Do you need a website as a tradesperson?

The search that actually happens

Almost nobody finds a tradesperson by browsing. They get a name from a neighbour, a local Facebook group or the counter at the merchant, and then they type that name into their phone to check it is real. That search is the one that decides whether you get the call, and it is the cheapest thing on this list to win.

So the first question is not "how do I rank for plumber in Leeds". It is "if someone types my business name today, is there anything there". If the answer is nothing, or a Facebook page last posted to two years ago, you are losing work you had already earned.

The second search, the one for your trade and your town, is a longer game and a crowded one. It is worth playing eventually. It is not worth playing before the first one is fixed.

If you have not got round to a website, you are in the majority rather than in a corner. In 2019, the last year an official survey counted, 58.9% of UK businesses with fewer than ten employees had no website at all, and the share never reached half in any year the question was asked. Our analysis of the ONS figures

Google Business Profile, first and free

If you do one thing, do this. A Google Business Profile is free, it puts you in the map results that sit above the ordinary links, and it is where your reviews live. For a business that works within half an hour of home it does more than a website will.

Before you create one, search your business name and your town in Google Maps. Google builds unverified listings from other sources, so there may already be one with your number on it. Claim that rather than making a second, because two listings for one business split your reviews and one of them will eventually be removed.

You verify it, usually by video or by post. Video verification means walking your phone around your van, your tools and any signage, so have those to hand rather than filming a kitchen table. If a verification fails, appeal it rather than deleting the listing and starting again: a second attempt on a fresh listing looks worse, not better.

Run it as a service-area business. That lets you list the towns you cover without publishing your home address, and it is the option most solo trades miss before deciding not to sign up at all, which is a shame, because it is the exact objection the option exists to answer.

The field that does the most work is the primary category, because it is most of what decides which searches you turn up in. Pick the one that names the job you want more of, not the broadest one available. Add the others as secondary categories, where they help without competing.

Two things get listings suspended, and both look harmless. Putting your town or your trade into the business name field when it is not your actual registered name is one. Using an address you do not work from, such as a relative's, to appear in a town you want work in, is the other. Neither is worth the risk of losing the listing you built the reviews on.

• Fill in hours honestly. A customer who rings inside your listed hours and gets nothing does not ring twice.
• List services individually rather than as one line. They are what a customer scans for, and they are searchable.
• Add photographs of finished jobs rather than a logo, and keep adding them. A profile whose last photo is three years old reads as a business that stopped.
• Take the short review link out of the dashboard and save it to your phone, so asking costs you one text rather than a hunt.
• Turn messaging on only if you will answer it. An unanswered message is worse than no message button.

What about Checkatrade and the other directories

For most solo trades this is the real decision, not the website one. Checkatrade, MyBuilder, Rated People, TrustATrader and the rest are where the money actually goes, and a guide about being found that skips them is dodging the question.

They work, in the narrow sense that they buy search traffic you cannot buy and put you in front of somebody who is ready to book. What they are not is a web presence. They are a lead channel with a price per lead, and the two get confused because both produce a page with your name on it.

Read the terms before the price. The models differ and they change: some charge a membership, some charge for each lead, some charge both, and on several of them the same enquiry goes to more than one trade, so you are paying to compete for it rather than paying for it. That is not a scandal, it is the product, but it does mean the number that matters is what a won job costs you, not what a month costs you.

The part worth thinking about hardest is what happens if you stop. The reviews you earned are on their domain, under their account, and they do not come with you. Years of proof can end up being something you rent. That is the honest argument for having one page you own as well, whoever else you pay: not instead of a directory, underneath it.

So judge a directory the way you would judge a van lease. Track what you spend and what you won from it for three months, and if you cannot say which jobs came from it, that is the finding.

What a one-page profile does that a website does not

There is a gap a Google listing does not fill. When somebody asks what you do, you want one link to send them, and it needs to show your work, your prices, your credentials and a way to get hold of you, on a phone, in about ten seconds.

That is a profile page, and it is a different object from a website. No domain to renew, no hosting bill, no theme to update, nothing to go stale except the facts you put on it. You can text it, print it on the van, add it to a quote, or turn it into a QR code on a business card.

