The ten-point tradie website checklist

Fifteen minutes, on your phone, with wifi off. Score each one out of one and be hard on yourself — your customers will be.

Open your own site the way a stranger would: phone, mobile data, from a search rather than a bookmark. Then work down this list.

How to run the test properly

Wifi off, so you are on the same connection as a customer standing in a driveway. A private window, so your browser is not helping you with things it has already cached. Search your trade and your suburb, find yourself, and tap through. Time it from the tap: that is your load time, and it is the only one that counts. On your own laptop, on your own wifi, you will pass tests your customers fail.

Do it twice: once on the home page, and once on the page a search actually lands people on, which is usually a service page and usually the weaker of the two. Score the one your customers see, not the one you are proud of.

The ten

1. Your phone number is a tappable button on the first screen, without scrolling. Not text you have to copy.
2. The headline says what you do and where. "Quality service since 1998" says neither.
3. It loads in under three seconds on mobile data. Count it out loud.
4. Your service area is listed by suburb, in words, somewhere a person and a search engine can both read.
5. Prices, or at least ranges, appear somewhere. Hiding them entirely costs more enquiries than it saves.
6. Your licence and insurance are visible if you are in a licensed trade.
7. There are photos of your actual work, not stock images of models in clean overalls.
8. The contact form asks for five things or fewer. Every extra field costs you submissions.
9. Your Google Business Profile details match the site exactly — same business name, same number, same address format.
10. Somebody could book or enquire without ringing, for the jobs that do not need a conversation.

Seven or less out of ten and the site is costing you work. Under five and you are better off starting again than patching — the fixes compound into a rebuild anyway.

What each point is really checking

The list looks like ten small things. It is three big ones, seen from ten angles.

• Can they reach you in one tap? Points one, eight and ten. A customer with a burst pipe is not filling in a form with nine fields and a captcha. The number as a button, a short form, and a way to book the routine jobs without a conversation.
• Can they find you at all? Points two, four and nine. A headline that says the trade and the place, the suburbs written out, and a Google profile that agrees with the site to the letter. Search engines match words; they do not guess.
• Do they believe you? Points five, six and seven. A price or a range, the licence number where a cautious customer looks for it, and photos of your actual work. Each of those is a question the customer has before ringing, and answering it on the page is cheaper than answering it on the phone.

Point three, speed, is the gate in front of all of them. Nothing on the page matters if the page has not arrived.

Fix these first, in this order

Number one (the tappable phone number) takes ten minutes and returns more than the rest put together. Then number three (speed), because everything else only matters if the page loads: why your site is slow. Then number nine, which is free: fix your Google profile.

If the answer is a rebuild: how to check the people who will build it

Under five out of ten and you are shopping, not patching. The same fifteen minutes, pointed at the studio instead of the site, saves you a bad year. Ask each one these seven. A decent studio answers every one in a sentence, and the answers are the same in the quote as they were on the phone.

1. Whose name will the domain be in? Yours, from day one, or walk away. The domain is the business. What "you own it" means has the full list of what should be yours.
2. Is the price fixed, or "from"? A fixed price is a number you can plan around. A "from" price is the number they wanted you to see first. Fixed price versus "from".
3. How many days, counted from what? A date in writing and a consequence if it slips. "A few weeks" is not a plan.
4. Who writes the words? If it is you, the quote is for a layout and the slow part is still yours. Someone who has written for your trade before will ask you better questions than you would ask yourself.
5. What happens if I leave? The right answer: the domain transferred, the files, every login, within days, at no charge. Anything else is a hostage.
6. How fast will it be, measured how? Ask for a Google Lighthouse score on handover, on a phone, with a number attached. "Fast" is an opinion. 95 is a measurement.
7. Can I see one you built that is live? Not a mock-up. A site with a real business behind it, that you can ring.

We answer all seven on the pricing page, in writing and with the numbers: fixed prices, live in 21 days from a start date agreed in writing or you pay half, a Lighthouse score of 95 or better on handover, and everything handed over within five business days if you ever want to go. Our one live site so far is a Melbourne locksmith, and you can ring it.

What a pass looks like

Nine or ten. A page that loads before the customer has finished reading the search result, says the trade and the suburb in the first line, has the number as a button under it, shows the licence and a price, and gives the routine jobs a way to book. That is not a fancy website. It is a website that does the one job it has, and most trade sites in Australia do not.

A site gets to ten by taking things away, not adding them.