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What your website has to do in eight seconds.

Not win a design award. Answer four questions fast enough that the person holding the phone stops looking. Nothing here requires hiring anyone.

Your website is not read at a desk. It is read on a phone, one handed, at six in the morning or nine at night, by someone who has three other tabs open with three other contractors in them. That person is not evaluating your craftsmanship. They are trying to make a list shorter. In the first eight seconds your only job is to not be the one they close.

Do you do the thing I need?

Named plainly, in the words a homeowner would actually use. Not "full service solutions". The trade, written the way somebody would say it out loud.

Fix it today: put the trade and the service in the first line of the page.

Do you work where I am?

The city, not the region. "Bay Area" reads as "probably not my street". A list of the towns you actually drive to is worth more than a map graphic.

Fix it today: name your towns in text, high on the page.

Are you real?

A licence number, a photograph of work you actually did, and a human name. A stock photo of a spotless kitchen proves nothing, because it could belong to anybody.

Fix it today: swap one stock image for a photo off your own phone.

How do I reach you right now?

One tap. Not a form that asks for a project description before it will let anybody talk to you.

Fix it today: make the phone number a real link, so a tap dials it.

The three mistakes that cost the most calls

A hero image with no words on it. A photograph of a kitchen answers none of the four questions. It is decoration standing where proof should be.

A phone number that is not a link. On a phone, a number that cannot be tapped is a number that will not be dialled. This is a two minute fix and it is missing from a startling number of trade websites.

A contact form as the only route. A form is a promise of a reply later. Half the people reading you at nine at night want a call tomorrow morning.

Fix the free thing first

For a lot of trades the first page anyone sees is not the website at all. It is the Google panel with your hours, your photographs and your reviews. That panel is free, it is already yours, and it is usually more out of date than the website people worry about.

Photographs from this year, the correct service area, correct hours, and a habit of replying to every review will move more calls than a redesign will. Then make the website the place that panel sends people to. Our free 9-Point Visibility Checklist walks through that part in ten minutes.

The five minute audit you can run yourself

1. Open your own site on your phone, on mobile data, not office wifi.

2. Time how long until you can see what you do and where you work.

3. Try to call yourself in one tap.

4. Ask someone who has never seen the site what you do, after five seconds of looking.

5. Search your trade plus your city and count how far down you are.

Whatever fails there is worth more than any new page.

Associations, newsletters, and member packets: this is free to reprint with a credit line - no permission needed, no strings. If something here is wrong or missing for your members, tell us and we'll fix it: hello@sftradestudio.com

Put together by SF Trade Studio from what we see studying how contracting businesses appear online · sftradestudio.com · We build websites for contractors, but nothing on this page requires that - it's yours either way.