SoloDesks builds one at solodesks.com/pro/yourbusiness out of details you have already entered, and the reviews on it are tied to real invoices rather than typed in by hand. Whatever you use, the test is the same: one link, loads fast on a bad signal, answers the questions in the next section without the reader having to hunt.

What to put on it, and what to leave off

A customer choosing between two names is asking four things: are you real, are you insured, have you done this before, and what will it cost to get you through the door. Everything on the page should answer one of those four. Everything else is decoration.

One rule separates a page that works from a page that reads like every other one. Checkable beats flattering. "Fully insured" is a phrase anybody can type. "Public liability with [insurer], £2m cover" is a claim somebody could go and verify, and a reader feels the difference even when they never check it.

• Business name, trade, and the towns or postcode districts you genuinely go to. Not "the North West", the places you would drive to on a Tuesday.
• The year you started trading. Tenure is the most reassuring fact you own and it costs nothing to state.
• Registration numbers where you have them: Gas Safe, NICEIC, NAPIT, a company number. Checkable, which is the whole point of putting them there.
• Insurance, naming the insurer and the level of cover, rather than the word "insured" on its own.
• Three or more photographs of finished work, each with what it was and where. "Full bathroom refit, Roundhay, four days" is evidence. A stock photo of a wrench is not.
• Hours, whether you come out at night, and what the callout charge is.
• Any guarantee you actually honour, in the words you would use for it on the phone.
• One contact method you genuinely check. A phone number you answer beats three that you do not.
• Leave off: stock photography, a mission statement, "we pride ourselves on quality", and anything written in the plural if there is one of you.

Should you put prices on it?

Most people flinch at this and then find it saves them hours a week. You are not publishing a fixed quote. You are publishing enough for somebody to work out whether it is worth ringing. "From £80", "£40 an hour", "£120 callout with the first hour included" and "price on application" are all real answers, and one page can carry a mix of them.

What you buy is the calls you did not want, not made. Somebody hoping for £20 rings somebody else, and you get the twenty minutes back. The trade off is that a competitor can read your prices, which matters less than people fear, because they could already ring up and ask you for a quote.

Work the number out before you publish it rather than after. A day rate that does not cover your unpaid time, the van, the insurance and the weeks you do not work is a rate you will come to resent, and a published price is harder to raise than it is to set correctly once.

Reviews are the part you cannot shortcut

Reviews are the only thing on any of these pages a reader trusts by default, because you did not write them. They are also the thing most solo trades have almost none of, and the reason is nearly always timing rather than unwillingness.

Ask at the moment you finish, while they are standing there looking at the work and are pleased with it. Not by email a fortnight later, when the feeling has gone and your message is one of two hundred. Have the link ready on your phone so the whole thing costs them a minute.

Do not offer anything in return for one. Incentivised reviews are against Google's review policies and get taken down, and a customer who notices the offer discounts every review on the page, including the honest ones.

Reviews on Google and reviews on your own profile are different assets and you want both. The Google ones do the work in search results, where you are being found. The ones on your profile sit next to your prices and your photographs, where somebody is deciding.

You will get a bad one eventually, and you cannot have it deleted for being unfair. Reply once, publicly, short and factual, and stop. The reply is not written for the person who left it, it is written for the next reader, and what they are checking is whether you argue with customers. A profile with nothing but five stars reads as bought anyway, so one bad review answered well is closer to an asset than a wound.

A domain and an email address, without the website

These are three separate purchases and almost everybody treats them as one. A domain name, an email address on that domain, and a website are sold together, and you can have the first two without the third.

It is worth doing early for two reasons. The name you want gets taken, usually by somebody who is not using it, and the price of a domain is small enough that holding it for a year while you decide costs almost nothing. Set it to renew automatically, because a lapsed domain is bought within days by people who resell it back.

The second reason is the email address. A quote from a name at your own domain, rather than a free mailbox with numbers after it, is read differently by exactly the customers who are hardest to win: commercial clients, letting agents, main contractors filling in a supplier form. It is the cheapest signal on this whole page.

