What a contractor's website needs to book jobs
A contractor's website has one job: make somebody standing in their own driveway, holding a phone, decide to call you instead of the next company on the list. Almost everything that matters is decided in the first ten seconds, and most contractor sites spend those ten seconds on a stock photo and the word "quality".
The phone number, where a thumb already is
Visible at the top of every page, and tappable. Not in an image, not only on the contact page, not hidden behind a menu. A large share of the people looking you up are on a phone and want to call in the next thirty seconds. Everything else on this page matters less than this.
Where you work, in plain words
Name the counties and the towns. "Serving the tri-state area" tells nobody whether you will drive to them, so they keep scrolling. This is also the single thing that decides whether you turn up when somebody asks a search engine or an AI assistant for a roofer near a specific town, because the answer has to come from somewhere and it comes from your own words.
Photos of your own work
Stock photography is the fastest way to look like every other contractor, because it is literally the same photos. Pictures of your crews, your trucks, and jobs you finished are worth more than any design decision on the site. Before and after pairs do more work than a paragraph. A phone camera is fine.
A real list of what you do
Written the way a homeowner says it, not the way the trade says it. People search for a leaking roof, a cracked shower pan, an old panel that keeps tripping. If the words on your site are "residential solutions", none of those searches find you. Each service that is worth real money deserves its own page.
Proof that you are a real company
License number, insurance, how long you have been doing this, and reviews with names on them. Homeowners have been burned or know someone who has, and they are looking for reasons to rule you out. Every specific fact you publish removes one of those reasons.
A form that goes somewhere, and gets answered
It should land in the inbox or the software you actually check, and somebody should answer it the same day. A quote request that sits for three days is the same as no website. If you are not going to answer forms, take the form off and leave the phone number.
Speed, on a bad connection
The site gets loaded on a cell signal in a driveway or a parking lot, not on your office wifi. Heavy pages, giant unresized photos and a pile of third party widgets lose people before anything is read. This is one of the few places where the technical work is worth paying for.
Being the company the AI recommends
A growing share of homeowners now ask ChatGPT or Google's AI for a recommendation instead of scrolling a list of links. Those systems answer from what they can read: clear service pages, a service area written out, and questions answered directly on your own site. Contractor sites are mostly built as brochures, which gives an assistant nothing to quote. Answering the real questions in plain text, on the page, is currently one of the cheapest advantages available in the trades.
What to skip
A homepage video that autoplays. A carousel nobody clicks. A live chat widget that goes to nobody. A mission statement. Any sentence containing the phrase "we pride ourselves". None of these have ever booked a job.
Common questions.
What should a contractor's website include?
A tappable phone number on every page, the towns and counties you serve by name, photos of your own finished work, a page for each service worth real money, your license and insurance, reviews, and a form that somebody answers the same day.
How do I get more calls from my contractor website?
Put the phone number where a thumb already is, name your service area in plain words, use photos of your own jobs instead of stock images, and make the pages load fast on a cell connection. Those four things decide most calls before anyone reads a paragraph.
Do contractors need a website if they have a Google Business Profile?
Yes, and the two work together. The profile gets you into the map results, and the website is what people read before deciding to call. Search engines and AI assistants also pull details from your site to answer questions about you.
How do I get my contracting business recommended by ChatGPT?
Answer the real questions in plain text on your own site, name your service area and your services specifically, and publish structured data so the page can be read reliably. Assistants quote pages that answer directly, and most contractor sites answer nothing.
How many pages does a contractor website need?
Usually five to eight. A home page, a page for each service that brings in real money, a page about the company, and a contact page. More pages than that is fine when each one earns its place.