Service
Websites for trade businesses
A trade website has one job: to be found by somebody whose problem started ten minutes ago, and to be called before they change their mind.
Nobody looking for a tradesman is browsing. There is water on the floor, no power, or a key locked on the wrong side of a door. They type the symptom into a phone, open the first two or three results, and call the one whose number they can see without hunting for it. The whole decision takes under a minute.
That sets everything else: the page has to open fast on mobile data, say immediately whether you cover their town, and keep the number in reach at every scroll position. What is usually missing from a site like this is not design — it is an answer to the question the visitor actually asked.
What this covers
- A page per service, written the way that service is actually searched for — by symptom, not by trade term
- The call action in reach at every scroll position, laid out for the phone first
- Coverage area visible immediately, with surrounding towns given their own ground to rank on
- Local structured data, sitemap and a machine-readable site description
- Contact form, privacy policy and a designed 404 — the parts that get skipped
- Hosting that costs close to nothing, because the site is static
How it goes
A list of symptoms, not a list of services
First we write down how people describe the problem when they call you. It is rarely what your invoice calls it, and the gap between those two is where the traffic is.
One page per search
Every service and every sizeable town you cover gets its own ground. Everything piled onto the home page means the home page competes with itself and ranks for nothing.
Phone first, then everything else
If it does not open quickly on mobile data and the call is not in reach, the rest does not matter. That is the order the decisions get made in.
Maintenance without a CMS subscription
Static pages have no login, no database and no plugins. There is nothing to break while you are on a job and nothing to patch on a schedule.
Where this has been done
Five sites in one trade, across five separate territories. That is the deepest proof I have — not the only kind of work I do.
Plumber.hr
Split. Nine service pages and a tenth that is a joke with a job — the reason people remember the site and pass it on.
Odštopavanje Osijek — Hidros
Osijek. An emergency service where the entire design question was how few taps it takes to place the call.
VKS Sanacija
Zagreb and Velika Gorica. Services plus a careers section, because staff are harder to find than customers.
Krtolin
Five service lines kept separately findable, without splitting the business into five websites.
ProH2O
Serbia. The same trade in a different market, where the problem is searched for differently.
Questions from trade businesses
Do you only build for plumbers and pipe work?
No. That is simply where the references stacked up. The pattern is identical for any trade somebody calls when something has gone wrong — electricians, locksmiths, appliance repair, roofers, heating and cooling, towing. It also holds for small firms that do no emergency work at all: a manufacturer selling across several countries is a different problem, but the same method, one page per question the customer asks.
I have a Facebook page. Do I need a website at all?
Facebook is found by people who already know you. Search is found by people who have the problem right now and have never heard of you. Those are two different audiences, and the second one is the expensive one to lose.
How many pages do I need?
One for each service people search for separately, and one for each sizeable town you cover. Fewer than that and the pages compete with each other; more than that, invented to fill a sitemap, and none of them says anything.
Will you also work for my competitor?
Not in your trade and your area. The five sites above sit in five separate territories, and that is not an accident — if I build for you, I do not build for whoever is competing for the same customer. If your area is already taken, you hear that in the first reply rather than after a quote.
What does it cost and how long does it take?
It depends on how many services have to earn their own search. A figure comes after the first conversation, once the scope is real. A number quoted before the problem is understood is a guess wearing a suit.
Are you called by people who found you, or only by people who already knew you?
Tell me what you do, where you work, and what people type when they look for it. If your area is free, I will tell you what the site would need.
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