Showing your license and insurance on your website

For your trade 6 min read

Where a license number and proof of insurance belong on a small trades site, in a form somebody can actually check, without a wall of badges.

The license took a while to get and the insurance costs you every year, so it is reasonable to want both on the website. What usually happens is a row of badges across the homepage, a scanned certificate on a page nobody visits, and the one piece of information a customer wanted nowhere on the site at all.

What the customer is actually checking

Two questions, and they are narrower than you would expect.

Can I confirm this business is who it says it is. And if something goes wrong in my house, is there somebody standing behind it other than the man in the van.

They are not reading your policy. They are looking for a number specific enough to type into a state or county lookup, and a plain sentence about cover. A property manager or a landlord will check. A homeowner mostly will not, but the presence of a checkable number does its work whether or not anybody checks it, because a business hiding nothing looks different from a business showing nothing.

Write the number as text, never as a picture

The most common version of this is a photograph of the certificate on the wall, uploaded as an image.

That fails at everything. It cannot be selected or copied, so nobody can paste it into a lookup. It is unreadable on a phone, which is where most of your visitors are. Search engines cannot read the number inside it. And on a slow connection it is a large file loading in place of something useful.

Write it as a line of type instead, in the normal text of the page. License No. 12345, State of Colorado. That is the whole job, it works on every screen, and somebody can copy it in one gesture.

There is a second reason not to upload the certificate itself. A scanned certificate or insurance document frequently carries a policy number, a signature, and a home address, since plenty of one-person trades are registered at the house. That is more of you on the public internet than the situation calls for.

Which license you have depends on where you stand

This part is worth checking rather than assuming, because it varies by trade and by town.

In Colorado, electrical and plumbing licenses are issued at state level, so the state is the right thing to name next to the number. General contracting and roofing are handled locally, so the number you hold comes from a town or a county, and naming which one is the difference between a checkable number and a meaningless one.

Confirm two things with whoever issues yours: whether they require the number to appear in your advertising, because some do and a website counts, and exactly how they want it written, since a lookup tool that expects a prefix will not find a number typed without it.

Never publish a number belonging to somebody else, including a licensed colleague you work under, unless the arrangement genuinely permits it and you name it. That is the sort of thing that turns a complaint about a doorframe into a licensing matter.

Insurance, said plainly and without figures

Write one sentence in ordinary words, naming what you carry: general liability, workers compensation if you have employees, and bonded if you are. Bonded means a third party will cover certain losses, and it is a different thing from insurance despite the two being welded together in most advertising.

Leave the coverage amounts off the page. They change at renewal, an out-of-date figure on a website is worse than no figure, and anybody who needs the number needs a certificate rather than a sentence.

The line that does the work is: fully insured, certificate of insurance available on request. Then actually be able to produce one within a day, which means knowing how to ask your agent for it before somebody asks you.

Where these lines belong on the site

Three places, and no more.

The footer, on every page, as one quiet line with the license number and the insured statement. This is where people look and it costs no space at the top.

The about page, in a short paragraph with a little more detail: what you are licensed for, who issued it, what insurance you carry, and how long you have been trading.

And one line near the top of any service page where the stakes are high enough that somebody hesitates, such as electrical panels, roofs, gas, or anything involving a permit. Make it one sentence, in the text, not a badge.

What you should not do is give it a whole page in the main menu. A page called License and Insurance competes with your services for attention and is visited by nobody.

Badges, and the ones that mean nothing

Some badges are worth their space because a stranger can verify them: a licensing body, a manufacturer certification, a trade association you genuinely pay for, an accreditation with a public register.

Many are worth nothing: any badge you awarded yourself, directory badges that arrive with a paid listing, vague seals reading trusted or verified with no issuer behind them, and anything from an organization that stopped existing. Five badges in a row on a homepage read as decoration, and decoration is what a reader skips.

Two rules keep this clean. Only display a badge you could prove today. And only use a logo you are actually entitled to use, because association and manufacturer marks come with rules about how they may appear, and that is the same territory as using photographs you did not take.

The renewal that quietly makes your site wrong

Licenses and insurance renew. The website does not change with them.

A number that lapsed in March sits on a homepage for two years because nobody's job is to look at it, and a wrong license number is a worse thing to publish than none at all. The same applies to a certification badge for a manufacturer scheme you left, and to a trade association you stopped paying.

The fix is a calendar reminder, not discipline. Whenever a renewal lands in your inbox, that is the reminder to open the website and check the line still matches. Twice a year, five minutes.

The lines to check on your own site

• License number written as text, in the footer of every page
• The issuing body named, whether that is the state, the county or the town
• Written exactly the way the lookup tool expects it
• No scanned certificates or insurance documents uploaded anywhere
• One plain insurance sentence, with no coverage amounts on the page
• Certificate of insurance genuinely available within a day
• Every badge on the site verifiable today, and used with permission
• A check of all of it whenever a renewal notice arrives

Questions people ask

Do I have to put my license number on my website

Some licensing bodies require the number in advertising and a website counts as advertising, so check with whoever issued yours. Even where it is optional, a checkable number does more for a stranger than any badge.

Should I upload a photo of my license or insurance certificate

No. It cannot be read on a phone or copied into a lookup, and those documents often carry a policy number, a signature and a home address.

Where should the license number go

The footer of every page, plus a fuller sentence on your about page. It does not need a page of its own.

Should I list my insurance coverage amounts

Leave them off. They change at renewal, a stale figure is worse than none, and anybody who needs the number needs the certificate instead.

Are trust badges worth having

Only where a stranger can verify the issuer. Anything self-awarded or vague is decoration, and a row of it makes the real ones harder to notice.

What if I work under somebody else's license

Do not present their number as your own. Say plainly what the arrangement is, or leave the number off and let the license holder show theirs.