Contractor websites show what a written quote cannot

For your trade 6 min read

A quote is one number on one page. What a contractor website has to show alongside it before a homeowner will sign anything at all.

A homeowner with three quotes on the kitchen table is not comparing three numbers. The numbers are usually close enough that the difference does not decide it. They are trying to work out which of the three of you will turn up when you said, finish what you started, and leave the house in a state they can live in.

A quote cannot answer that. It is one page of figures, and every contractor's version looks much the same. The website is where the rest of the answer goes.

What a quote cannot show and a photograph can

The number on your quote describes a job that does not exist yet. A homeowner has no way to picture it, so they picture the worst version.

Show finished work at the same scale as theirs. A whole-house remodel gallery is no use to somebody adding a single bathroom, and a photograph of a mansion makes a modest job feel like an afterthought. Group the work by the kind of job it was, add one sentence to each set saying what the job actually involved, and include at least one before photograph. Before and after together tell somebody more than twenty finished shots, because the after alone could have been a nice house to begin with.

If a job went long or changed halfway through, that is a good sentence to write, not one to hide. It reads as somebody who has done this before rather than somebody selling.

Whether you are licensed and insured, and where anyone can check

"Licensed and insured" is a phrase, and a phrase costs nothing to type. The version that carries weight is the one somebody can verify without calling you.

Put your license number on the page as text. Name the state or city board that issued it and link to the page where a member of the public can look it up. Say who carries your liability cover and that you hold workers' compensation for anyone on site, because a homeowner who does not understand insurance still understands the difference between an injury being your problem and an injury being theirs.

This is the least glamorous section on the site and one of the few that a competitor cannot copy by writing a nicer sentence.

Who will actually be in the house

The person who measured up is often not the person who arrives at seven on the Monday. That surprise does more damage than almost anything else in the job, and it is easy to remove in advance.

Say how your crew is put together. Whether it is you and two others, whether you use the same electrician and plumber every time, and whether the person who quoted stays as the point of contact through the work. Names help. So does saying who the homeowner should speak to when you are up a ladder and unreachable, and how long a message usually takes to come back.

What happens the day the job changes

Every job changes. The homeowner already suspects this. What they fear is an invoice that follows the change without discussion.

Write down how you handle it. Work stops, they get told what was found, they get the cost in writing before anyone continues. If you price change orders at an hourly rate plus materials, say so. If there are things you commonly find once a wall or a roof is open, list two or three, because a homeowner who has been warned about rotten sheathing in advance is a homeowner who is not blindsided by it later.

This paragraph does more for the sale than any photograph. It is also the part of the job most contractors handle well and never think to describe.

When you could start, and what starting means

A lead time is not a weakness. Being fully booked into next season tells a homeowner something useful about you. What loses the job is silence, because the homeowner reads it as either uninterested or unavailable.

Give the current shape of your schedule in a sentence, and say when it was last updated. Then explain what starting looks like, because "we start on the twelfth" means very different things to you and to them. Whether the first week is demolition, whether they can stay in the house, whether the kitchen is out of use, and how many working days the whole thing usually runs.

What the street looks like while you work

The homeowner has to live in this. Some of the questions they will not ask out loud are the ones that decide it.

Say what time your crew arrives and when they stop. Say where the skip goes and how long it stays, where the vans park, whether the site gets swept at the end of each day, whether anyone needs to use the bathroom, and what you do about dust in the rest of the house. If you protect floors and doorways as standard, that is worth a line. None of it appears on a quote, and all of it is what somebody is imagining at eleven at night.

Who pulls the permit

Permits are where a homeowner most fears being left holding something they do not understand.

Say plainly whether you pull them or they do, which work needs one in your area, roughly what the inspection schedule does to the timeline, and what happens if an inspector fails something. A contractor who explains the inspection process in four sentences has demonstrated that they have been through it, which is the actual thing being assessed.

A short checklist

Photographs of finished work at the same scale as the job being quoted, with a before shot
License number as text, and where the public can verify it
Liability cover and workers' compensation, stated plainly
Who is on site, and who the homeowner calls when you cannot answer
Your written process for changes found mid-job
Current lead time, with the date it was last updated
Working hours, parking, skip, dust and daily clean-up
Who pulls the permits and what inspections do to the schedule

Questions people ask

Should I put prices on a contractor website

Not job prices. A range for the kinds of work you do most, and a clear statement of what a site visit and a quote cost, is enough to stop the wrong inquiries without pretending you can price a house you have not seen.

How many past jobs should I show

Enough that somebody finds one like theirs. Eight jobs across the categories you want more of beats forty of whatever you happened to photograph.

Do I need testimonials on the page

They help, but they are read after the photographs and the license number, not before. A named review from a nearby town is worth more than five anonymous quotes.

What if most of my work comes from referrals already

Then the site is doing a different job. Somebody handed your name still looks you up before calling, and what they find either confirms the referral or weakens it.

Should the site have a quote request form

Yes, as a second option under the phone number. Ask for the job, the address and a rough timeframe, and nothing else, because every extra field costs you inquiries you would have wanted.

My old site was built by someone who has stopped replying

That happens often and it is not your fault for not knowing how to get back into it. What matters is whether you own the domain name, and that is usually recoverable even when nothing else is.