questions, and a separate page can answer each one. If you offer only two or three services, short pages are fine, as long as each one says something specific about the job.
Should I list prices on my website?
You do not have to. Jobs vary, so a price on the page can mislead. You can still explain what drives the cost, such as size, materials, access, permits and what the first visit includes.
Do I need to show customer reviews?
They help, if they are real. Show reviews from a platform where customers wrote them, link to the source, include the critical ones and answer them politely. Never buy reviews or screen out the unflattering ones.
Should I put my license number on the site if my state does not require it?
In most cases, yes. It is one of the first things a careful homeowner checks, and it costs you one line of text. Confirm the exact format with your licensing board.