Most tradie websites look fine. The logo’s sharp, the photos are decent, the colours match the van. And plenty of them still don’t make the phone ring.
When we look at why, it’s rarely the design. It’s that the site doesn’t have a page for the job the customer searched for, the quote form asks twelve questions, the licence is a badge nobody can check, or the enquiry lands in an inbox nobody looks at until 9pm. A website is a salesperson who works nights, and these are the things that make it good at the job.
Here are the pages a NZ trade business website needs, what goes on each one, and a checklist you can run on your own site in about 15 minutes.
The short version
A tradie website that wins work does five things:
- Tells people what you do and where, in the first screen, with a number they can tap.
- Has a page for each service you want more of, and for the areas you cover.
- Shows proof they can check: real job photos, reviews and a licence they can look up.
- Makes the enquiry easy: a short form and tap-to-call on every page.
- Does something the moment an enquiry arrives: an instant reply, and tracking so you know where it came from.
Everything else is decoration.
The pages, one by one
| Page | What it’s for | Must have |
|---|---|---|
| Home | Point people to the right service fast | Trade, area, tap-to-call, your best proof, links to each service |
| One page per service | Rank for that job and convince for that job | What the job involves, photos of that job, common questions, a quote form |
| Service areas | Show you cover their suburb or town | Real local detail, not the same page with the town swapped |
| Our work (projects or gallery) | Proof | Real photos, short captions saying what and where |
| Reviews | Trust | Real reviews, linked to your Google profile |
| About | Who turns up | Faces, licences, how long you’ve been doing it |
| Contact or quote | The close | Short form, phone, hours, area |
| Thank-you page | Tracking | Confirms the enquiry and tells them what happens next |
| Privacy policy | The law | How you use the details people send you |
You don’t need all of these on day one if you’re starting small. But you do need the service pages. That’s where most of the work comes from, and it’s the part most tradie sites skip.
The first screen
Someone’s landed on your site from Google on their phone. In the first screen, before they scroll, they should be able to answer three questions: what do you do, do you cover my area, and how do I get hold of you?
So the top of your home page needs your trade in plain words (“Electrician in Hamilton and Waikato”, not “Powering your future”), your service area, a phone number they can tap to call, and a button to get a quote. If someone has to hunt for your number, a good share of them will go back to Google and tap the next listing instead.
A page for every service you want more of
This is the single biggest gap on tradie websites. A plumber’s site with one “Services” page listing fifteen things in bullet points gives Google nothing to rank for “hot water cylinder replacement” and gives the customer nothing to read about their problem.
Give each service you want more of its own page:
- What the job involves, in the words your customers use. “Switchboard upgrade”, not “distribution board remediation”.
- Photos of that job, from your phone, from real sites.
- The questions people ask you about it. How long does it take? Do I need to be home? What affects the price? You answer these on the phone every week, so write them down once.
- How you charge, if you’re comfortable saying: a call-out fee, an hourly rate or free quotes. Being upfront filters out tyre-kickers.
- A quote form or call button on the page, so they don’t have to go looking.
A good test: if a job brings in good money and you’d like twice as many of them, it deserves its own page.
Service area pages, without the shortcuts
If you cover several towns, it helps to have pages for the main ones. But this is where a lot of websites go wrong. Copying the same page twenty times and swapping the town name is exactly the kind of thin, near-duplicate page Google’s spam policies describe as doorway pages. It doesn’t help, and it can hurt.
Do it properly instead: one page per area you genuinely want work in, with something real on each. Jobs you’ve done there, the suburbs you cover, local conditions that matter for your trade (older villas in one town, new subdivisions in another), and reviews from customers in that area. Three good area pages beat thirty copies. We go deeper on how location affects where you show up in our map pack guide.
Proof people can check
Trust is the whole sale for a trade. People are letting you into their home, so they’re looking for reasons to believe you’ll turn up, do it right and not leave a mess.
- Real job photos. Phone snaps from a real site beat every stock photo ever taken. Before-and-after shots are gold.
- Reviews. Show real ones and link to your Google profile, so people can see the rest. If you’re short on reviews, start there: here’s how to ask for them.
- Licences they can look up. Don’t just put a badge in the footer. Name your registration and link to the public register, so a customer can check it in ten seconds: the LBP register for builders, the Electrical Workers Registration Board for electricians, and the Plumbers, Gasfitters and Drainlayers Board for plumbers, gasfitters and drainlayers. Memberships and guarantees (Master Builders, Master Plumbers, Master Painters and so on) belong here too, if you hold them.
