Ask ten tradespeople whether they need a website and you'll get ten different answers. Some swear by theirs. Others have run a successful business for twenty years without one and can't see the point. So who's right?
The honest answer: you need some kind of online presence, but it doesn't have to be a fancy website. Let's look at what actually matters and what's a waste of your hard-earned money.
Google Business Profile: The Absolute Minimum
If you do nothing else — seriously, nothing else at all — set up a Google Business Profile. It's free, it takes about twenty minutes, and it's the thing that appears when someone in your area searches "plumber near me" or "electrician in Bristol".
Fill in your trade, the areas you cover, your phone number, your working hours, and upload a handful of decent photos showing your actual work. That box in the Google search results with your name, star rating, and a click-to-call button? That's your Google Business Profile doing the work.
For a lot of sole traders, this alone generates more phone calls than any website would. The reason is simple: people searching "boiler repair Sheffield" aren't casually browsing. They need someone now. If your profile is right there with strong reviews and an easy way to call, you don't need a website to win that particular job.
When a Website Genuinely Helps
A website starts earning its keep when you're chasing bigger jobs or trying to stand out in a crowded market. If you're quoting for a £15,000 kitchen extension, the homeowner is almost certainly going to Google your business name. If the only thing they find is a Facebook page with four posts from last year, they might not feel confident enough to hand over that kind of money.
A straightforward website with your services, project photos, a few testimonials, and your contact details says "this is a legitimate, established business." That credibility matters when the job value goes up. Extensions, full renovations, commercial work — these customers do their homework.
There's also the long game of SEO. A website with pages targeting specific services and locations — "bathroom fitting in Nottingham", "rewiring in Derby" — can climb Google rankings over time and bring in organic enquiries for years without you spending a penny on advertising.
What to Actually Put on It
Keep it lean. You don't need fifteen pages, animated banners, or a blog you'll never update. Here's what works for trade businesses:
Homepage: Who you are, what you do, where you work. A couple of sentences, your phone number front and centre, and a few good photos. Done.
Services page: List each service with a brief description. "Bathroom fitting — full installations including plumbing, tiling, and electrics. Typical turnaround 5-7 days. Covering Nottingham and surrounding areas." Specific and useful.
Gallery: Before-and-after photos of real jobs you've completed. This is what potential customers actually spend time looking at. Ten strong project photos are more persuasive than pages of sales copy.
Reviews: Embed your Google reviews or paste in a few of the best ones with the customer's first name. "Fantastic job on our en-suite. Dan and his lad were tidy, punctual, and the quality is brilliant. — Karen, West Bridgford." Real words from real people carry serious weight.
Contact page: Phone number, email, areas covered. Maybe a simple contact form. Don't bury your contact details three clicks deep — make them impossible to miss.
Cheap Options That Do the Job
You absolutely do not need to pay a web designer £2,000 for a five-page brochure site. Here are realistic options for tradespeople:
Wix: Drag-and-drop website builder, starts at about £13 a month. You can put together a perfectly decent site in an afternoon with zero technical skills. It won't win design awards, but it'll look professional enough.
WordPress with a starter theme: More flexible than Wix and cheaper to run — hosting is about £5-10 a month. There are starter themes specifically designed for trade businesses available for £30-50, and they look sharp straight out of the box. Slightly steeper learning curve, but nothing insurmountable if you're comfortable poking around on a computer.
Directory listings: Sites like Yell.com, Checkatrade, and Bark effectively give you a web presence with your details, photos, and reviews. A free listing on Yell combined with a solid Google Business Profile might genuinely be enough for many sole traders who are getting plenty of work through word of mouth already.
Local SEO Basics
SEO sounds intimidating but for a local tradesperson the fundamentals are surprisingly simple. You're not competing with national brands — you're trying to appear when someone in your town searches for what you do.
Use your trade and location in your page titles. "Electrician in Leeds | Dave Wilson Electrical" beats "Home | Dave Wilson" every time. Mention your service areas naturally throughout your pages: "We provide rewiring and consumer unit upgrades across Leeds, Pudsey, Horsforth, and the surrounding areas."
Get yourself listed on relevant directories: Yell, Checkatrade, MyBuilder, Bark, TrustATrader. Each listing signals to Google that your business is real and operates in a specific area. It also gives potential customers yet another place to find you.
Gaffer can help keep your Google Business Profile active with recent interactions, which is something Google considers when ranking local businesses. But even without any tools, regularly updating your profile and consistently collecting reviews will put you ahead of most competitors who set their profile up years ago and forgot about it.
Website vs Social Media Only
Can you survive with just Facebook, Instagram, and no website whatsoever? For plenty of tradespeople — especially sole traders doing domestic work — the answer is yes. Loads of successful businesses operate entirely through social media pages and personal recommendations.
The risk is that you're building your entire online presence on land you don't own. Facebook could change its algorithm tomorrow and your posts stop reaching anyone. Instagram could start charging for business features. These platforms make their own rules and you have no say in the matter.
A website, even a basic one, is yours. It sits there doing its job regardless of what Silicon Valley decides to change next week. Think of it as owning versus renting.
So What Should You Actually Do?
If you're a sole trader doing smaller domestic jobs and you've got more work than you can handle from word of mouth, a Google Business Profile and an active Facebook page is genuinely enough. Don't let anyone guilt you into spending money you don't need to spend.
If you're looking to grow, chase bigger contracts, or you're in an area with stiff competition, invest in a simple website. Five pages, honest photos, real reviews, your phone number where nobody can miss it. Budget £15-20 a month and an afternoon to set it up.
The tradespeople who win the most work online aren't the ones with the slickest websites. They're the ones who show up in local search results, have genuine reviews from real customers, and make it ridiculously easy for someone to pick up the phone and call them. Whether you achieve that with a website, social media, a Google profile, or all three together — you're doing it right.