What your site is for
Most people don't arrive at a contractor's site ready to read. They got your name from a neighbor, a truck or a Google search, and they want to know you're a real business before they spend an evening talking about their kitchen. Your site should answer three questions fast: Are you legitimate? Have you done work like mine, near me? How do I reach you, and what happens if I do?
That's why a good contractor website often looks plain. If a design makes those answers slower to find, it's a worse site no matter how much it cost. Awards for web design aren't what you're after.
And if your site was the free one Google made for you, it's gone. Google's help page said websites made with Business Profiles stopped being available on March 5, 2024. You need a real one, on a domain you control.
The first screen on a phone
Google says it uses the mobile version of your content for indexing and ranking, and it warns that a mobile page with less on it than your desktop page may lose traffic. Don't hide things on phones to tidy up the design. Pick up your own phone and look at your homepage before you scroll. Say you're a made-up deck builder in Boise. That first screen should show:
- What you do and where: "Custom decks and covered patios in Boise and Meridian." Words, not a slogan about passion and craftsmanship.
- A photo of your own work, ideally with your own crew in it. Stock photos of models in spotless hard hats fool nobody.
- A phone number people can tap, and one button for requesting a quote. Those two, no more.
- A trust line: license number, years in business if it's impressive, and your Google rating if you've earned it.
A big rotating banner fails this test, and so does an autoplaying video. They push the useful parts down and add weight to the page.
The pages you need, and the ones you can skip
A small contractor can run on a surprisingly short list. Build these first:
| Page | What makes it work | When to skip it |
|---|---|---|
| One page per service you want more of | What's included, what moves the price, photos of that kind of job, a link to your related projects | Services you'd rather not sell. Drop them. |
| Project pages | Town, scope, how long it took, one thing that surprised you. A handful of real write-ups beats a wall of unlabeled photos. | Never. If you've got one finished job and a phone, start there. |
| About | Your name, your face, your license, who'll actually be on site | Never. People are letting you into their house. |
| How we work | Estimate, contract, deposit, schedule, change orders, cleanup, warranty | Fine to fold into About if you're small. |
| Quote request | A short form, plus the phone number for those who hate forms | Never. |
| Town pages | Only with real local work and local knowledge. Copies with the name swapped are doorway abuse. | When all you've got to say is the town's name. |
| Blog | A cost guide or permit explainer only you could write | If you won't keep it up, one good guide beats a blog that stopped in 2023. |
On the quote form, ask for what you'd ask on the phone: name, phone, town, type of project, rough timeline. A budget range is worth adding if you do larger work, because it sorts the callbacks for you. Then say what happens next, like "We call back within one business day." Then keep the promise.
What your state says your site must show
This one's specific to your trade, and a lot of design advice skips it. Here are two states that show how different the rules are. Rules vary, so check with your own licensing board before you publish. This isn't legal advice.
- California. The Contractors State License Board says a license number must appear whenever licensed contractors advertise, "whether on paper, over the air waves or on the Internet."
- Arizona. State law says the license number must be preceded by "ROC". Broadcast, internet and billboard ads can leave it out if they point to a website that prominently displays your name and license number. So there, the website is doing legal work for your ads.
A lot of sites tuck the license number into tiny footer text. Even where that's legal, it's a waste. Homeowners get told to check licenses: the FTC's advice after storms is to hire only licensed, insured contractors and ask for proof of insurance. Put the number where people can see it, and link to your state's license lookup if it has one.
Testimonials are also your responsibility. The FTC says a business that puts testimonials on its own website is disseminating them, not merely hosting them, so fake or false ones can come back on you. Use real customers' words, with permission.
One more, which reaches businesses open to the public. The Justice Department's 2022 guidance on web accessibility says it has consistently taken the position that the ADA applies to what those businesses offer on the web. It names missing image descriptions, poor color contrast and unlabeled form fields as barriers. Those are cheap to get right when you build a site and annoying to fix later, so ask your designer about them up front.
Speed, photos and the things Google can read
Contractor sites are photo-heavy, so they're often slow. Google's Core Web Vitals give you targets: the main content should load within 2.5 seconds, the page should respond to a tap in under 200 milliseconds, and things shouldn't jump around as it loads. Google stops short of saying these numbers decide rankings. It says they align with what its ranking systems seek to reward. A slow site loses the homeowner either way.
On photos, Google's image guidance is practical: put images near relevant text, write useful alt text (a short description of the image), use short descriptive file names, and compress them, since images are often the biggest part of a page. "boise-cedar-deck-rebuild.jpg" helps. "IMG_4471.jpg" doesn't. Alt text like "Cedar deck with a covered patio in Boise, after the rebuild" also helps someone using a screen reader.
Ask for structured data too, the code that tells search engines what a page is about. Google says to use the most specific LocalBusiness type you can, and schema.org's home and construction types include GeneralContractor, RoofingContractor, Plumber and HVACBusiness. Google recommends rating markup only for sites that capture reviews about other businesses, so don't mark up your own stars.
Build it yourself, or hire someone
A website builder is enough for plenty of one-crew contractors. As of November 2026, Wix's paid plans start at $17.77 a month on a yearly subscription, with its Business plan at $39.77. A paid plan is what lets you connect your own domain and drop Wix's branding. You'll trade polish and flexibility for that price, and your weekends.
Hiring a designer makes sense when your jobs are big enough that the site is really a sales tool, or when you'll simply never get around to it. We're not quoting designer prices here, because the ranges we found all came from people selling the service, and they vary too much to be useful. Get two or three quotes. Whoever you hire, these are the questions that protect you:
- Will the domain be registered in my name, with the login in my hands?
- If I stop paying you, do I keep the site and its content? Can I move it?
- Who writes the words? Who takes the photos? Is that in the price?
- Can I change my own phone number, hours and project pages without paying you?
- Is the monthly fee for hosting, for changes, or for something else?
- If this replaces an existing site, how will you handle redirects?
That last question is the expensive one.
How a new site can cost you your rankings
Here's how it goes wrong: a new site launches, it looks great, and a month later the phone is quieter, because the old addresses now show errors. Those pages may have had years of links and rankings behind them, and that doesn't move to a new address on its own.
If any addresses change, Google says to use permanent 301 redirects, which send people and search engines from the old page to the new one, and to keep them for at least a year. It also warns that rankings may fluctuate while it recrawls the site, so don't launch the week before your busy season. Before you start, export a list of your current pages and match every one to its new home. Keep your phone number and business name exactly the same. Then check that the new site still shows your license number and every service you sell.
If your site isn't broken, you may not need a new one. Rewriting the service pages and adding five real project write-ups can do more than a redesign, for less money and less risk.
Getting found once it's live
A website doesn't bring anyone on its own. Link it from your Google Business Profile, ask finished customers for reviews, and add a project page every time you finish something you're proud of. If you're a roofer, our guide covers storm pages and insurance wording, and if you're comparing paid sources, see buying leads versus earning them. Home builders can start with our page on SEO for builders, and our industries page covers other businesses.
Sojig is our product, and it isn't a website builder. It won't design your site or take your photos. Once your site exists, it checks it each week and drafts fixes for what's holding pages back, and it tracks where you appear in Google Maps from each city you serve, with review replies, posts and profile fixes drafted for you to approve. For now you copy the profile work in yourself. On WordPress, approved website fixes can publish directly. Wix and Squarespace get step-by-step instructions instead, which matters if you hate touching your site, so pick your platform with that in mind. If your site has five pages and you're booked for a year, you don't need us yet.