- Faces. An about page with a photo of you and the crew does more than a paragraph about “quality and service”.
The quote form
Every extra field on a form is another reason to give up. Ask for what you need to call them back and nothing more:
- Name
- Phone
- Suburb
- What’s the job? (a free-text box, or a short list of your services)
- An optional photo upload, if photos help you quote
You can sort out the details on the call. A form that asks for budget, timeframe, property type and how they heard about you before they can press send loses people who would have booked.
Put a phone number and a short form on every service page, not only on the contact page.
What happens after they press send
This is the part almost every website guide leaves out, and it’s where jobs are won or lost.
Reply straight away. Someone who fills in your form at 7pm is often filling in two or three others. An instant email reply confirming you’ve got their enquiry and saying what happens next keeps them with you while you’re on the tools or at dinner. Then follow up until they book or say no. We cover this properly in do you actually follow up your leads?, and for the calls you can’t answer, who answers the phone when you’re on the tools.
Track where enquiries come from. Set up tracking on form submissions and on taps of your phone number, using a thank-you page so every form counts once. Without it you can’t tell whether your Google Ads, your Google profile or your Facebook page brought the job, and every marketing decision after that is a guess.
Fast on a phone
Most people looking for a tradie are on their phone, often standing next to the problem. A slow site loses them before they see your number.
Google’s own measure, Largest Contentful Paint, calls a page good when its main content shows within 2.5 seconds. The usual culprits on tradie sites are huge photos uploaded straight from a phone, sliders and autoplay video on the home page, and a pile of plugins and tracking scripts that load before anything else. Test your site with Google’s free PageSpeed Insights on the mobile setting and see where you sit.
What you don’t need
- Sliders and carousels on the home page. Most people never see the second slide.
- Stock photos of a model in a hard hat. Customers can tell.
- A blog for the sake of having a blog. Write articles only if you’ll answer real customer questions, properly.
- Long forms, pop-ups and chat boxes that cover the phone number.
- Clever headlines. “Excellence in every detail” tells nobody what you do.
Make sure it’s yours
The domain, the website files and your Google profile should be in your business’s name. Check who’s listed as the registrant of your domain, and make sure it auto-renews, because a lapsed domain takes your website and your email down together. We cover the checks in .nz vs .co.nz.
The 15-minute self-check
Open your website on your phone and go through this:
- Does the first screen say your trade, your area and show a number you can tap?
- Is there a separate page for each service you want more of?
- Do your area pages have real local detail, or are they the same page with the town swapped?
- Are the photos your own work?
- Can a customer click through to check your licence and your Google reviews?
- How many fields are on your quote form? More than six is too many.
- Send yourself a test enquiry. Did anything come back straight away?
- Do you know how many enquiries came from your website last month, and from where?
- Run PageSpeed Insights on mobile. Is your main content showing within 2.5 seconds?
- Is your business listed as the registrant of your domain?
Every “no” is a job you’re probably losing to someone else’s website.
Tradie website FAQ
How many pages should a tradie website have?
Enough for one page per service you want more of, plus home, your work, reviews, about, contact and a privacy policy. For most trade businesses that’s somewhere between 8 and 20 pages. More pages only help if each one has something real on it.
Can I just have a one-page website?
You can, and it’s better than nothing. But one page can’t rank well for ten different jobs. If you want work from Google for specific services, give them their own pages.
Should I use a website builder or pay someone?
A builder works if you have the time and you’ll do the service pages and tracking properly. If you’d rather be on the tools, paying someone saves the hours. We compare the options in website builders for tradies and break down the prices in what a website costs in NZ.
Do tradies even need a website if work comes from word of mouth?
Word of mouth still gets checked online. Someone recommended by a neighbour will often look you up before they ring, and a site with real photos and reviews turns that recommendation into a booking. It also gives you something to switch on when referrals go quiet.
What should be on a tradie’s home page?
Your trade and area in plain words, a tap-to-call number, a quote button, your best proof (photos, reviews, licence) and clear links to each service page.
Want us to run this checklist on your site with you? Get a free leads audit: 20 minutes with Ryan or Matt, no obligation. To see what we build, have a look at our websites for trade businesses.