I'm a paver who got fed up of bad trade websites.
So I built my own properly. Two lads then asked me who'd done it. That's how this started. Now I build sites for trades that win the job before you turn up to quote — priced in writing, published on the page, and one firm per town.
The work
One site. Mine.
I'm not going to show you made-up companies to pad a portfolio out. This is my own driveway firm — real, live, my own phone number on it. Have a look and judge it on that, then let me build yours and judge that too.
Grade Paving
Block paving and driveways. I built it because I looked at every paving website in Yorkshire and they were all stock photos and "quality workmanship", and not one of them would tell you what anything cost.
- The prices are published on the page. Almost no trade in Britain does that.
- There's a section telling you what to ask a driveway firm — including me.
- There isn't a single photograph on it anywhere. Notice whether you minded.
Before you pay me anything
I'll build your homepage first.
This is the bit that matters more than any portfolio. You shouldn't have to guess whether I can do it for your trade — so I'll just do it, and you can look.
You give me forty minutes on the phone
How you price, what you won't take on, where you'll travel to, and the parts of the job that go wrong when somebody does it cheap. That last one is the important bit.
I build the front page
A real page on a real link, with your firm's name, your villages and your prices on it. Not a mock-up and not a PDF. It takes me about an hour and it costs you nothing.
You tell me if it's any good
Have a look that evening. If it's rubbish, say so and I'll leave you alone — you've lost forty minutes and I've lost an hour. That seems fairer than asking you to take my word for it.
What's different
Five things nobody else in the trade will put on a page.
Your customer isn't nervous about your workmanship. They're nervous about handing six grand to somebody they can't check up on. Everything here is aimed at that one problem.
Your prices, published
Guide ranges, on the page, before anybody rings. It puts off the tyre-kickers and it tells the serious ones you've nothing to hide. Almost nobody does it, which is exactly why it works.
What to ask — of you, and of anyone else
The section that teaches your customer how to spot a bad job. Now every rival quote gets measured against a checklist you wrote. This is the one an agency physically cannot write for you.
A process with numbers on it
Four steps, what happens at each, and what they've got in their hand at the end of it. Most of the fear is fear of the unknown.
Every village listed by name
Not "and surrounding areas". Somebody in Sprotbrough reading the word Sprotbrough behaves differently to somebody reading South Yorkshire.
Nothing in the way
No cookie box, no chat bubble, no sliding photos. Your number on screen wherever they scroll, and it loads in under a second on 4G in a van.
Price
Same rule I put on your site: it's on the page.
The homepage is free and it comes first. This is what it costs to turn that page into the finished site — and you only decide after you've seen it.
NO CONTRACT PAST THE FIRST YEAR. CANCEL ANY MONTH AFTER THAT, ONE EMAIL.
THE DOMAIN GOES IN YOUR NAME, NOT MINE. IF I VANISH TOMORROW YOU STILL OWN THE LOT.
The catch
One firm per trade, per town.
I can't build this for you and for the lads down the road as well. It'd be no use to either of you — same prices, same argument, same page. So I don't.
It isn't a sales trick, it's just how it has to work. But it does mean if you have a think about it for three months, it might have gone. I'd rather tell you that now than spring it on you later.
Questions