Every item below is on a site I have built, and I have kept the list to nine because a checklist of twenty is a checklist nobody uses.
Hold your current site against it. If you are about to pay someone to build one, hand it to them.
1. Your phone number, as a button, above the fold
Make it tappable and put it in the header, in the hero and again at the bottom, rather than leaving it in the footer or on a contact page. Someone looking for a tradie is usually standing in front of the problem with their phone out, and every extra tap is a chance to lose them.
On the Matches Machinery Hire site the owner’s number is the primary button on every screen, and the enquiry form sits behind it for after hours rather than in front of it.
2. A text option, not just a call
Some people will ring a stranger. Some never will. The ones who never will are perfectly happy to send a text, and if the only options are “call” or “fill in this form”, you lose them.
Your Vision Carpentry has Get a free quote, Call and Text side by side in the hero, with none ranked above the others, because different people take different routes.
3. Photographs of your own finished work
Your own jobs, not stock images or renders.
For most trades this is the entire sales pitch. A homeowner sees a finished deck and recognises the thing they have been putting off for two summers, and no amount of copy does that.
Range matters as much as quality. A carpentry portfolio that includes a set of barn doors and a sound-proofed studio alongside the decks tells a customer you are not only a deck builder, which is how one job turns into the next one.
4. A way to add those photos yourself
A portfolio that only grows when you email your web guy stops growing, usually by about the second job.
If the work is your sales pitch, budget for a way to upload jobs yourself. It is the difference between a portfolio that has six jobs forever and one that has thirty in two years.
5. The suburbs and postcodes you cover
Put them on the first screen, not on a contact page. The first thing a local wants to know is whether you work around here, and it costs nothing to answer before they scroll.
Be specific. “Brisbane and surrounds” tells someone in Dayboro nothing. A list of postcodes does.
6. Services named as symptoms, not trade categories
Nobody searches for structural timber repair. They search for the thing they can see: rotten bearers, failing deck boards, a balustrade that moves when you lean on it, water-damaged timber.
Write your services the way a customer would describe the problem, not the way you would describe it to another tradie. This is the single most common thing I change on a rewrite.
7. Your licence number, where it can be checked
Put your QBCC licence number in the footer, or better, near the top. It costs a line of text and it separates you from everyone who cannot show one.
The same goes for anything else verifiable, such as years trading, insurance and accreditations. On a trade site, a checkable fact beats an adjective every time.
8. Something that proves you know the rules
This is the one most sites skip, and it is the cheapest credibility available.
If you build elevated decks in Queensland, say what the National Construction Code actually requires: a barrier at least a metre high wherever you can fall a metre or more, no gap that lets a 125 mm sphere through, handrails at least 865 mm above the stair nosings. That is Part 11.3.
A careful homeowner is already worrying about it. Saying the numbers out loud is worth more than another photograph.
9. Reviews with a location attached
“Samford, 4520” under a review does more work than five anonymous stars, because a review from a neighbour carries weight that a generic testimonial cannot.
Ask for Google reviews specifically, and ask the same week you finish the job.
What is not on the list
No slider, and no stock photo of a hard hat and a clipboard. No “we pride ourselves on quality workmanship”, which every one of your competitors has already written. And no live chat widget unless somebody is watching it, because an unanswered chat converts worse than no chat at all.
If you want the version of this specific to your trade, there are pages for carpenters and excavator and plant hire, both written off real builds. Or just tell me what you do and I will tell you which of the nine you are missing.