How Much Does a Website Cost for Tradesman?
The cost of a tradesman website can vary widely, ranging from as little as £500 to as much as £15,000. This depends on the company you select, the services they offer, and their level of expertise, as well as the number of pages and functionality you require. Alternatively, some companies offer a website subscription model with ongoing monthly payments, helping you get online more quickly without having to pay a substantial deposit upfront. Your monthly costs may range from £95 up to £200 or more, depending on the number of pages and functionality you require, and more.
In addition to website development costs, you will have annual expenses for the domain name, starting at £8 per year, and an SSL Certificate, which typically costs around £50. There are various hosting options, with prices ranging from £50 per year to over £500.
Furthermore, you should also consider the ongoing expenses for SEO, which can range from approximately £200 to £3000 or more, depending on the specific services you require.
(There’s a lot to consider!)
A Professional Website – A Worthwhile Investment
As a tradesperson, having a professional trades website for your business is integral to showcasing your skills and expertise to your clients; but is it worth the cost? Whether you specialise in electrical work, plumbing, heating, carpentry, landscaping, or painting, you may be curious about the cost of creating a website for a tradesman before making any decisions.
A well-designed and informative website can establish a sense of trust that word-of-mouth recommendations alone might not be able to achieve. You can use your website to inform potential customers of your services while increasing your online visibility on major search engines like Google. Additionally, reviews can be displayed on your website – either as testimonials or using a live reviews feed. They are an effective tool to help you gain credibility and confidence in your work.
Several factors need to be considered before determining your trades website cost, such as your unique needs and requirements. No two trade websites are exactly the same, so there isn’t a simple answer to the above question.
Pages and Functionality
If you are planning to create a basic or starter trades website, you could choose between a single page or maybe three pages, with a single page listing all of your services. Alternatively, you can opt for multiple pages to show your services in more detail, and you can integrate external quoting or appointment tools if you want a more functional website.
The Essentials
To give you the best chance of success, your tradesman website should typically include:
- A Home page – introducing you, your business, what you do, where, for whom – with some reasons to choose you / your accreditations and memberships, etc.
- An About page where visitors can “Meet You / the Team”
- A Contact Us page with a contact form that sends you an email
- Separate pages for each of your main Services (this is particularly important)
- A page for Customer Reviews and Testimonials
- GDPR pages, such as cookies, privacy policies, and website terms of use
- A Consent Management Platform, allowing your web visitors to choose what non-essential cookies they let you collect
Optional Extras
You may also require other pages, such as:
- A Gallery to display your work (e.g. conservatories, bathrooms, landscaped gardens, decorating, roofing, new windows and doors, new boiler installations, new lighting installations, etc.)
- Case Studies and Projects
- Prices and Financing Options
- FAQs (frequently asked questions)
- Areas We Serve
- A Blog
In addition, you might want quoting and appointment booking tools like Truequote for boilers, Acuity Scheduling for service appointments, and Spruce for heat pump and other quotes. You can also add Reviews.io and Trustpilot, as well as other Reviews widgets to display your reviews – including Google and Facebook Reviews – from loyal customers.
Contact Methods
It is typically necessary to have a contact form on your tradie website to allow users to make enquiries. However, in certain circumstances, you may require more than one form. For instance, you might need one form for general enquiries and another for quotes, where users can upload photos or other documents. You should also include a phone number where your clients can reach you. This should be clickable on a mobile phone, so people don’t need to write it down. You can also have Livechat or a Messaging App (if you are going to be able to handle the messages).
Geopages
If you provide services in multiple areas, we highly recommend creating Geopages for each region. These Geopages must have unique and relevant content that caters to the target audience in each location. In addition, you should have an “Areas We Serve” or “Areas We Cover” page to give an overview of all the places you serve. This ensures that when someone searches for a tradesperson in a particular area, for example, “plumber in Plymouth”, your page will appear higher on their search results due to being tailored to the specific location.
You may want to do this after your trades website is live and as part of a monthly SEO service to save you from having to pay for your costs all at once. Ensuring that the content is original, unique, and of high quality is crucial. Otherwise, Google may penalise it for being duplicated or low-quality. It is no good just creating these pages for SEO – they must add real value to the website user.
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
Do you want your website to be easily found on Google and other search engines like Bing? Or are you just planning to promote it through offline methods, such as flyers and business cards? If you want your website to rank higher on Google search results, you will need to invest in monthly Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). It is important to be aware of this at the outset, and to budget for this.
SEO requires ongoing effort, similar to simmering water after it has boiled. Neglecting your website’s SEO can result in a decline in your search rankings over time.
