The Complete Guide to Websites for UK Trades Businesses

Last Tuesday a roofer rang me at eight in the evening. He'd been quoted £4,200 for a website. Six pages, "SEO included", twelve-month contract, £180 a month after that. He just wanted to know if it was worth it.

It wasn't.

This is what I'd have told him over a pint. No jargon, no upselling, no contracts. Just what a UK trades business actually needs from a website in 2026.

I ran a cleaning business in Lancashire for eleven years before I went back to building websites full-time. I've sat on both sides — the bloke needing the work and the bloke building the site. That matters, because most agencies selling to trades have never had to chase an invoice in their life.

Why a Facebook page isn't enough

You don't own your Facebook page. Meta does. They change the algorithm and your reach drops 80% overnight. It happened in 2018, it happened again in 2023, and it'll happen again. Posts that used to reach 500 people now reach 40. You're renting an audience from a company that keeps raising the rent.

Same with Instagram. Same with TikTok. Same with that Bark or Checkatrade profile you pay £80 a month for. You're a tenant on someone else's land.

A website is the only thing you own. You own the domain, you own the content, you own who sees what. If your website lands a customer at eleven on a Sunday night, Mark Zuckerberg doesn't get a cut.

Use social media for community and before/after photos. But send people to your website, because your website is where they actually decide.

The five pages every trades site needs

There's a lot of waffle about what pages a website needs. For a trades business it's five. Maybe six.

1. Home

What you do, where you do it, a clear phone number, and three reasons to choose you. Above the fold — that's the bit visible before anyone scrolls — there should be no doubt about what you sell and how to get hold of you.

2. Services

One page, or a page per service if they're genuinely different. A boiler swap and a bathroom refurb are different jobs and want different pages. Boiler service and boiler repair? Same page is fine.

3. About

Who you are, how long you've been doing this, what you care about, and a real photo of your face. People ringing a tradesperson are inviting a stranger into their home. They want to see who.

4. Recent work or portfolio

Photos. Real ones, of real jobs, with at least a sentence saying what it was and where. Not stock photos. People can tell instantly.

5. Contact

Phone number, email, area covered, a form for the ones who don't ring. Don't make it a treasure hunt.

The optional sixth page is reviews. Worth its own page if you've got plenty. Otherwise sprinkle two or three across the other pages and you're done.

You don't need a blog unless you'll actually write one. You don't need a Process page with seventeen icons. You don't need an Our Values page. Customers don't read those.

Mobile matters because of where your customers are

Sixty-eight percent of trades website traffic is on a phone. That's from real data on Fehu client sites, not a guess. The customer ringing you about a leaking radiator isn't sat at a desk. She's stood in the kitchen with a tea towel under the rad, googling "emergency plumber near me".

If your site on a phone is tiny text, buttons too small to press with a thumb, or a phone number she has to copy out by hand — you've lost her. She'll back out and try the next result.

A proper mobile site has:

• Text big enough to read without pinching
• A phone number that rings when you tap it (the technical bit is called a tel: link — it's one line of code, any decent web designer knows this)
• Buttons big enough for thumbs, not mouse pointers
• A page that loads in under two seconds on 4G

Test yours now. Pull it up on your phone, switch off the wifi so it's on mobile data, see how it feels. Anything awkward is what your customers are putting up with.

What to look for in a web designer

The trades industry gets fleeced harder than most because websites have no fixed reference price. A bathroom suite costs what a bathroom suite costs. A website costs whatever they think you'll pay.

Fair pricing in 2026 for a trades website:

• £400–£800 — basic but proper, 3–5 pages, fast and mobile-friendly. Good for a sole trader getting going.
• £800–£1,500 — proper small business site. Decent design, more pages, basic SEO setup, content help.
• £1,500–£3,000 — serious site with custom design, multiple services, location pages, full SEO setup.
• £3,000+ — only if you genuinely need bespoke features. Booking systems, customer portals, integrations with your job-management software.

Red flags to walk away from:

• Twelve-month contracts. A website isn't a phone bill. You should own it outright.
• "SEO included" with no specifics. SEO included means nothing. Ask exactly what they do and what you'll see.
• Hosting at £150 a month forever. Reasonable hosting is £5–£20 a month. Anything more for a basic site is them pocketing the difference.
• They won't name the platform. If they're cagey about whether it's WordPress, Wix, Squarespace, or custom, they're hiding something.
• You can't edit anything yourself. Some agencies charge £80 every time you want to change your phone number.

Timeline: a proper small business site takes 2–4 weeks. Anyone promising 48 hours is pasting your details into a template. Anyone quoting four months is overcomplicating it.

How Google Business Profile and your website work together

Your Google Business Profile is that listing on the right of Google when someone searches "[your trade] [your town]". It's free. It's the single biggest source of work for most local trades.

Your website and your Google Business Profile work as a pair:

• Your Google Business Profile needs your website address on it
• Your website needs to match the business name, address and phone number on your profile exactly. Even Ltd vs Limited can hurt
• Your profile shows up first; your website is what convinces them you're worth ringing

If you haven't got a Google Business Profile, set one up tonight. It'll be the highest-return half-hour of work you do this year.

The real cost of a cheap website

A £99 website from a we-build-sites-cheap outfit will lose you more in one bad month than a proper site costs in total. Run the numbers. Say a tradesperson does jobs averaging £400. If they lose two enquiries a month because the site is slow or the phone number is hard to find, that's £800 a month. £9,600 a year. Every year. A proper £997 site that brings in one extra job a month pays for itself in three months and keeps earning for the next five years.

The maths only goes one way. Cheap websites are the most expensive thing on the books because they never stop costing you.

What to do this week

If you've already got a website: pull it up on your phone on 4G. Is your phone number visible without scrolling? Does it ring when you tap it? Time how long it takes to load. Anything over three seconds, you've got a problem. Check your Google Business Profile matches your website word for word. Count how many enquiries the site brought you last month. If it's zero, something is broken.

If you haven't got one yet: buy your domain name today before someone else does. About £10 a year. Set up your Google Business Profile this evening. Get three or four quotes from people who'll show you their previous trade work.

You don't need to spend thousands. You need to spend the right amount on the right things — and not get talked into a contract that lasts longer than your van.