Tradie website design: 8 things to get right (and 5 that don't matter)

Most tradie websites we audit were built to look finished, not to be found or to be used by someone standing in a wet laundry. They have a logo, a slider, a “Services” page that lists everything in one paragraph, and a phone number somewhere below the fold. This is the list we build against on the tradie sites we run ourselves in Australian cities, and the list we score client sites against in a free audit: eight things that decide whether the site brings work, and five that take your money and change nothing.

The eight things that matter

1. A page for every job, not a “Services” list

Google ranks pages, and a page can only rank for one thing. “Blocked drains”, “hot water repairs”, “switchboard upgrades”, “roof restoration”: each needs its own page with the price, how the job usually goes, what to do first and the questions people ask about it. A “Services” page with twelve jobs in one block ranks for none of them. This is the single biggest difference between a tradie site that appears for job searches and one that does not.

2. A real page for every suburb you drive to

A tradie has no shopfront, so Google ranks the business near its base by default. The way to appear across the suburbs you serve is a page for each one that a local would recognise: the housing, what fails there, the price in that area, links to the suburb next door. Pages that are copies with the suburb name swapped are doorway pages and get filtered. The service-area article goes through the eight ingredients of a suburb page.

3. Prices on the page

A set price or a from-price per job, and what moves it (after-hours, access, parts). The person comparing three plumbers at 11 pm books the one whose page says what a burst-pipe call-out costs. “Call for a quote” is a reason to keep scrolling. Prices are also what Google’s answer box and AI assistants quote when someone asks “how much does a hot water system cost in Sydney”.

4. Your work, photographed on your phone

The van, the job before and after, you on site, the tools. Taken in daylight, on your phone, with a short shot list of about twenty photos. Real photos beat stock hard hats with customers, who can tell, and with Google, whose image understanding can tell too. Edited by whoever builds the site, so they load light.

5. Your Google reviews, shown live

The rating and the latest reviews pulled from your Google Business Profile, not typed in by hand. Typed-in reviews cannot be checked and read as fake; invented ones breach Australian Consumer Law, and the ACCC’s guidance on managing online reviews is clear that businesses must not post or commission reviews that are not genuine. Live reviews update themselves and carry the trust of where they came from.

6. Tap to call, tap to text, a form that reaches you

The number in the header on every page, tappable. A “text us the problem” option for the people who will not ring a stranger at night. A quote form that sends you an SMS and an email the moment it is filled in, not an inbox checked on Monday. On the sites we run, a large share of enquiries arrive as texts and forms, and most of those arrive outside office hours.

7. Fast on 4G, one-handed

Google measures real users’ loading, responsiveness and stability (the Core Web Vitals) and uses page experience in ranking. Your customers measure it with their thumb. A hand-built static site under 500 KB per page loads in under 2.5 seconds on a mid-range Android on two bars of signal; a page-builder template at 3 to 6 MB does not. Test on a real phone, outside, not on the office laptop.

8. Licence, ABN and service area, shown honestly

Your licence number, your ABN and the suburbs you cover, in the footer and in the LocalBusiness schema Google reads. No fake address in a better suburb to look closer: Google removes those profiles, and the trust with them. Service-area mode on the Google profile exists for exactly this.

The five things that don’t

A logo animation or a hero video. It delays the thing the visitor came for and costs you the Core Web Vitals. A clear heading with the trade, the area and the jobs does more.

A slider. Nobody clicks to the second slide. Put the one message you want on the page, once.

Stock photos. Models in clean hi-vis in a studio. Customers and Google both know it is not you.

A long About page. Two paragraphs, your licence, a real photo. The story of the company goes after the price list, not before it.

A chat bubble or a pop-up. They fight for the phone’s processor, cover the call button and drive people away before they have read the price. If you want messaging, make it a text to your mobile.

What a good tradie site looks like in practice

Open it on your phone. In the first screen you see the trade and the area, the jobs you do, a price or a from-price, your rating, and a tappable number and text button. One tap down is the job the visitor searched for, with its own page. The suburb they typed has its own page too. The whole thing loaded before they finished reading the heading. That is the entire design brief, and it is what the websites for tradies page scores your current site against, free, eight questions, no email required.

If you already have a site that is well structured and just slow, a rebuild on the same URLs is often the cheapest path. If it is a template with one “Services” page, starting fresh is usually cheaper than fixing it. The free audit tells you which, in writing.