For building firms
Builders websites that do the vetting before the site visit
People planning an extension or a renovation read a builder's website for weeks before they ring. This page is about what they are checking, which enquiries you actually want from it, and how search, reviews and ads work for a firm that hands over a limited number of big jobs each year.
- Price from
- £1,400
- Build time
- 14 working days
- Built by
- Coltura
- Growth Care™
- £149 a month
One-off, for a Growth Website of up to 6 pages.
From agreed direction to launch.
Our studio in Didsbury, Manchester.
Optional. Cancel any time, with a month’s notice.
How your customers choose
People hire a builder slowly, and they hire the one they trust.
An extension usually starts with drawings, a planning application and a lot of evenings reading. By the time someone asks you to price it, they have often ruled out a dozen builders quietly, and you never hear about the ones that ruled you out.
When it is urgent
The job that cannot wait
Real urgency in building is rarer: a collapsed garden wall, storm damage, a ceiling down, a structural crack that has just got worse, or a project left half-finished by another firm. They want to know you take on that kind of work, how soon you could look, and a number to ring. A short page for it, if you want those jobs, catches them.
When it is considered
An extension, a loft or a renovation
This buyer is trying to answer an anxious question: will this firm turn up, finish, keep the house liveable in the meantime and not surprise me with the bill? A gallery of finished rooms answers none of that on its own.
What wins their trust, what loses it, and what they search for
What makes them trust you
- A clear line on when you can next start on site
- The size of job you take on, stated plainly
- Insurance and memberships named, with what they mean
- A landline and a real yard or office address
What makes them leave
- Vague promises about quality with nothing behind them
- Having to ring just to find out whether you are booked up
- A contact form that asks for nothing and promises nothing
- Photos that are plainly stock, or plainly someone else's work
What they type into Google
- “builders near me”
- “single storey extension”
- “loft conversion”
- “kitchen extension cost”
- “garage conversion”
- “house renovation”
- “local builders reviews”
- “extension builders”
Most of these are typed in the evening while the plans are still forming, often with a town name on the end.
01 / 04
The middle of the job is what they are dreading
Most builders' sites show the glossy end: bifolds open, kitchen island lit. The homeowner has seen a hundred of those. What persuades them is the middle of the job, because that is the part they are worried about living through.
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Take a phone out on site once a week and you have it. A project page that runs from the old back wall to the handover, with a line or two at each stage, does more than any list of services.
- The before shot, taken from the same spot as the finished one
- Foundations, steels going in, the roof on: proof the hidden work was done properly
- How the house was protected while the family was still living in it
- Who was on site, and who the homeowner spoke to each week
- How changes halfway through were priced and agreed
- A short note from the client at handover, in their own words
02 / 04
Extensions, lofts and garage conversions are separate searches
Very few homeowners type “builder” on its own. They type the job: single storey extension, loft conversion, garage conversion, house renovation, often with their town on the end. A site with one Services page listing all of it gives Google nothing specific to match, and gives the reader nothing specific to read.
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Each kind of work you want more of deserves its own page, with its own projects, the questions people ask about that job (do we need planning, how long will we be without a kitchen, can we stay in the house) and a way to enquire about that job in particular. Your Google Business Profile should follow suit: its services, photos and updates should reflect the work you want more of.
03 / 04
Reviews when you only hand over a few big jobs a year
A plumber can collect reviews every week. A builder finishing large projects might get a handful a year, which makes each one matter more and a long gap look worse than it is. Ask at handover, while the client is happiest, and make it easy: a direct link by text, and a suggestion to mention the type of work and how the job was run.
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Put the best of those reviews on the matching project page, next to the photos of that job, rather than in a scrolling carousel nobody reads. Your site boards, vans and invoices should carry the website address too, because the neighbours watching an extension go up are often planning one of their own.
04 / 04
Paying Google for extension clicks, and when not to
Ads on searches like “extension builders” plus a town can work for a builder, because a single signed job is worth a lot. They go wrong in predictable ways: clicks from people looking for builders' merchants, building jobs or DIY advice, and ads that land on a homepage instead of the page for that job. Negative keywords, a tight area and a landing page for each type of work fix most of that.
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Coltura's order is website first, then tracking so calls and forms from each page are counted, and only then ads, if the numbers say they are worth it. Growth Care covers the part builders usually let slide: adding each finished project, updating the start date line, and keeping the site as current as the work on the ground.
What the website needs
The building firm site, page by page
Built around the projects you want more of, with the evidence of how you run a job sitting beside every one of them.
Homepage. The kinds of project you take on, the area you cover, when you can next start, and a way into each type of work.
One page per type of work. Extensions, lofts, conversions or renovations, each with projects of that kind.
Project pages. Each job from start to handover, in stages.
How we run a job. Quotes, payment stages, protecting the house, and who is on site.
About the firm. Real people, the trades you employ or bring in, insurance and any memberships.
Enquiry. Questions about drawings, planning and timing, so you can see which enquiries need a visit.
The enquiry route, and what to leave out
The enquiry route
From a set of drawings to a site visit worth making
- The visitor picks the kind of project, or arrives on its page from search.
