Show finished work with before-and-after photographs, credentials and registrations written out in plain text, services split by trade, and a callback request that collects the job details. A client holding three quotes decides on evidence, and most contractors give them none.
Almost every contractor has the evidence already. It is several hundred photographs on a phone, sorted by nothing, that the client never sees. The website’s job is to get maybe twenty of them in front of the person deciding.
How much finished work should you show?
Between six and twelve projects is plenty. More than that and nobody reaches the end; fewer and it looks like everything you have ever done.
Each project needs four things: what the client wanted, what you did, how long it took, and photographs. The two-line description matters more than people expect, because it is what turns a photograph of a finished kitchen into evidence that you can run a job.
Do before-and-after photographs actually work?
For contracting, yes, more than almost anything else. A finished room is a nice photograph. The same room before, next to it, is proof of what you changed.
Two practical rules. Shoot the before photograph from roughly the same position as the after, or the comparison does not read. And get them compressed properly, because a gallery straight off a phone will be tens of megabytes and will not load on a site visit.
What should you say about credentials?
Write them out as text, with a line explaining what each one means. A row of unexplained logos and badge graphics tells a client nothing, and a client who does not know what a registration means cannot be reassured by it.
- Trade registrations
- Name them, say what they cover
- Insurance
- Type and cover level
- Years trading
- A number, if it is true
- Team size
- Honest, not inflated
- Guarantee
- Length and what it covers
Do not invent any of it. A client who checks one claim and finds it wrong stops reading the rest.
How should the enquiry form work?
A contractor is usually on site when the enquiry arrives and cannot take a call. So the form should collect enough that you can call back already knowing what the job is.
- What kind of work — pick from your trades.
- Where — an area or postcode is enough at this stage.
- Rough timing — urgent, next month, planning ahead.
- A good time to call back.
- Name and one way to reach them.
That is six fields, and it turns a missed call into a callback you can prepare for.
Should you list prices?
Usually not a fixed price, because contracting genuinely varies. But say something. A typical range for a common job, a day rate, or a minimum job size all help the client work out whether to contact you, and stop you quoting for work far below your floor.
What about a page for each trade?
Worth doing if you genuinely offer several. A client searching for one specific trade lands on the page for it rather than on a general services page that mentions it in a list. That is also how search engines index the work.
What is not worth doing is a page for every trade in every town you cover. That pattern is transparent to search engines and it damages the site it is on.
Questions people actually ask
- I do not have before photographs of old jobs. What now?
- Start taking them from the next job. In the meantime show the finished work with a proper description of what the job involved. Then add before-and-after as it accumulates.
- Should I show client names?
- Only with permission, and never for private homes without asking. "A four-bedroom house in the north of the city" is enough detail and creates no problem.
- Do reviews belong on the site?
- Real ones, yes, with a first name and the type of job. Invented ones are worse than having none — they read as invented, and once a client suspects one thing is fabricated they reconsider everything else.