Trades & field service
The one they call is usually just the one who answers.
Being better at the job is not what wins the emergency call. Being findable, answering, and quoting the same day is.
Werehouse Media builds websites, local search visibility and job systems for UK trades and field service businesses: heating and plumbing, electrical, roofing, building, groundworks, landscaping, pest control, cleaning and similar. The commercial reality in this sector is that the business which replies first usually wins the job, which makes response speed a more valuable investment than design. Very few trade businesses compete seriously for local search, so a properly structured site with a real page for each service and each town, and a correctly configured Google Business Profile, will frequently outrank far older competitors within months.
Behind that sit the systems: enquiries acknowledged within seconds, quotes produced and chased automatically, jobs and certificates tracked in a CRM built around sites and visits rather than sales deals, and a phone that gets answered when everyone is under a floor. Websites from £995, local SEO from £695 a month, process audit free for a limited time (normally £495), bespoke applications from £4,500, and CRM builds quoted after the audit.
The search problem
People are searching for your trade every day. Almost nobody is answering them.
Somebody in your area is looking for an electrician, a plumber, a roofer or a heating engineer right now, and in most towns there is no obvious answer waiting for them. Whoever turns up first takes the job. That is a rare position to be in and it will not stay open indefinitely.
The reason is straightforward: most trade businesses do not market. They rely on word of mouth, which works right up until a quiet January, and then there is nothing to turn on. The ones who do market usually buy leads from a directory, which is renting an audience rather than owning one.
What wins local search for a trade
- The Google Business Profile is the whole game for "near us" searches. The right primary category matters more than almost anything else on this list and is the single most commonly got-wrong field. An electrician categorised as "Contractor" instead of "Electrician" is invisible for the search that matters. Service area drawn to where the vans actually go, every service listed, twenty or more real photographs of real jobs.
- A real page per service. Boiler repair, boiler installation, power flushing, landlord certificates and emergency call-out are five different searches at five different values. A "Services" page listing nine bullet points ranks for none of them.
- A real page per town, for towns you genuinely work in. Four honest town pages beat ten near-identical ones with the name swapped, which Google treats as doorway pages and which can pull the whole site down.
- Reviews, continuously. Asked for after every job by a system rather than remembered occasionally.
- Speed. Emergency searches happen on a phone on mobile data, often in a hallway with one bar. A heavy site loses that job to a lighter one.
The full working checklist, ordered by return per hour, is in the local SEO checklist for trades, and the emergency-search argument is in local SEO for trades. Both are free and neither requires hiring anybody.
The website
The site has one job, and it is not looking impressive.
A trade website converts on four things, and design is the fourth of them.
The phone number, immediately
Tappable, in the header, on every page, visible without scrolling. A significant share of trade enquiries are people standing next to a problem. Making them hunt for a number to solve it is an unforced error, and putting a contact form where a phone number should be costs jobs every week.
Proof that you are real
Photographs of actual jobs, not stock imagery of a smiling man with a clipboard. Registration numbers where they apply (Gas Safe, NICEIC, NAPIT, FENSA, TrustMark and the rest) because those are what a homeowner checks. Reviews on the page rather than only on the profile. The area genuinely covered, stated honestly.
Enough price information to qualify
Not a full price list for work that has to be surveyed, but enough to stop the wrong enquiries and reassure the right ones. A call-out charge. A typical range for common jobs. What affects it. The trades that publish something convert better and waste less time quoting for people who were never going to buy.
Then design
Clean, fast, legible, and obviously not a template with a different logo on it. Design matters here mostly as a credibility signal: a site that looks abandoned suggests a business that might be. It does not need to be a showpiece, and money spent on animation is money not spent on the systems below, which return more.
The systems behind it
Quoting, chasing and answering, without an office.
This is where most of the money actually is, and it is the half of the industry that web designers never touch.
Enquiry response, within seconds
The business that replies first usually wins the job. Not the cheapest, not the best reviewed. The first. An enquiry that arrives at 3pm on a roof and gets answered at 7pm has usually already gone elsewhere. Every enquiry acknowledged instantly, qualified, and put somewhere it will be seen. This is the highest-return single automation available to a trade and it has a page of its own.
