What a Contractor Website Needs to Get Booked Jobs

What a contractor website needs

A contractor website needs seven things to turn a visitor into a booked job: proof you are real and insured, a page for each service and each area you work in, photos of your own jobs, a quote form that asks the right questions and gets answered fast, a phone number that works with one thumb, speed on a phone, and reviews that match what Google shows. Everything else is decoration. This is the checklist we build to for contractor websites in Toronto and the GTA, and it applies in Montréal just the same.

The homeowner's situation explains the list. They are on a phone, often in the evening, with a problem and three tabs open. They will give each site about ten seconds to answer two questions: can these people do my job, and can I trust them in my house. Then they will send one quote request, maybe two, and the first useful reply usually wins.

1. Proof before pitch

Licence number, WSIB or CNESST coverage, liability insurance, years in business, the areas you serve. On the page, not in a PDF, and near the top. A homeowner comparing three roofers will pick the one who answered the trust question without being asked. If you hold a trade licence, name it. If you are insured, say for how much. These are the lines a competitor without them cannot copy.

2. One page per service, one page per area

"Services" as a single page with a bulleted list does nothing for search and little for the visitor. Someone searching "basement waterproofing Scarborough" wants a page about basement waterproofing that mentions Scarborough, with photos of a basement. Google's guidance on local results says they are based on relevance, distance and prominence (Google Business Profile Help); the relevance half is won on pages like that.

Keep the area pages honest. Different neighbourhoods have different housing stock, different permit offices, different jobs you have done there. Write that. Ten near-identical pages with the city name swapped are the kind of thing Google has learned to ignore.

3. Your photos, not stock

A stock photo of a smiling man in a hard hat says nothing. Twelve phone photos of your crew's actual work, with a line about the job under each, says you have done this before and here is the evidence. Before-and-after pairs are the strongest format. Put them on the service page they belong to, not only in a gallery nobody opens.

4. A quote form that works from the truck

This is where most contractor websites lose the job they already won. The form is either a single "message" box, so the first reply has to ask five questions, or a twenty-field monster nobody finishes on a phone. Our lead follow-up automation page covers the reply; here is the form.

Ask for	Why
Name, phone, email, address	You cannot quote without the address; ask for it up front
The service, from a short list	Routes the request to the right person and sets the reply template
Rough size or scope	"Square feet", "number of rooms" or "number of windows": one field that lets you ballpark
Timing	"This month", "next three months", "just pricing": tells you who to call first
Photos, optional	A phone photo of the problem saves a site visit on half of small jobs

Then the part the form cannot do alone. The visitor should get a text within a minute confirming what they sent and offering a time for a call or a measure. You should get an alert with the details, not an email that waits until you are home. That reply speed is the single biggest difference between contractors who book from their site and contractors who do not; it is also what the automation for contractors plan is built around.

5. A phone number for one thumb

Tappable, in the header, visible on every page without scrolling, and the same number as your Google Business Profile. On a phone, a call button that stays fixed at the bottom of the screen outperforms anything in a menu. And when you cannot pick up because you are on a ladder, missed-call text-back sends the caller a text so they do not dial the next name on the list.

6. Fast on a phone, measured, not assumed

Contractor sites are heavy: big photos, a video of the crew, a reviews widget, a chat bubble. Each one is reasonable; together they make a page that takes eight seconds on mobile data. Google's 2016 research found 53% of mobile visits are abandoned past three seconds (Think with Google), and its targets for a healthy page are on web.dev. Test yours with the free SEO audit; it runs Google's PageSpeed Insights on mobile and desktop and shows the result in about a minute.

7. Reviews that match Google

Show your Google reviews on the site, with the same star count Google shows. A site that claims 5.0 while the profile shows 4.3 and 11 reviews costs you trust twice. Ask for a review after every finished job, by text, with the direct link; that is a one-line automation and it compounds. Google says review count and score factor into local ranking, in the same help page linked above.

Mistakes that quietly cost quotes

These come up on contractor sites more than any others, and each one is cheap to remove.

• A chat bubble that nobody staffs. A visitor types a question at 8 pm, gets silence, and assumes that is how you work. Turn it off or connect it to the same automatic reply the form uses.
• "Call for a free estimate" as the only next step. Half of evening visitors will not phone a business after hours. Give them a form, and let the form text them back.
• Service areas listed only as a map image. Google cannot read a picture of a map. Write the areas as text, and give the main ones a page.
• Old prices or old promotions. A "spring special" in October tells the visitor the site is unattended, and they wonder what else is.
• A PDF brochure instead of pages. PDFs do not rank, do not resize for a phone and do not have a quote button.
• Photos with no words. A gallery of forty images with no captions wastes the proof you worked hard to earn. One line under each: the job, the area, the material.

The order to fix things

1. Phone number tappable and in the header. Ten minutes.
2. Quote form asking the five things above, with an automatic text reply. A few days.
3. Trust block near the top: licence, insurance, years, areas. One afternoon.
4. Speed: compress the photos, remove what you do not need. Measure before and after.
5. Service pages, then area pages, with your own photos. Ongoing.

Our contractor website page shows what the finished version looks like, with the forms built for the trades we work with: flooring and moving have their own pages because their quote forms ask different questions. If the problem is less the site and more the search results, start with the Google Business Profile vs website post instead.

Run the free audit on your current site first. It will tell you which of the seven is missing.