Contractor Website Design in Toronto & the GTA

Why do contractor websites lose the quote?

The call comes in at 2 pm. You are on a roof, in a crawl space or driving between two jobs. It goes to voicemail, and the homeowner calls the next name on the list. The contractor who answers first, or at least replies first, gets the walk-through.

A website cannot pick up the phone, but it can take the quote request properly, reply by text within a minute so the person knows you have it, and give you everything you need for the call back: the job, the address, the timeline and a photo. That is what every site we build for a trade does, and the missed-call text-back in the Automation plan covers the calls the site never saw.

We know the problem from the inside. BuildSites runs its own flooring company, Flooring Office, and the quote problem is the same whether the trade is flooring, tiling or drywall.

What does a contractor website need to show?

Trust, before the price. A homeowner choosing between three contractors picks the one who looks like a business that will still exist next year. Most contractors already hold the proof and never put it on the site.

• Your licence and insurance: the licence number, the WSIB clearance certificate, and liability insurance, stated plainly on the About page and in the footer.
• Reviews, linked, not quoted: a link to your Google reviews and your HomeStars profile where the person can read them, rather than three testimonials we typed in.
• Real job photos: phone photos from your own jobs, labelled with the city, beat any stock image of a stranger's kitchen.
• One page per service: a page about basement waterproofing ranks for basement waterproofing. A list of twelve services on the homepage ranks for none of them.
• The areas you drive to: named in the text of the service pages and on an areas page, so a search for your trade plus Vaughan or Oakville can find you.

What does $297 a month buy that a $39 template does not?

Several Toronto agencies now put a monthly price on their contractor pages, some as low as a few dollars a week. The question is what the monthly fee covers. Here is what ours covers, from the pricing page:

Included in the Website plan	How it works for a contractor
Up to 8 pages, designed and written for your business	Home, about, reviews, contact, and one page per service and area, written from a 20-minute call and your list
Quote or contact form answered by text within a minute	The homeowner gets a text while you are still on the ladder
Local search pages per service and area	Service and city pages that can rank, not a doorway grid
Google Business Profile linked, analytics and Search Console connected	Your profile, your site and your numbers in one place
Hosting, monitoring every minute, updates within 24 hours, nightly backups, unlimited edits	Text us the new phone number or the new service and it is live, usually the same day

Prices are in USD, plus applicable taxes. There is no upfront build cost; the first payment is due the day the site goes live, on a 12-month term, then month to month.

How does a contractor site handle quotes from a phone?

The form is built for a phone first, because that is where both of you are. Big tap targets, a photo upload that opens the camera, the address field that completes itself, and four questions, not fourteen: what is the job, where is it, when does it need to be done, and a photo.

The reply by text goes out within a minute and tells the person when to expect your call. On the Automation plan the quote is followed up at day 1, 3 and 7 until it is answered, and the invoice afterwards until it is paid. Automation for contractors walks through the workflows.

Do contractors need a page for every city?

A page for every city you actually work in, each one written for that city. Luxury Flooring has seven across the GTA because their installers drive to all seven. A page for a town you have never worked in, generated from a template, is the pattern Google's spam policies describe, and it is the pattern on some of the agency sites that rank for "contractor website design Toronto" today. We do not build it.

How fast can a contractor site go live?

48 hours from your logo, your services list and your licence details. Working time only. If you have no logo, we set a clean wordmark so the clock still starts. Bilingual sites for Montréal take one to two weeks because every page is written twice.

Which trades do you build for?

The trades where we have built a real site or run one ourselves: flooring, moving and delivery, and barbershops, each with its own page on our industries page. The flooring page goes into the quote form in detail. For a trade not listed, book a call and we will tell you honestly whether we have built for it.