Web design for trades: a site that works at the moment someone decides to call.

The basics are a gate, not a selling point. An easy-to-find phone number is unlikely to win you the job. But a missing number or an unclear service area gives a visitor a reason to try someone else. So your service area, phone number, email, hours, and the work you take on belong where a visitor can find them from any page. The effort goes elsewhere.

What weighs most is the words in reviews. In one laboratory study, thirty people chose a plumber online while thinking aloud (Ponathil et al., 2024). It used a desktop prototype, not a phone, and its two coders agreed on 45 and 57 per cent of codes before discussion, so we take a direction from it rather than a rule. Participants weighed the text of reviews over star ratings, read a wholly positive set of reviews as manipulated, and trusted third-party platforms over a company’s own site because a company can moderate its own. The paper recommends linking to reviews on external platforms. We prefer that to a curated wall of quotes. Participants also asked to see licensing and insurance, preferred a local business, and wanted to know how fast a provider would respond, particularly for urgent work.

The person matters. In the same study, a worker’s name recurring across reviews raised trust and created a preference for that person. A named tradesperson on the site answers the question they were asking: who will turn up. That is our inference from what they were looking for, not a finding of the paper.

Will it work on a phone? Yes. There is no database or application server behind the site, and we design for a normal connection rather than assuming everyone has fast internet, with a practical target of a load time under one second. The build standard is on How it works.

Will people in my area find me? The site is structured so that search engines can understand what you do and where, and the service area is stated plainly. We do not promise a ranking.

Is it the cheapest way to get a website? No. Sites for one person start at $4,800, excluding GST, and every project has a fixed price agreed before work begins. If you need the cheapest possible website, there are studios better suited to that, and we will say so early.

Do I have to keep paying? No. The site and the hosting account are yours from the first day, and the site keeps running without a care plan. If you want someone looking after it, care starts at $160 per month. Small changes, such as a new price, are made for you: on a care plan within a business day, and without one they are quoted as small jobs. The detail is on How it works and Contact.

Every project begins with written research, shown to you before design begins. For a trade it reads three things.

What people in your area search for, and what they find. The searches that lead to a trade like yours, and the sites those searches return.

What your competitors show and hide. Service area, licence, insurance, the jobs they take, and how easy it is to call them from a phone.

What a customer needs before they call. For Acreage Services it was whether the business would take on a steep block, and where. For your trade it will be different, and the research says what.

The research remains yours whether or not we build the site.

Disclosure. This is the studio’s own sister business. It is included because it is real work for a real trade. It is not here because a client asked us to show it.

Fallow & Blade Acreage Services does acreage and slope mowing in western Brisbane. The enquiries worth winning come from steep and difficult blocks, jobs ordinary mowing operators often do not want to take on, so the site had to establish capability quickly. We built a plain, capable site that leads with the terrain and the work itself, makes the service area clear, and puts the enquiry route where people can find it.

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If you think the studio might be a fit, send a short description of what you need. Andrew will reply within one business day. If it looks suitable, the next step is a free thirty-minute conversation. There is no obligation until you accept a written proposal.

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