Web design for tradies
Websites for tradies that actually bring in work.
Marketing-led websites for Melbourne tradies — built to rank locally, designed to convert, with the post-launch reporting nobody else includes. From A$3,200.
For tradies, specifically
What I know about your niche.
The Melbourne trades website market is mostly broken. Of the 100+ trades websites I look at in a typical month, 80% have at least one of these structural problems: 7-second mobile load times, broken contact forms, missing Google Business Profile, no real photos of actual work, no service-area schema, no reviews integration. Each one of those costs you real callouts.
What actually works for a tradie website:
- Mobile speed under 1 second. Tradie prospects are searching at 7am from the car park, on patchy 4G. A slow site loses to a faster competitor’s, every time. Astro + Cloudflare delivers sub-second consistently.
- Google Business Profile that’s actually maintained. Weekly posts, photo uploads, review responses, accurate service area, accurate hours. Most trades set up GBP once and never touch it again — the ones that maintain it weekly dominate the map pack.
- Photos of real work, not stock. Before-and-afters from actual jobs, captioned with what was done and how long it took. Stock photos of pristine plumbing read as exactly what they are.
- Clear service area and pricing transparency. Even rough pricing bands (“From A$220 for a leaking tap”) outperform “call for quote”. Most prospects price-shop quietly; if they can’t see your numbers, they assume you’re hiding something.
- Reviews integrated and dated. Five testimonials from 2019 read worse than two testimonials from this month. Live integration with Google reviews (showing star count + recent ones) builds more trust than a carousel of cherry-picked quotes.
Trades who’d be a good fit for what I do: plumbers, electricians, builders, carpenters, painters, landscapers, roofers, tilers, plasterers, HVAC, locksmiths, removalists. The marketing-led framing applies the same across all of them — what differs is the specific search behaviour and conversion path for each.
What every tradies website needs
Local search visibility
Tradies prospects search "[service] near me" or "[service] [suburb]". Local SEO and GBP optimisation are non-negotiable, set up day one.
Clear booking path
Whether it's a contact form, a phone tap, or a booking widget, the path from landing to enquiry has to be one tap. Friction kills bookings.
Trust signals that work
Reviews, real photos of the work, certifications, response time, area served. Stock photos and stock claims read as exactly what they are.
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1. Discovery
Two-week structured workshop including a marketing brief that's specific to tradies — what your customers Google, what your competitors are getting wrong, where leads should be coming from.
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2. Build
4–6 weeks. Copy drafted before design. SEO and GBP set up in the build phase.
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3. Launch + 6 months of reporting
Lighthouse 95+ at launch. Monthly performance reports for 6 months.
Pricing
From A$3,200. Calculator gives a real number in 30 seconds.
FAQ
Things tradies ask before booking.
I get enough callouts already from word of mouth. Do I need a website?
If you're at capacity on the work you have, no rush. If you want to grow beyond referrals — bigger jobs, commercial clients, higher margins — yes. A working website is what lets you charge what your work is actually worth instead of being commoditised on Hipages or Airtasker.
Hipages, Airtasker, ServiceSeeking — do those replace a website?
They generate leads, expensively, and put you in a bidding war with every other tradie. Your own website lets prospects find you directly, see your work, and decide they want YOU specifically — that's a fundamentally better economic position. Use the directories for fill-in work; use your website for the work that actually pays.
Should I focus on Google Business Profile or the website?
Both. GBP gets you in the map pack for 'plumber near me' searches; the website earns the call once they've clicked through. Without the website, they bounce. Without GBP, they don't find you in the first place. Set up properly, the two compound.
What about photos? My phone photos look unprofessional.
Phone photos are fine — better than stock photos every time. The job isn't to look like a glossy magazine; it's to look like a competent tradie who's actually done the work. Genuine before-and-afters with simple captions outperform staged photos.
I'm a plumber/sparkie/builder/etc. — do you have a niche-specific approach?
Yes. The structure is the same (marketing-led, Astro, GBP-integrated) but the content is specific to the trade. Plumbers have different prospect concerns (emergency callouts, water damage timing) to builders (project pricing, references, license verification). That comes out in discovery.
How much can I realistically charge after the website is live?
Conservatively, tradies with proper websites + GBP setups charge 15-30% more for similar work, because they're being chosen rather than commoditised. Some clients see bigger lifts (40-50%) where the website unlocks commercial or insurance work they couldn't access before. Quote rises aren't instant — they typically follow 3-6 months of post-launch consistency.