A website either converts or it decorates, and the difference is not the colour
scheme. It is the order of the page, where the form sits, what you show and what
you leave out. Getting found is the list further down. This is what has to happen
once somebody actually lands.
One decision per screen
The page is built in the order a customer actually thinks in: what do you do,
can I trust you, what does it cost, how do I get hold of you. Every section
asks for one thing. Sites that offer five choices at once get none of them
taken.
The form is above the fold
Visible the second the page loads, without scrolling, on a phone. Name, number,
what they need — that is it. Every extra field costs you enquiries, and asking
for an address before you have earned it costs you more than the address is
worth.
A page for every service
Not a bullet on a list. Somebody with a leak wants a page about leaks — what it
usually involves, roughly what it costs, how fast you can be there. A page that
answers the question outsells a page that announces you also do that.
A gallery of your actual jobs
Before and after, from your phone, on real houses in streets people recognise.
This is the single thing that separates you from the outfit with the stock
photo of a roof in California. Nobody needs it to be a photoshoot. They need
it to be yours.
An About page with a face on it
They are about to let you onto their roof and into their driveway. Who you are,
how long you have been at it, who turns up on the day. It is one of the most
visited pages on any trade website and most of them waste it on a paragraph
about being passionate.
Reviews where the decision happens
Your best reviews sit on the pages where people are deciding, not buried on a
separate page nobody visits. They update on their own as new ones come in, so
the site never looks like it stopped in 2023.
Built for a thumb, not a desk
Because that is where they are. Thumb-sized buttons, a phone number that dials
when tapped, and a quote form short enough to finish standing up in a driveway
with one bar of signal.
Motion with a job to do
A light sweep across the button so the eye lands on it. Sections arriving as you
scroll instead of sitting there flat. Used to point at the next step, never for
its own sake — the moment an animation makes somebody wait, it has cost you the
enquiry it was meant to win.
Nothing bolted on that slows it down
No pop-up covering the phone number, no slider nobody swipes, no chat widget
nobody is manning. Most contractor sites are slow because of things that were
added to help. What is left is the stuff that earns its place.
Every enquiry gets answered
Every form and every tap lands somewhere that answers. The enquiry is routed to whoever
should handle it, their phone tells them it has landed, and the customer gets
a reply straight away — so the website is not just
collecting names for you to deal with on Sunday night.
