What a tradesperson's website needs on it

Someone with a leaking pipe, a dead socket or a boiler that will not fire is not browsing. They search, they open two or three results, and they call one of them. Your website has about thirty seconds to answer three questions: do you do this work, do you come to where I live, and how do I reach you. Everything below serves those three answers.

Say what you do, and the towns you cover

Place names beat adjectives. "The local area" means nothing to a stranger; the name of their own town means everything. Write it as a sentence you would say on the phone: "Boiler repairs, leaks, taps and bathrooms. Covering Milton, Newport and the villages between." Put it at the top, in plain words, and use the plain word for your trade. Say "plumber", not the clever name you gave the company.

A number that rings, and hours written as text

Make the phone number something people can tap. A number inside a photograph cannot be tapped, copied, or read aloud by a screen reader.

Write your hours as text: "Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm". If you answer at weekends, say so. If you do not, say what happens instead, a voicemail you pick up and when. Only write it if it is true, because a phone that rings out is worse than a page that says you are closed.

Photographs of your own jobs

Four to eight pictures of work you have actually done beat any stock photo of a wrench on a workbench. Take them the same way each time, same angle, same light, and show before and after where the change is the point. Write one line under each picture saying what the job was. That line is what someone reads while the picture loads on a slow phone signal.

What you do, and what you do not

A short list of jobs is enough: boiler repairs, leaking pipes, taps, toilets, bathroom installs. Then the boundaries. Domestic or commercial. Gas or no gas. Weekdays or seven days. Someone who works out in ten seconds that you are not the right trade for their job will not waste an afternoon of yours, and the same list tells the right person that you are.

How a quote works

Two lines here save a phone call. Say whether you charge for the first visit. Say whether you put a price in writing before work starts, and whether that is fixed or an estimate. Say who buys the parts. These are facts about your own business, so only you can write them, but the rule is straightforward: if a customer has to ring to find out, it belongs on the page.

An enquiry that gives you enough to quote

If you offer a form, ask for what you would ask on the phone anyway: name, number, postcode, what has gone wrong, and when suits them. A photo of the problem helps. Then make sure the messages land somewhere you check every day, not an inbox you set up once and forgot.

An email link instead of a form depends on the visitor having a mail app ready to go, and not every phone has one set up. Before you can call the site finished, send yourself a test enquiry from your own phone and confirm it arrived with the details intact.

Leave these off

• Stock photographs presented as your work.
• Any registration, certification or insurance line you could not evidence if a customer asked.
• A blog holding one post, or pages marked as coming soon.
• Sound or video that starts playing on its own.
• Three paragraphs about the company before your phone number.

What you can do this week

Write three lines: what you do, the towns you cover, and the number with your hours. Then list your last five jobs and pull out the four with the best photographs. That is most of the site already, in your own words, and it will drop into whatever you end up building it with.

Sitewright is not built yet, so there is nothing here to sign up for. The waitlist on the home page is the only thing that is open.