When developing trades websites, you must ensure that the entire site, including headings, images, videos, and other information displayed, is fully optimised for search engines. This involves a team of professional copywriters and SEO experts writing copy designed to appeal to both users and Google’s search algorithms. Whilst this work takes time, it is instrumental in getting your website found. Not investing in this process when building a new website can be a false economy and potentially a waste of time and resources.
User Experience (UX)
It is crucial to ensure that your tradesman website not only looks visually appealing but also functions efficiently on various devices such as smartphones, tablets, laptops, and PCs. It should be user-friendly and easy to navigate. Moreover, the website should load quickly, as visitors may lose interest and leave if the page takes too long to load. Otherwise, Google will penalise your website for this.
Trades Website Pricing
To give you an idea about pricing for new websites, your trades website cost might start at around £1,600 for a professional, mobile-friendly, SEO-’d trades website – including professional copywriting and quality stock images. This would include a Home Page, an About Us Page, 4 individual Services Pages, a Contact Page with a contact form, your GDPR pages, a Consent Management Platform, and links to your social media. However, trades website costs can range anywhere from as little as £500 up to as high as £15,000.
Nowadays, it is also possible to reduce your initial outgoings, which is especially useful for startups and sole traders, and to subscribe to a pay-monthly website service, helping you get online more quickly without having to pay a substantial deposit upfront. This is similar to the monthly subscriptions to other things you use in your business, such as Checkatrade or TrustATrader for lead generation; Xero or Quickbooks for your accounts; Truequote for Bolier Quotes; or Microsoft Office for creating documents, etc. This can be great for cash flow and ongoing budgeting, and prices can range from £95 up to £200 or more per month, depending on the number of pages and functionality required, the quality of the solution, their expertise, and ongoing service.
Additional Trades Website Costs
When you are planning to get a new website, it is essential to consider not just the one-off price of building it but also the cost and quality of ongoing support services, maintenance and website hosting. This includes ensuring your website is regularly backed up, secure, updated, and maintained, as well as having access to customer support. You may want to find out how much these services cost and what is or is not included in the package. All these costs significantly differ from one company to another – in both price and quality.
Not to mention the regular costs of SEO, which could vary from approximately £200 up to £3000+, depending on the service you need. Some companies have set packages, while others tailor their services to your unique requirements. Furthermore, you will have yearly costs for the domain name, starting from £8 per year, and a Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) Certificate, which ensures the safety and security of your website and costs around £50 per year. For a more professional appearance, you may also want to consider having an email address that is based on your domain name. Additionally, having a logo design for your business is crucial if you want to be recognised and stand out from the crowd. If you want to know more, feel free to check out another one of our blog posts, which discusses the importance of professional branding for your service or trades business.
Hosting, Support and Maintenance
Various hosting options are available, starting from as cheap as £50 per year. However, as with everything you purchase, you tend to get what you pay for. The more affordable options may require you to keep everything updated yourself, might not come with backups or security, and may not provide super-fast website speeds. Usually, all support is provided through a support ticketing system, email, or live chat, which real people may not handle. In addition, response time may not be as quick as you would like. If your website is slow or down, you are losing potential customers.
Alternatively, you can opt for a monthly website care package, which provides speedy, high-quality hosting, nightly backups, website security, and monitoring. These services involve frequently checking that your website is running as it should be and updating your plugins and backend for you. This way, you won’t have to worry about your website crashing, being slow or showing a 404 Page Not Found error!
Need A Trades Website for Your Business?
If you are a tradesperson in need of a professional trades website for your business, rest assured that at the award-winning Web Design and SEO Company, established in 2015, we will ensure you get value for your money and receive a high-quality tradie website that is well worth your investment. Our friendly, UK office-based team (working in Plymouth and serving the whole of the UK) can support you by phone or email from Monday to Friday, 9am to 5.30pm.
In addition to the above standard services, at WDSEO, we also include up to 30 minutes of our time to complete minor content updates as part of our own “Monthly Website Care Package”. This includes a range of tasks, such as uploading new customer testimonials or adding new photos to your gallery, which we carefully resize, rename, and geotag to ensure they are fully SEO-optimised. If there is a problem with your website, we will resolve it for you. We take care of everything, so you can focus on running and growing your trades business.
Contact Us
So, why not take the leap and invest in a website to give your trades business the visibility it deserves?
If you are interested in our SEO-optimised Websites and SEO Services, head to our Online Shop for Websites for Small Businesses and Tradesmen. Alternatively, if you have unique functionality and/or styling requirements, Book a Call with us for a Bespoke Website Design.
Should you have any questions, please feel free to explore our Knowledge Hub, where you’ll find FAQs and useful resources, such as Blogs, Videos, and even eBooks on choosing the right website design company and SEO agency for your Trades or Small Business.
You can also reach us by calling 01752 291865, messaging us on WhatsApp on 07457 404241, completing our contact form, or starting a Live Chat now!