I work a lot with tradespeople — electricians, carpenters, plumbers, small construction firms. When they call me, the starting situation is almost always the same: enough work coming in, but the enquiries arrive through word of mouth, recommendations, the mate from the football club. Works fine — until it stops working. Someone retires, someone moves away, and suddenly the pipeline dries up.

That's when the question of a website comes up. And honestly: most tradespeople do need one, but not for the reasons agencies tend to tell them.

Why tradespeople need a website — and why not

The classic sales pitch goes: "97% of people search online for local services" — some number in that ballpark, seasoned with percentages that sound convincing. I don't quote those numbers anymore, because I haven't verified them and neither can you.

What I can say from my own experience: when someone in your area needs an electrician, they Google. If you don't show up, they call the next one who does. That's not a statistics problem, it's a visibility problem. And it can be solved without a six-figure website.

The other side: a website isn't the answer for every tradesperson. If you've got more enquiries than you can handle, you don't need a website that makes you even more visible. You need either more staff or higher prices. A website doesn't fix a capacity problem.

But if you need at least the occasional new enquiry — and most tradespeople do — a good website is the best tool you can have for not much money.

What actually belongs on a trades website

Here's the version I've learned from working with trades, not the checklist from the next website-builder pitch.

Your phone number, large, at the top, on every page. This is the most important thing. Most of your potential customers are on their phones, have a question, and want to call. If they have to dig through a menu to find your number, they're gone. A tap-to-call button top right, clearly visible — that's not negotiable.

Photos of real work. Not stock photos. A slightly blurry photo of a staircase you built yourself beats any professional shot of a staircase from an image library. Customers want to see what you can do — and what you can actually do, not what someone has made up. Three or four photos per project, with a date on them, done. That's more content than 90% of trades websites out there.

A clear list of your services. "We offer individual solutions" means nothing. "Renovations, drywall, painting, emergency water-damage callouts" means something. Be specific. If you don't offer something, put that in too — it saves you the enquiries you'd have turned down anyway.

Your service area. "Berlin and surrounding area" is good. "Berlin, Potsdam, Bernau" is better. Customers search with place names, and if their town is on your page, it helps not just visitors but Google too.

A short text about you and your business. Who you are, how long you've been doing this, whether you've got an apprentice or a journeyman, whether you're a member of a trade association. Short enough that people read it. Personal enough that it doesn't sound like it came from an agency.

References and reviews. If you've got happy customers (and you do, or you wouldn't still be in business), ask three or four of them whether you can put a short statement on your website. With a name, with a trade, ideally with a photo of the finished work. One real reference beats ten invented ones.

Imprint and privacy page. Required, not optional. If you don't have them, you can be sent a cease-and-desist. Any serious website agreement includes them.

What you don't need

Just as important. Some of what gets sold to tradespeople as "essential" is wasted money for most businesses:

A blog nobody writes. If you're not actually going to write something every four to eight weeks, drop it. A blog that hasn't been updated since 2021 looks worse than none at all.

An online price calculator. Sounds clever, almost never works, because every trades job is bespoke. Customers who use a price calculator are usually the wrong customers — the ones chasing the cheapest quote.

An expensive high-end animation or video background. Loads slowly, costs money, nobody waits for it. Sober wins.

Three languages when your customers speak one. An English version of a carpentry website in rural Bavaria is almost always overengineering. Unless you actually work for international clients.

An app. Seriously. I've been asked for this with a straight face. A trades app that nobody downloads. No.

What actually brings in work: local SEO

Here's the part most tradespeople underestimate. A website alone doesn't bring you customers — it has to be found. For trades, that almost always means: being found locally.

When someone Googles "electrician Freiburg", you want to be on the first page. It's not witchcraft, but it's also not a one-off setup. For that you need:

  • A Google Business profile (formerly Google My Business), fully filled in, with photos, opening hours, and regular updates. That's the single biggest lever for trades.
  • Consistent contact details everywhere — same address, same phone number, on your website, on Google, in directory listings.
  • Customer reviews, gathered proactively. Ask your happy customers after each job whether they'd write a quick review. It adds up.
  • Local terms on your website — your town, your service area, the services you offer, used naturally in the text, not as a keyword sausage.

There's more to it — backlinks, structured data, load speed. If you want to dig in, I've written a separate post on local SEO.

What a trades website costs

For most trades, a solid business website with five to seven pages is enough — home, services, references, about, contact, plus imprint and privacy. That typically sits in the €2,000 to €5,000 range, depending on how much you contribute yourself (copy, photos) and how much custom design you want.

I've written that up properly in a separate post: What a website costs.

The thing to remember: the website isn't the endpoint, it's the start. Anyone who has it built and then never looks at it again will be disappointed. Anyone who maintains it, drops in photos of new projects, adds a reference now and then — that person will notice, after a year, where their enquiries are coming from.