The Contractor's Website Playbook

Read this before you pay anyone $5,000 for a website

I build websites for a living, so take this with whatever grain of salt you want: most contractors are overpaying for their websites, and a lot of them are overpaying for websites that don't work.

I run a one-person web studio in Denver. My clients are painters, landscapers, roofers, and other home-service contractors — people who need the phone to ring, not a design award. I wrote this because I keep having the same conversation: a contractor shows me a proposal from an agency, and half the line items are things they don't need, priced like things they do.

This playbook covers three things: what your website actually has to do, what it should cost, and how to spot the padding before you sign. It's short on purpose. You have jobs to run.

Want me to run this on your site instead?

You can self-score with the checklist below, or send me your site and I'll run the full 10-point audit myself and tell you exactly what's worth fixing — free, no pitch. If your site's already fine, I'll tell you that too.

1. Your website has one job

Your website exists to turn a searcher into a phone call. That's it.

Here's how it actually gets used. Someone's water heater fails, or their fence is falling over, or they finally have the budget to paint the house. They Google "fence repair Denver" or they get your name from a neighbor and look you up. They land on your site — almost always on their phone — and in about ten seconds they decide one of two things: this person looks legit, I'll call or back button.

Every decision about your website should be tested against that ten seconds. Does this help a stressed homeowner on a phone decide to call me? A slick animated homepage doesn't. A phone number they can tap does.

Three moments matter:

• The search. Can people find you when they look for what you do in the area you serve?
• The landing. Does the site load fast on a phone and immediately show what you do, where you work, and proof you're real?
• The decision. Is calling you (or filling out a short form) the easiest possible next step?

2. The essentials — what every contractor site needs

Here's the complete list. If a proposal doesn't cover these, it's incomplete.

• A tap-to-call phone number, visible without scrolling. On mobile, your number should be a link that opens the dialer — at the top of the page, not buried in a footer.
• Fast load on a phone. Your customers are on job sites, in driveways, on cell connections. A site that takes six seconds to load loses people who would have called.
• Photos of your real work. Homeowners can smell stock photography. Ten decent phone photos of actual jobs beat a hundred glossy stock images.
• Your service area, stated plainly. "Serving Denver, Aurora, Lakewood, and the west metro" — in text, on the page. Google reads it and so do customers.
• Reviews on the site. You don't need fifty. Two or three real quotes from real customers, with names, do the work.
• A short contact form. Name, phone, what the job is. Every extra field costs you leads.
• Basic local SEO. Every page needs a title that says what you do and where ("Deck Builder in Denver, CO"), a description Google can show in results, and a link to your Google Business Profile.

A site that nails these seven things will outperform a $10,000 site that's missing three of them.

3. What agencies overcharge you for

None of these are scams exactly — they're real services, sold to businesses that don't need them, at prices that assume you won't ask questions.

• Monthly "SEO packages" with no deliverables. For a local contractor, the SEO work that matters is mostly done once. If nobody can tell you what you're buying each month, stop buying it.
• Template sites at custom prices. Nothing wrong with a template site, but it's a $1,500–$2,500 job, not a $6,000 one. Ask directly: "Is this built from a template or from scratch?"
• "Branding discovery" phases. If you're a contractor whose brand is shows up on time, does good work, answers the phone, you don't need a $3,000 workshop to figure that out.
• Hosting markups. Agencies routinely charge $100–$150/month for hosting that costs a real company a few dollars. Ask what you're getting for the money.
• Retainers on a site that never changes. Legitimate if maintenance is actually happening. Ask for the log of what was done last quarter — no log, no retainer.
• Pages you don't need. A blog nobody will ever write for, an "Our Process" page longer than your services page. A great contractor site is often five pages or fewer.

The tell that runs through all of these: vagueness. Padding hides in words like "optimization," "management," "strategy," and "premium." When you ask what those words mean and the answer is more words like them — that's your answer.

4. Google Business Profile: half the battle, and it's free

For a local contractor, your Google Business Profile (the listing with the map, reviews, and photos) often matters as much as your website. When someone searches "painter near me," the map results show up before the regular websites. Getting into that map pack comes from:

• A complete, accurate profile — services, hours, service area, phone, all filled in.
• Photos, added regularly — job photos, before-and-afters, your truck, your crew.
• Reviews — asked for, and answered. Ask right when the customer is happiest, then reply to every review.
• Consistency everywhere — your name, address, and phone should match exactly across Google, Yelp, Angi, Nextdoor, and the rest.

You can do all of this yourself for free. It takes discipline more than skill.

5. What fair pricing looks like

These are my actual prices — other honest vendors will land in similar ranges. If a quote is way above these, the vendor should be able to explain exactly what you're getting for the difference.

Two rules of thumb: one-time work should be priced one-time — building the site, setting up listings, configuring email are projects, not subscriptions. And monthly fees need monthly deliverables — hosting, updates, backups, listing upkeep, fine; "management" needs a definition or a decline.

6. Red flags when hiring a web company

Any one of these is a reason to slow down. Two or more, walk.

• They register the domain in their name. You should be the registered owner of your domain, full stop.
• They can't itemize the monthly fee. If "what does this buy me each month?" doesn't get a plain answer, you have your answer.
• You never talk to the person doing the work. Every layer between you and the builder is a layer where your job gets misunderstood.
• Long contracts. Twelve-month minimums, cancellation fees. Good vendors keep clients with good work, not contracts.
• No contractor sites to show you. Ask to see three, then visit them on your phone.
• They won't hand over access. "We keep that for security reasons" means "we keep that so you can't fire us."

7. The 10-point self-audit

Pull up your site on your phone and score it. One point each.

• My phone number is visible without scrolling, and tapping it starts a call
• The site loads in under 3 seconds on cell data
• Within 5 seconds, a stranger could say what I do and where I do it
• Every photo is my actual work — zero stock photos
• At least two real customer reviews appear on the site
• My contact form has 5 fields or fewer
• My Google Business Profile is complete, with photos added in the last 60 days
• My name, address, and phone match exactly across Google, Yelp, and other listings
• I own my own domain and have the logins for my site and hosting
• I can say exactly what every monthly web-related fee I pay actually buys

8–10: Your web presence is in good shape. Don't let anyone sell you a rebuild.
5–7: You're leaking leads. Most of what's missing is cheap to fix — fix the phone number and speed first.
0–4: Your website is costing you jobs right now. The good news: getting to 8+ costs less than you think.