Web design for trades
Your customers are not browsing. They are deciding.
Trade websites fail for the same handful of reasons, and none of them are about how the site looks. They fail because the number is hard to find, because every job is crammed onto one services page, and because nothing on the site proves you are qualified. Pick your trade below and we will go through exactly how your customers search and what your site needs to do about it.
Pick your trade
Each of these goes through how that trade's customers search, the pages the site needs and where your registrations belong.
plumbers
Plumbing is two businesses wearing one pair of boots. Half the work arrives in a panic, half is planned weeks ahead, and the two types of customer behave nothing like each other. A website that treats them the same converts neither well.
Read the guideelectricians
Electrical work sells on credentials before it sells on price. Someone letting a stranger near their consumer unit wants to know you are certified, insured and accountable, and they want to know it before they pick up the phone.
Read the guidebuilders
An extension or a renovation is one of the largest purchases a household will ever make outside the house itself. People research for weeks, shortlist quietly, and rule firms out long before they ever make contact. Most of that judgement is made looking at photographs.
Read the guideNot on the list? We build for roofers, landscapers, heating engineers, window installers and the rest. Tell us your trade and we will map the same thing out for you.
What every trade site needs to get right
The trades differ in the detail. These six hold regardless of what you do.
The phone number is the product
Trade enquiries are overwhelmingly phone calls made on a mobile, often one-handed and often in a hurry. The number belongs in the header of every page, tappable, without anyone having to hunt for a contact page. It sounds obvious. Most trade websites still get it wrong.
One page per job, not one list of jobs
A single services page listing fourteen things you do will not rank for any of them. People search for the specific job — "consumer unit replacement", "loft conversion", "emergency plumber" — and the page that ranks is the one about that job and nothing else.
Your accreditations are the sales pitch
Gas Safe, NICEIC, NAPIT, FMB, TrustMark, your insurance. These are the things a cautious customer checks before they ring anyone, so they belong in a fixed position across the site rather than buried on an About page. Where a scheme lets a customer verify your number publicly, we link to it.
Photographs of your own work beat anything written
Nothing persuades like a set of real photographs of a finished job. For anything visual — building, landscaping, bathrooms — this is the single biggest difference between a site that generates enquiries and one that just exists. Phone photos are fine. Stock imagery is not.
Say where you actually go
An areas-covered page stops the wasted calls from forty miles away and tells Google which towns you should show up in. It does not need to list every village in the county to do its job.
Speed matters more than it does elsewhere
Someone with water coming through a ceiling will not wait for a slow site to load. They will hit back and ring whoever is next. We build light and test on real handsets rather than on a desktop connection.
A website on its own will not fill your diary
Anyone telling you otherwise is selling. A new site makes you credible when someone checks you out, and it gives Google something worth ranking. But a brand new site with no reviews, no Google Business Profile and nobody linking to it will not appear on page one next month, whatever anyone promises.
What it will do is convert the people who already find you — the recommendations, the van signage, the returning customers — instead of losing them to a page that looks abandoned. If you want enquiries faster than organic search can deliver them, paid search is the honest answer, and we will tell you that rather than sell you a site and let you wonder why the phone is quiet.
What our clients say
Excellent service from start to finish. Understood what we needed and made it happen.
Working with SearchMaven has been a pleasure, he's a great person to work with, technically highly competent but also full of ideas.
As a Head of Marketing, I've worked with a number of external agencies supporting us with Google Ads, and SearchMaven stands out for its strategic approach and consistent performance.
Websites we’ve recently built
Different businesses, same job: clean, fast and built to bring in enquiries. Judge the standard for yourself.
Digital Marketing Explained
Fast, content-led site structured for search visibility.
Play Double Bass
Booking-focused lessons site built to turn visitors into enquiries.
Gardening Explained
Content-heavy gardening site built for search and easy reading.
Questions, answered
No. We build for local service businesses generally, and the guides here happen to cover plumbers, electricians and builders because those trades have the most distinct search patterns to write about. If you are a roofer, landscaper, heating engineer, window installer or anything else, get in touch and we will map out the same thing for your trade.
We are not going to claim a portfolio full of your trade to win the job. Have a look at the recent work below and judge the standard for yourself. What we will bring is a structure built around how your customers search, which matters more than whether we have built for your trade specifically.
Plans start at £50 a month ex VAT with no setup fee, and run on a 12-month term that covers the cost of the build instead of a large bill up front. After that it rolls month to month. Full details are on our pricing page.
Your domain, your content and your data are yours and leave with you whenever you go. The design and build itself stays with us and is included for as long as you are on a plan, which is what lets us charge a monthly fee rather than a large sum up front.
Most sites go live within three to four weeks of starting. We agree the structure and the content first, then build, and you review everything on a private link before anything is published.
Not always, and we will tell you if it is not. Sometimes the existing site is fine and the problem is that nobody is finding it, which is a different job. Send us the address and we will give you an honest read on whether it needs rebuilding or just needs traffic.
Everything else you might be weighing up
The plans, the wider service and the pages that answer the questions most people ask next.
Compare the monthly plans
Three plans from £50 a month, all with no setup fee. See exactly what each one includes.
View pageWeb designHow we design and build
The full process, what is included in the monthly fee and how long a build takes.
View pageGoogle AdsGet found while the site builds authority
Organic visibility takes months. Paid search brings enquiries in the meantime.
View pageWant a site built around how your customers actually find you?
Tell us what you do and where you work. We will come back within one working day with what we would build and what it would cost. No obligation.
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