WEB DESIGN FOR TRADIES Trade websites. More calls.
Web design for tradies has a low bar to clear. Most trade sites are a stock photo of a ute, a paragraph about quality workmanship at competitive prices, and a contact form nobody fills in. None of it answers the only question the visitor came with: do you do this job, in my suburb, and can I ring you now. That question is the entire brief.
Your ute is the best advertising you own, and it points at a dead end. Someone reads the signage at the lights, types the name in that night, and finds nothing, or a one-page site somebody's nephew built that will not open on a phone.
Four answers.The rest is decoration.
The four things they are checking are always the same. Do you do this specific job. Do you come to my suburb. Are you licensed and insured. Can I ring you right now. Almost every trade website in the country fails on at least two of those, usually by burying them under a mission statement about being passionate and reliable, which is what the other three quotes also said.
The photos matter more than anything else on the page. You already have hundreds of the right ones on your phone: the switchboard before and after, the bathroom rough-in, the deck on the last Friday of the job. A stock image of a generic tradesman with folded arms is the single fastest way to look exactly like every other quote they are holding, and it is the default on most trade sites because it was free.
Then it has to be built to be rung rather than browsed. The phone number sits in the header at thumb size on every page, the service area is written out instead of implied, the licence number and insurance are visible without hunting, and the quote form asks four questions rather than fourteen. Long forms feel thorough to the person who built them and feel like paperwork to the person filling one in on a phone at the end of a shift.
A person choosing a trade gives you about four seconds before they go back and ring the next one. Everything on the page either helps them decide or is in the way.
Five steps.Then live.
The first step is the one that changes the site most, and it is the one nobody asks about. A trade that wants more bathroom renovations and a trade that wants more service calls need two different websites.
The same five steps run on every build, Starter through to Authority. What changes is how many pages come out the other end, not the method. See the full web design process.
The jobs you want
not the trade you areWhich work is actually worth having: the jobs with the best margin, the ones you would take every week, and the ones you are sick of being rung about. The site gets built to bring in the first list and quietly discourage the last one.
Proof, not stock
off your phoneJob photos, before and afters, licence and insurance numbers, and the reviews you already have. This is the step that stalls most builds, so we tell you exactly what to send and how many, in writing, before anything is designed.
Structure and search
decided before designEvery page gets one job and one search to win before a colour is chosen. Which services get their own page, which suburbs are worth building for, and how someone moves from landing to phone call in as few taps as possible.
Design sign-off
your approval, in writingColour, type and layout presented for approval before a line of code is written. Changes are cheap here and expensive later, which is the only reason this step exists where it does.
Build and launch
Astro, then liveBuilt on Astro with Tailwind. 95+ Lighthouse, under 2.5 seconds, Search Console connected and the sitemap submitted on launch day, so the site starts being found rather than sitting there.
The Starter
$1,800
3 to 5 pages covering your main services and your main area, with your photos, your licence and a tappable number throughout. Live in 3 weeks. Right for a one-van operation.
The Growth
From $3,500
5 to 10 custom pages, one per service you want more of, plus 30 suburb pages so each area you drive to has something of its own to rank with.
The Authority
Book a call
10 to 20 custom pages and 50 suburb pages, built for a business running several crews across more than one council area or more than one trade.
Every package is a fixed price, agreed before any work starts. After launch we keep the site running on a monthly support plan, and any build can run on any plan. See what every package includes.
What people ask before they book.
A Facebook page is a good second address and a poor first one. You do not own it, it is hard to find on Google unless someone already knows your name, and a customer cannot see your licence number, your service area or your prices without scrolling through months of posts. The practical test is what happens when someone reads your ute at the lights and searches the name that night. If a Facebook page is all that comes back, you are asking a stranger to trust a social profile with a job worth thousands.
Newcastle Web Co builds a 3 to 5 page trade site for $1,800 fixed, delivered in 3 weeks, with SEO, schema and Google Business Profile alignment included rather than sold separately. A fully custom build with 30 suburb pages starts at $3,500. Across the Australian market a small business site is commonly $2,000 to $8,000, and a template job under $1,000 usually arrives with no search work in it at all.
Six things, in this order: what jobs you actually do, which suburbs you cover, photos of your own recent work, your licence and insurance details, real reviews, and a phone number that can be tapped from any page. Everything after that is optional. Most trade sites carry a long paragraph about quality workmanship and competitive prices instead, which tells the visitor nothing they could not have assumed.
Three weeks for a Starter build from the day the brief is signed off, provided your photos and details come back in the first week. Custom Growth and Authority builds are confirmed at consult before any work starts. The biggest cause of delay on a trade site is not the build, it is photos sitting on a phone, which is why step two of the process exists and why we tell you exactly what to send.
No, and we would rather say that plainly than sell you a dashboard you will never open. There is no login on any tier. Content changes are made by us and are covered by your monthly support plan, from $50 a month with two small edits included. For a business that changes its site a few times a year that is a better arrangement than a CMS nobody logs into. The files are delivered to you on completion either way.
Tell us the trade, the jobs you actually want more of and the areas you cover, and we will come back with a fixed price and a page list. No obligation, and no hard sell.
Serving Newcastle and the Hunter. Newcastle, Lake Macquarie, Maitland, Cessnock, the Hunter Valley and Port Stephens, and remotely for trades anywhere in Australia.