You are between jobs, sat in the van with a coffee going cold, and the thing nagging you is not this week. It is February. Every year the same gap opens up, and every year you fill it by dropping the price or taking on something you did not want.
A website for a trade business is not a brochure, it is a way of stopping that gap opening. Whether it earns its money is a question with an actual answer, and the answer is arithmetic rather than opinion. You know what a job is worth to you and how many you can physically do. Everything else follows from those two numbers.
So this does the maths for electricians, roofers, builders, landscapers and groundworkers, and settles the question you are really asking, which is whether the money would do more sat on another directory subscription. Plumbing has its own version, covered in the guide to web design for plumbers.
Key takeaways
- A website for a trade business pays for itself the moment it produces one extra job a quarter, which for most trades is a far lower bar than it sounds.
- A directory listing is rented visibility: the directory ranks, you appear on it alongside your competitors, and you stop existing the month you stop paying.
- Checkatrade's published plans in September 2026 are free, £30 a month for Approved and from £59 a month for Growth, all on a twelve month term with the Growth price set by postcodes and lead volume.
- Most trade enquiries are lost to a slow reply rather than a bad website, because the second quote to arrive rarely wins.
- FutureProofs builds trade websites from £189 a month with hosting, unlimited edits and monthly SEO inside one figure.
Word of mouth is a good business and a bad growth plan
Most trades going five years or more run on recommendation, and it works. The jobs are better, the customers warmer, and nobody haggles as hard when their sister told them to ring you.
The problem is that recommendation has no dial on it. It produces roughly what it produced last year, arrives when it arrives, and dries up exactly when everyone else's does. It also caps the sort of work you get offered, because customers recommend you for the job they hired you for. The landscaper known for fencing gets asked about fencing. The patios go somewhere else.
What a website adds is a second, controllable source of enquiries you can point at the work you want more of. That is the whole argument, and it is worth exactly what the arithmetic says it is.
Do the maths: what is a website for a trade business worth?
Twenty minutes with your invoices settles this better than any sales conversation.
What one job is actually worth to you
Not the invoice total, the margin. Take your last twenty invoices, strip out materials, plant hire and anything you subcontracted, and divide by twenty. That is what one job puts in your pocket, usually bigger than trades expect on the small jobs and smaller on the big ones.
How many extra enquiries change your year
Second number: how many quotes do you send to win one job? Count it for a month if you do not know. Most trades land between one in three and one in five, and it moves depending on how fast you get there and whether you were the only one who turned up.
Now multiply. Win one in four, want one extra job a month, and you need four extra enquiries a month. Four. That is the entire target, and it is worth writing down, because it is far smaller than the number people imagine when they think about doing marketing.
So what is a website allowed to cost?
Fill this in with your own figures. The example is a domestic electrician doing consumer units, rewires and EV chargers.
| Line | How to work it out | Example |
|---|
| Average job value | Last twenty invoices divided by twenty | £900 |
| Margin per job | Value minus materials and subcontract | £550 |
| Quotes sent per job won | Count it for a month | 4 |
| Extra enquiries for one more job a month | Same as above | 4 |
| Value of one extra job a month, a year | Margin times twelve | £6,600 |
| A plan at £189 a month, annually | Fixed | £2,268 |
On those numbers the site breaks even at about one extra job every four months, and four extra enquiries a month roughly triples its own cost. For a roofer whose average flat roof is nearer £3,500, or a builder quoting extensions, break-even is one job a year and the sums stop being interesting.
Which is the honest reason we price at £189 a month with the SEO included rather than four thousand up front: a trade should see payback inside a season rather than bet a quarter's profit on it. One caveat, though. That is the arithmetic once the site is working, which is not month one. Judge it at six months.
A website or another directory subscription?
The real question, and almost everyone asking it has been burned once already. You paid for a year of leads, got sent enquiries that four other trades got at the same time, chased three of them to voicemail, and quietly decided the whole business was a con.
What you are actually renting
When someone searches electrician Stowmarket, a directory usually ranks near the top. That is the point of them and they are good at it. But the search is won by the directory, not by you. You appear on that page as one of eleven names, sorted by rules you do not control, next to the competitor who has undercut you all year. On your own site the same search lands on a page with nobody else on it. The difference is structural, not a matter of quality.
| A directory listing | Your own website |
|---|
| Who ranks for the search | The directory | You |
| Who else is on the page | Every competitor who pays | Nobody |
| Who the enquiry goes to | Often several trades at once | Only you |
| What happens when you stop paying | You disappear that month | The pages stay and keep ranking |
| Who owns the reviews | The platform | You, on your Google profile |
The costs are worth knowing rather than guessing at. Checkatrade's published plans as at September 2026 are a free tier, Approved at £30 a month and Growth from £59 a month, all on a twelve month term, with the Growth price set by how many postcode areas you pick and how many leads you want. The entry cost is genuinely low. What it buys is the right to compete on a page you do not own, with no residual value at the end.
When a directory is still worth it
Being dogmatic here would be daft, so, where they earn it:
- You are brand new. No reviews, no site, no history. A directory buys day-one visibility that SEO cannot.
- You need to fill a specific gap. A quiet fortnight in February is a good use of a lead subscription and a bad reason to commission a website.
- Your trade genuinely lives there. In a few niches the platform owns the search so completely that fighting it is not sensible.
What is not sensible is a fourth year renting leads while owning nothing. For most established trades the answer is both for a year, then let the subscription lapse once your own pages rank. Why a directory profile can outrank your own site, and what to do about it, is worked through in our piece on your website versus your directory listings.