Most registrars will also forward the domain to any address you like, so the link you print on the van can be your own name even while it lands on a profile page somebody else hosts. Whether that is worth the extra step is a matter of taste, but it costs no more than the domain does.

When a real website is worth building

None of this means websites are useless. It means they are rarely the first thing, and there are three cases where one genuinely earns its keep.

Before committing to any of them, price the whole thing honestly: a domain and hosting every year, and the evenings. An abandoned website carrying last year's phone number is worse than no website at all, because it is the first result for your name and it tells a customer you have stopped trading.

• You are running paid ads. Google Ads wants somewhere to send the click that you control, and a profile on somebody else's domain is a weaker landing page than your own.
• You take commercial or tendered work. A main contractor filling in a supplier form expects a domain, and a business email address on that domain, and will quietly mark you down without one.
• You want to rank for your trade and your town, and you have time to write. That is won with pages answering real questions, kept up over months. It is a genuine channel and a slow one.

The order to do it in

Starting from nothing, this is the sequence. Each step is worth doing on its own even if you never get to the next one.

• Search your own business name on a phone, signed out, and look at what a customer sees. That is your online presence, whatever you believed it to be.
• Check Google Maps for a listing that already exists under your name, and claim it rather than creating a second one.
• Claim and verify a Google Business Profile. Free, and the biggest single return on this list. Get the primary category right.
• Set up one profile page: trade, area, credentials, three photographs of finished work, and a price or two.
• Ask the next three customers for a review at the moment the job is done.
• Put the link on your quotes, your invoices, the van and the bottom of your texts. A link nobody sees is a page that does not exist.
• Buy the domain with your business name on it, and put your email on it. Cheap, quick, and it stops somebody else taking the name.
• Only then weigh up a paid directory, and judge it on what a won job costs rather than what a month costs.
• Only then consider a website, and only if one of the three cases above is actually you.

Common questions

Do I need a website as a sole trader tradesperson?

Usually not, and rarely first. A free Google Business Profile and one profile page you can send as a link answer the questions a customer actually has, and they take an afternoon rather than a project. A website earns its place when you are running paid ads, chasing commercial or tendered work, or committing to write content over months.

Is a Google Business Profile free?

Yes, free to create, to verify and to keep. You can run it as a service-area business, which lets you list the towns you cover without publishing your home address. That is what most solo trades working from home want, and it is the step people most often abandon before finding.

Can I use a Facebook page instead of a website?

It is better than nothing and worse than a Google Business Profile. It does not appear in map results, it is awkward to read for anyone not signed in, and a page nobody has posted to in two years reads as a business that has closed. If it is all you have, treat it as somewhere to point at rather than the thing itself.

What should be on a tradesperson's profile page?

Trade, the towns you cover, the year you started, insurance with the insurer named, any registration numbers such as Gas Safe or NICEIC, three or more photographs of finished work, your hours and callout charge, and a number you answer. Checkable facts beat adjectives, so name the insurer instead of writing "fully insured".

Should I put my prices online?

Publishing a starting price or an hourly rate filters out the enquiries that were never going to book, which is most of what a phone costs you. You are not committing to a fixed quote. "From £80", "£40 an hour" and "price on application" are all legitimate answers, and you can mix them on one page.

How do I get my business to show up on Google Maps?

Create or claim a Google Business Profile and verify it, usually by video or by post. Search Maps for your business name first, because Google often already holds an unverified listing built from other sources, and claiming that one keeps any reviews already attached to it. Once verified, the primary category is the field that does most of the work in deciding which searches you appear in.

Is Checkatrade worth it for a sole trader?

It depends on what a won job costs you there, which is a number only you can work out, and the only honest way to get it is to track spend against jobs actually won for about three months. Judge it as a lead channel rather than as a web presence: the reviews you earn sit on their domain and under their account, so they do not come with you if you leave. That is the argument for having one page you own as well, rather than instead.

Do I need a domain name if I do not have a website?

You do not need one, but a domain and a website are separate purchases and the domain is the cheap half. It gets you an email address at your own business name, which is read differently by commercial clients, letting agents and main contractors, and it stops somebody else taking the name while you decide. Most registrars will also forward it to any page you like, including a profile page you did not build yourself.

Do the maths

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