- The form asks what the project is, whether there are drawings, and whether planning or Building Regulations approval is in hand.
- It asks roughly when they hope to start, with your next start date shown beside it.
- Someone still at the ideas stage gets a helpful reply; someone with approved drawings gets a site visit.
Leave it out
What not to put on the site
- One long Services page listing every trade you could possibly do
- Stock photos of hard hats and handshakes
- A start date that stopped being true months ago
- Promises about prices or timescales you would never put in a contract
Proof and credentials
What a homeowner checks before they let you knock through
There is no licence to be a builder, and homeowners know it, so they look for the things that are checkable. Show the ones you hold and explain each in a sentence.
What to show, item by item
- Building Regulations and sign-off
- Say how Building Regulations approval is handled on your jobs, and that the homeowner gets the completion or final certificate from building control at the end. It answers a question many are too unsure to ask.
- Planning and party walls
- Whether you help with planning applications, and whether you help the homeowner serve notices under the Party Wall etc. Act 1996, which in England and Wales covers work on a shared wall and digging foundations close to a neighbour's building.
- Memberships, if you hold them
- The Federation of Master Builders or TrustMark, with what each means for the customer and where they can check it.
- Insurance
- Your public liability cover, and employer's liability, which is compulsory if you employ people, stated plainly.
The standard of build
There is no demonstration site for a building firm, and one borrowed from another sector would not tell you much. Every site is designed and built from scratch around the business, works properly on a phone and is yours outright. If you want to see the standard of build first, three demonstration sites for invented businesses, a roofer, a dental practice and a wine bar, are on the examples page.
See the demonstration sitesIn our clients’ words
What our clients say.
Questions
The questions builders ask.
How do I stop getting enquiries for jobs that are too small?
Say what you take on, in a line near the top of the site: your minimum job size and the kinds of project you focus on. Most people who would have wasted a site visit read it and go elsewhere, and the ones who stay are already the right size.
Should a builder publish prices?
A full price list rarely works for building work, but silence sends people elsewhere. Say how you price, what the survey and quote involve, and, if you are comfortable, the range your typical projects have come in at. A homeowner who learns early that your loft conversions cost more than they hoped will thank you for saving them the visit.
Does a builder need a page for every town they work in?
Only where you have something real to say about the place. Near-identical pages with the place name swapped are thin, and readers can tell. State the area you cover clearly on the site and on your Google Business Profile, and write a page for a place only when you have real projects there to show. A few genuine local project pages beat dozens of templated ones.
The offer in brief
Five answers that are the same for every business we build for. Open any of them.
What does it cost, and what is included?
Growth Websites start at £1,400, one-off, for a complete rebuild of up to 6 pages with setup included. A larger site is the Signature Website, at £3,500. Up to six pages, which for a building firm usually means a homepage built around the projects you want, pages for your main types of work, a projects page that shows jobs in stages and a how-we-work page. You also get an enquiry form that filters by drawings, planning and timing, your Google Business Profile set up and linked, and tracking so you can see which pages bring in the enquiries that become jobs. A bigger site with more pages is the Signature Website.
All nine parts are included:
- Growth Audit
- Offer and Messaging Rebuild
- Complete Website Rebuild
- Conversion Optimisation
- Local Search Foundation
- AI Search Readiness
- Conversion Tracking
- Performance Optimisation
- Launch Support
How long does it take, and what do you need from me?
About 14 working days from agreed direction to launch. You watch the real site take shape on a private link, with one round of considered changes before launch. What we need from you: photos of a few projects at different stages (phone photos are fine), the type and size of work you want more of, the area you cover, and the insurance and memberships you hold. Beyond that, about half an hour on the phone; we write the copy.
Who builds it?
Coltura, an independent digital studio in Didsbury, Manchester. We do every audit and every build in-house, so you deal directly with the studio doing the work. We take on a limited number of builds at once, which is why there is sometimes a short wait before a build starts.
Do I have to pay every month?
No. Growth Care is £149 a month if you want it, and entirely optional. It covers hosting and security, monitoring, content changes within a fair monthly allowance, a plain-English monthly report, a quarterly conversion review and messaging us directly. Cancel any time, with a month's notice. You are also free to host the site yourself.
What if it is not right for us?
The audit and the direction come before you commit. If the plan is the wrong fit for your business, you can walk away and keep the audit. You own the site, the domain and the content outright, and after launch anything that does not work the way it was built to work is fixed at no charge for 30 days.
Where to next
Also for builders:
Related trades we build for:
Next steps
Find out what your website is costing you.
Ask for the free Growth Audit of your current site. Then look at it as someone with approved drawings would: can they tell within a minute what size of job you take on, how you run it and when you could start? If not, that is where the shortlist is being lost.
Done by hand and back within 48 hours. You can have it without a phone call.
Or ring us on 07958 394808Or start on your own
- Instant website check: one page checked, with the evidence for each finding.
- Revenue leak calculator: what more enquiries would be worth, worked out from your own numbers.