The pages that earn their keep, trade by trade
Same rule underneath all of these. One page per service you actively want more of, crossed with the towns you would genuinely drive to. Not thirty villages, and not one services page listing everything you have done.
- Electricians. EICR and landlord certificates, consumer unit upgrades, rewires, EV charger installation, outdoor lighting. EV chargers are the one most electricians under-serve, and it is a high intent search with a decent ticket.
- Roofers. Flat roof replacement, tile and slate repair, chimney and leadwork, fascias and soffits, storm damage. Storm damage earns its own page because it catches the search in the week after a gale, when nobody is comparing prices.
- Builders. Extensions, loft conversions, garage conversions, renovations. Plus two pages nobody builds and everybody searches for: how you quote, and how long a job takes.
- Landscapers. Patios and paving, fencing, turfing, driveways, clearance, maintenance contracts. The maintenance page turns a seasonal business into a monthly one.
- Groundworkers. Mostly writing for other trades, so drainage, foundations, site clearance and hardstanding, framed around lead times and plant rather than reassurance.
Every one needs the same three things: photographs of that job done by you, a price range or an explanation of what moves the price, and a way to get in touch in one tap. A page with no photographs is a page saying you have not done many.
Town pages work the same way: one for each place you actually want work in, written about that place with jobs from it. That is what our Bury St Edmunds web design is built around, and the full version is in the Suffolk Garden Maintenance build, where the brand and the site went in together. The general shape of what we do for trades sits on the trades sector page.
Most trade leads are lost to a slow reply, not a bad website
The uncomfortable bit. If you have paid for leads and concluded they were rubbish, some were. But a good number rang somebody else while you were up a ladder, and that is fixable in an afternoon for less than the cost of a rebuild. A homeowner who has contacted three trades is not sitting down to compare three quotes. They are waiting for the first person who seems competent and available, and the second quote to arrive is competing against a decision already made.
The thirty minute rule
Anything arriving in the working day gets a human response within thirty minutes, even if that response is "got it, I am on a job until four, I will ring you at half four". That message alone puts you ahead of most of your competition, because most of them reply that evening or the next morning, if at all. Use text rather than email for domestic work. People read texts. Quote emails sit unopened next to the school newsletter.
What to automate and what to keep human
- Automate the acknowledgement. Every form submission and missed call gets a text back inside a minute, with your name and a real time you will ring.
- Automate the chase. A quote gone quiet gets a nudge on day three and day ten. Most trades send a quote once and never follow it up, which is where the lost work goes.
- Automate the review request. The day after the job, while they are still pleased, asking them to mention the town and the work.
- Keep the quote human. Nobody wants an automated price for their roof.
That is a system rather than a website feature, and it is what our lead follow-up service at £125 a month does. If you only have budget for one thing this year, fix the response speed first.
What to expect month by month
So you can hold whoever builds it to something, and so you do not panic in week three.
| When | What is happening | What you should see |
|---|
| Weeks 1 to 4 | Site live, Google Business Profile tidied, pages indexed | Your business name ranks properly. Occasional specific enquiries |
| Months 2 to 3 | Service and town pages appear for the less contested searches | First enquiries you cannot trace back to a recommendation |
| Months 4 to 6 | Pages on page two start moving up. Reviews building | Enquiries from searches you can name, at a rate you can plan around |
| Months 6 to 12 | Competitive town-plus-service searches come into range | Enough in the diary to turn down the work you dislike |
Judge it at six months, not six weeks. And judge it on enquiries, not rankings, because a screenshot of a ranking has never paid anybody's van finance.
Frequently asked questions
Do I need a website as a tradesman?
You need one if you want to choose your work rather than take what arrives. Word of mouth and a Google Business Profile keep most trades busy, but neither lets you aim at a job type or a town, and neither gives a homeowner spending thousands anything to look at before committing.
How much does a website cost for a builder?
Ours start at £189 a month, covering the build, hosting, unlimited edits and the ongoing SEO in one figure with nothing up front. For a builder quoting extensions that is the margin on a fraction of one job a year, which is why the arithmetic is easier for higher-value trades.
How do tradesmen get more leads without paying for directories?
Build a page for each service you want more of and each town you will drive to, get your Google Business Profile complete and reviewed, and reply to every enquiry within thirty minutes. Those three cover most of it. Directories supplement that rather than substitute for it.
Is Checkatrade worth it for a trade business?
It is worth it when you are starting out with no site and no reviews, or filling a specific quiet patch. Published plans in September 2026 run free, £30 a month for Approved and from £59 for Growth on a twelve month term. What it does not do is build you anything you keep.
How do I stop chasing work as a tradesman?
Stop treating enquiries as the scarce thing and start treating your response time that way. Acknowledge every enquiry within minutes, chase every quote twice, and ask for a review after every job. Then build pages aimed at the work you want more of, so the enquiries are worth answering.
How many towns should a trade website cover?
Three to six for most single-van and small firms. Pick the towns you would happily drive to on a Sunday, write a real page for each with jobs you have actually done there, and add more only once those rank. A long list of thin village pages performs worse than four good ones.
What to do next week
Start with the twenty minutes on your invoices, because until you know what a job is worth to you and how many quotes you send per win, every marketing decision is a guess. That one exercise tells you whether a website is a two-month payback or a two-year one, and which of your services deserves a page first.
Then fix the response speed, because it is free and it works this week. Set up a text that goes out on every missed call, and a reminder to chase quotes on day three and day ten. You will win jobs off that before anything else changes.
The website is the third thing, and by then you will know what you want from it: pages for the work you want more of, in the towns you want to be in, with photographs of your own jobs on them. We build and run those for trades across Suffolk and Cambridgeshire on one monthly plan, and the numbers are on the pricing page.
