What a website costs for a landscaper in Australia

Landscaping sells on the photo. The site has one job: put the before-and-after in front of the right person in the right suburb. Here is what that costs, fixed.

Landscaping is the trade where the photo does the selling. A retaining wall, a paved courtyard, a front yard that went from dirt to done: the customer does not need to be told you are good, they need to be shown, and then they need to know you work in their suburb. Everything a landscaping website costs comes down to how well it does those two things.

The short answer

The prices are on the pricing page and they are fixed before we start. Starter is one strong page at $1,490. Standard, $2,590, is five to seven pages plus four suburb pages. Complete, $3,590, is ten-plus pages, ten suburb pages and online booking for the maintenance side. No GST on any of them. The care plan afterwards is $99 a month, month to month, and if you want the suburb pages to keep growing, the Local SEO retainer is $450 a month, also month to month.

What moves a landscaper between the three is the number of kinds of work you want enquiries for, how many suburbs you want them from, and whether the maintenance side of the business should take bookings without a phone call. Count those three and the package picks itself.

What a landscaping site has to do

• Show the work, properly. Before and after, side by side, from the same spot, with a line about what the job was and roughly how long it took. Ten of those beat a hundred stock photos of somebody else's garden. This is the part of the site you already have on your phone.
• Separate the design work from the maintenance work. A customer wanting a courtyard built and a customer wanting the lawn done fortnightly are different people searching different words. Each kind of work gets its own page, or neither gets found.
• Say where, by suburb. Landscapers drive further than most trades, and the customer wants to know you will come to them. The suburbs written out, each on its own page when the package includes them, and matching the Google Business Profile word for word. Suburb pages that work explains why the two have to agree.
• Make the quote request easy. A landscaping quote needs a site visit, so the form asks for the four things that decide whether the visit is worth it: what, where, roughly the size, and photos of the space if they have them. Fewer fields, more enquiries.

Which package fits which landscaper

Starter, $1,490. A sole operator doing mostly maintenance and small jobs in a handful of suburbs. One strong page: the work you do, a dozen before-and-afters, the suburbs, a tap-to-call button and the quote form. If the Google Business Profile is doing the map work, this is the right size.

Standard, $2,590. A landscaping business that does design-and-build work and wants enquiries from the suburbs with the right houses. A home page, a page for each of three or four kinds of work, the gallery, and four suburb pages written for those suburbs: the block sizes, the soil, the councils, the kind of jobs that come from there. This is where most landscapers with a crew sit.

Complete, $3,590. A business with maintenance rounds and a design side, vans and staff. Ten-plus pages, ten suburb pages, and online booking for the routine work, so a fortnightly lawn customer books without a call and the phone is free for the courtyard enquiry. What each one includes for a landscaper specifically is on the landscapers page.

The other ways of paying for it

Each option in the table below works for somebody. The difference is who owns what when the money has moved, and for a landscaper, who owns the photos of your own work is a question worth asking twice.

The DIY builders are a genuine option for landscapers, because you have the photos and the platforms are built around photos. The cost is the evenings, and the fact that the site lives on their system: leave and you rebuild. If you have more evenings than jobs right now, it is a fair trade. When the jobs come, it stops being one.

The lead platforms sell you an enquiry that has been sent to other landscapers too, so you are quoting a courtyard against three strangers before the customer has seen anyone's work. For maintenance rounds it can fill a week. For design work it is a race to the wrong number. The sum is in hipages versus your own website.

What is in the price, and what is not

In every package: the words written for landscaping, the gallery built from your photos with the before and the after side by side, the suburbs written out, the domain registered in your name, and every login handed over on day one. Two rounds of changes are included; anything beyond is quoted in writing before we start.

Three promises come with the number. Live in 21 days from a start date agreed in writing, or you pay half. A Google Lighthouse score of 95 or better on handover, or we keep working on it free. And if you ever want to leave, the domain, the files and every login handed over within five business days, without being asked why. The start date is agreed once we have your photos, so the clock does not start on an empty gallery.

Not in the price: the yearly domain renewal in your name, and the ongoing care. The care plan is $99 a month for hosting, backups, updates and up to 30 minutes of changes; if you stop it, nothing you paid for switches off. The Local SEO retainer, $450 a month, keeps adding suburb pages and Google Business Profile posts, and it is the one that makes sense once the site has proved it can find work.

The costs no quote shows you

• The before photo you forgot to take. The after is easy. The before is the one that sells, and it has to be taken before the excavator arrives. Make it a habit on the next five jobs.
• The two lines about each job. What the customer wanted, what was hard about it. Nobody else can write them.
• The suburbs you actually want. Four is a good start; ten is a lot to keep true.

How to check any quote you are holding

1. Is the price fixed, or "from"? Fixed price versus "from" explains what the second one usually becomes.
2. Whose name is the domain in? Yours, or it is not your website. What "you own it" means.
3. Who owns the photos once they are on the site? You do, always. If the answer is anything else, walk.
4. How many days, from which date? A start date in writing, agreed once the photos are in, and a consequence if it slips.

When you should not buy a website yet

If your Google Business Profile has no photos, put twenty on it this week, for free, before spending a dollar with anyone: the five-minute guide. If it is spring and the diary is already full to autumn, a website will not help you this season, though it will help you next winter. And if the work comes through one builder who keeps you busy, keep the builder happy first.

If none of that is you, the three prices are on the pricing page, and the quote comes back within one business day. Bring the photos.

The before photo is the one that gets you the job. Take it first.