What Should a Builder or Tradesperson’s Website Include?

A contractor can have excellent workmanship, years of finished jobs and a steady stream of recommendations, while a customer who looks them up finds a dated homepage, a phone number and a few unlabelled photographs.

A trade website does not need to look like a technology company’s. Its job is to make the standard of the work easy to judge, say clearly where the business operates, and help the right customers get in touch.

That holds for builders, electricians, plumbers, roofers, landscapers and most other trades. The details differ, but visitors tend to ask the same questions: Do you do this kind of job? Have you done it before? Do you cover my area? Can I check you are who you say you are? How do I get in touch?

1. A homepage that says what you do

“Quality you can trust” could describe almost any company. A stronger opening names the main work and where it is done:

• “House extensions and renovations across County Meath.”
• “Domestic and commercial electrical work in Galway city and county.”
• “Garden design, patios and planting in south Dublin and north Wicklow.”

The first screen should usually hold that line, a short explanation, one main action and a photograph of real work. Every service, every review and a row of competing buttons can wait further down.

2. A page for each main service

Someone planning an extension does not want to scroll past commercial work to find it. Where services have different customers, processes or questions, give each a page of its own. For example:

• A builder: extensions, renovations, new builds, commercial work.
• An electrician: rewires, fault-finding, EV charger installation, commercial fit-outs.
• A roofer: slate and tile roofs, flat roofs, chimneys, gutters and fascias.
• A landscaper: garden design, paving and patios, planting, maintenance contracts.

Only list what the business genuinely offers. The aim is not a page for every variation of a search phrase; it is enough room for each substantial service to explain the work and show matching examples.

Each service page should answer what the work includes, who it suits, which areas you cover, what you need to know to give a price, and how to ask for one.

3. Project pages that prove the work

Real project photographs are among the strongest things a trade business can show. A gallery of unlabelled images, though, leaves visitors guessing what they are looking at. A simple structure for each project works well:

Project type: Rear garden redesign with a new patio and planting.

Area: South Dublin, if the client is happy for you to say so.

Scope: What you did, in two or three sentences.

Photographs: The finished result, and the before or in-progress shots where they help.

Next step: A link to the matching service page or the enquiry form.

Never add jobs, client names or project values that are not real to make a portfolio look bigger. Ask permission before publishing anything that identifies a customer or their home. On larger commercial jobs, be precise about your part: “built the development” and “carried out the groundworks” are very different claims.

4. Coverage areas, stated plainly

Most trades cover a county and some neighbouring towns. Say so on the homepage, the contact page and each service page.

A page for a particular area can be useful when it carries something specific to that area, such as different services or real projects nearby. Dozens of near-identical pages that change only the place name are a different matter: Google’s spam policies treat pages made to target specific regions or cities with substantially similar content as doorway abuse, and they do little for the customer reading them.

If you travel to customers rather than receiving them at an address, set up your Google Business Profile as a service-area business. How to get your business found on Google Maps explains the setup.

5. Registers, insurance and proof

Customers increasingly check a contractor before they call, and in some trades Irish law gives them something definite to check.

Electricians. In homes, most electrical work, including installing or replacing circuits, counts as restricted electrical work. That work can only be carried out and certified by a Registered Electrical Contractor, and customers can look a contractor up on Safe Electric’s register. Most commercial and industrial work falls under controlled electrical works, which must be certified when a registered contractor does it, although the law does not require that only registered contractors carry it out (Safe Electric).

Gas installers. Work on domestic natural gas installations, including installing, servicing, repairing or removing appliances and pipework, must be done by a Registered Gas Installer (Gas Networks Ireland). The register is run by Safe Energy Ireland for the Commission for Regulation of Utilities, and customers can search it at rgi.ie.

Energy upgrades. Homeowners applying for SEAI’s individual home energy grants must choose a contractor from SEAI’s registered contractor list when they apply (SEAI application form). If you are on it, a customer planning a grant-funded job needs to know.

Builders. There is no mandatory register for builders yet. The Construction Industry Register Ireland (CIRI) was given a legal basis in 2022, and the Construction Industry Federation says registration will become a legal requirement once the statutory register is set up (CIF). Until then, describe any CIRI membership accurately and do not present it as a legal requirement.

If you are registered, say so on the website and link to your entry where the register allows it. For trades with no register to point to, landscaping for example, the evidence is the work itself, a clear account of how you operate, and insurance and memberships you actually hold. Show only credentials that are current, and never copy badges from a competitor’s site.

6. Contact that works from a phone

Most customers want to call or send a short description of the job. Make both easy:

• a tap-to-call number, prominent on mobile;
• a short enquiry form;
• an email address or messaging option that someone checks;
• a line on what helps you price a job, such as photos, measurements or a postcode;
• the areas and types of work you take on.

A contractor who mainly handles larger jobs might ask for the project type, location, timing and a short description. A form with twenty required fields helps no one. Send yourself a test enquiry every so often; a form that quietly stops working costs work before anyone notices.

7. A site that loads quickly on site

A homeowner may look you up during a lunch break; a facilities manager may open the site between two buildings. The essentials should load quickly and stay readable on a phone outdoors.

Prepare photographs properly, at sensible sizes, rather than leaving them out to chase a speed score. Google uses Core Web Vitals in its ranking systems, but a good score alone does not put a page at the top of the results. Relevant, useful content comes first.

8. Search basics, done properly

Give each service page a clear title, headings that describe the work and real information about where you operate. Make sure Google can crawl the site and that nothing blocks it from indexing. If you are replacing an older site, keep or redirect its existing page addresses, so that old links and bookmarks do not end at an error page.

Do not claim to serve places you do not, and write for the person deciding who to hire rather than repeating “builder” and a county in every sentence. Local SEO is the work of getting this groundwork right across the site and the Business Profile.

A simple structure to start from

1. Home: the main work, the area, one strong project photograph and a clear way to get in touch.
2. Services: an overview linking to a page for each main service.
3. Projects: finished work, with honest details and good photographs.
4. About: the business, its background and how it works, including any registrations.
5. Contact: phone, a short form and the areas you cover.

As the business grows, new service and project pages slot into this structure without rebuilding the menu each time. Let the structure follow the real work, not a set number of pages.

A website that matches the standard of your work

If your projects are clearly better than the website that represents them, improving the site is one of the most direct ways to make the business easier to choose.

EviLux builds local business websites and redesigns existing ones, with real project photography, clear service pages and enquiries that reach you. Start a project and tell us what your business does.