A contractor website has one job: turn someone who is already interested into a phone call. It is not a brochure, and it is almost never the thing that found them — that was Google, a neighbour, or your van. By the time they are reading, they are checking whether you are real.
Above the fold, on a phone
Four things, visible without scrolling, on a 390px screen:
- What you do and where. “Licensed plumber serving Boulder County.”
- Your phone number, as a tappable link.
- One trust signal — licence number, years in business, review count.
- A button that does something: call, or request a quote.
Most visitors never scroll past this. If it is a stock photo and the word “Welcome,” the rest of the site does not matter.
The pages that earn their place
Home
The above-the-fold block, services, service area, reviews, call to action. Done.
One page per core service
This is where search traffic actually lands. “Water heater replacement in Boulder” is a page, not a bullet on a list. Three or four of these out-earn a twenty-page site every time.
About
Read more than contractors expect, because people want to know who is coming to their house. A real photo of you and the van beats any amount of copy.
Reviews
Pulled from Google, not retyped. Retyped testimonials read as invented, because many are.
Contact
Phone, email, service area, hours, and a short form. Not a form alone.
The expensive extras that change nothing
- A gallery of 200 photos. Nobody scrolls it. Twelve good ones is more persuasive.
- A blog nobody updates. Three posts from 2023 signals a business that may not exist.
- Animation and sliders. They slow the page, and speed is a ranking factor and a conversion factor.
- Live chat nobody staffs.
The two things that matter technically
Speed — most visits are on a phone on mobile data, and a slow site loses people before it says anything. Matching details — your name, address and phone must match your Google Business Profile exactly, or you weaken the listing that is doing most of the work.
Where the real leverage is
For most trade businesses the Google Business Profile out-performs the website by a wide margin. Get the profile right first; the site’s job is to confirm what the profile already convinced them of, and to let them contact you without thinking.