Quotes out the same day, chased on their own
Quote produced from the site visit rather than typed up at nine at night, sent, and then followed up politely on a schedule that stops the moment it is accepted or declined. Most trades know their conversion rate would improve with chasing and most never chase, because chasing is the job nobody wants after a twelve-hour day.
A CRM built around jobs, not deals
Off-the-shelf CRMs model contacts, deals and pipeline stages. A field service business's real objects are properties, jobs, visits, engineers, certificates and recurring services. A CRM for tradesmen built around those is a genuinely different thing from a sales CRM with the labels changed, and it is why so many trades abandon the CRM they bought. A CRM like that is quoted after a process audit (normally £495, free for a limited time), and that audit will frequently say buy a good vertical product instead, which is a legitimate answer and a cheap one.
The phone, when everyone is on a job
Two people under a floor cannot answer it. An AI receptionist that qualifies the job, captures the address and the fault, works out whether it is an emergency, and texts it through is worth more in this sector than almost any other. It is a managed service, from £999 to set up and then £250 a month, and we run it; see the AI receptionist page, including the honest arithmetic about when it is not worth it.
Pricing
Published, like everything else.
The same published prices as everywhere else on this site. Quoted in writing before anything starts, fixed, and never adjusted because of the sector on the invoice.
| What | Price | Usually right when |
|---|---|---|
| SEO audit and fix list | Normally £495, free for a limited time | You already have a site and nobody finds it. |
| Local SEO | From £695/month | You need to be found in your own town and the map pack matters. |
| Full search programme | From £995/month | Content, technical work, earned links and AI search visibility together. |
| Website build | From £995, multi-page £1,495 upwards | No site, or one that cannot be extended. |
| Website redesign | From £1,495 | A site with rankings worth protecting that has run out of road. |
| Process audit | Normally £495, free for a limited time | Before any system is quoted. |
| Bespoke application | From £4,500 | A portal, dashboard or internal tool with its own data model. |
| CRM or ERP build | Quoted after the audit | Your own records and stages, when no product fits the way the work runs. |
| Care | From £49/month | Anything live that needs watching. Never a condition of the build. |
| The whole chain | Scoped per business | The website, the enquiry handling and the internal system are better built as one thing than bought from three suppliers. |
The incumbent specialists in most sectors publish no prices at all and put a book-a-call form where the number should be. We would rather you saw the number first.
Straight answers
Common questions.
How much does a website for a trade business cost?
From £995 for a focused site done properly, and £1,495 upwards for a multi-page site with a real page for each service and each town, which is what most trades actually need in order to rank. Local SEO to work it continuously is from £695 a month. If you already have a site, the SEO audit (normally £495, free for a limited time) is the better first step: it tells you whether the site is the problem or whether the problem is a Google Business Profile in the wrong category, which is a far cheaper fix.
I get all my work by word of mouth. Do I need any of this?
Possibly not, and that is a real answer rather than a modest one. If you are booked six weeks out and turning work away, marketing spend is not your constraint. Capacity is, and the systems half of this page will do more for you than the website half. The businesses this is genuinely for are the ones with a quiet month they cannot explain, or the ones who want to choose their jobs rather than take what arrives.
How many town pages should I have?
Only for towns you genuinely work in and can write something specific about. Ten near-identical pages with the town name swapped is the pattern Google treats as doorway pages, and it can pull down the whole site rather than just failing to help. Four real pages beat ten thin ones, every time. If you cannot write a distinct paragraph about working in a town, it does not need a page.
Is a CRM worth it for a five-van operation?
Sometimes, and the honest first step is the process audit, normally £495 and free for a limited time, rather than a build. At five vans the usual answer is a good off-the-shelf field service product, and the audit will name which one. Bespoke earns its cost when the products genuinely do not model your work, when you are paying per seat for people who only need one screen, or when something you depend on cannot be connected. We would rather hand you a free audit that says buy Commusoft than sell you a £6,000 build you did not need.
Will you take my work if I am not in Sussex?
Yes. Local SEO for a plumber in Leeds works the same way as for one in Lewes, and the whole engagement runs on calls, screen shares and preview links. Being local is genuinely useful for the first conversation and makes very little difference after that.
Worth reading next
Written for owners, not for marketers.
Next step
What happens to an enquiry at 3pm?
If the honest answer is that it sits until the evening, that is where the money is going, and it is cheaper to fix than a website. Tell us how the day actually runs.