A construction site services website has one reader worth designing for: a contractor or site manager working out whether you are dependable enough to put on a live site. They are not browsing. They have a job starting, two or three suppliers to choose between, and a strong preference for the one that looks least likely to cause a problem.

I rebuilt Express Site Solutions, who have been supplying site services across London and the South East since 2007. The offer was strong and the client list was long. The website said neither. What follows is what changed and why.

The judgement being made in ten seconds

Credibility, and nothing else at first. Before anyone reads a service page they have formed a view from the design, the photography and whether the thing works on the phone they are holding. That view is a proxy for how the business is run, fair or not.

This is why "modernise the website" is not vanity work for a site services firm. The old Express site was losing a judgement the business had already earned in person.

The four things the site has to do

01 Answer what you do and where, immediately

Site services covers a lot of ground, and a contractor arriving from a search has one of those things in mind. The homepage has to name the category and the coverage area in the first screen. "Across London and the South East" does more work than any amount of keyword tuning, because it answers the second question every enquiry has before they have to ask it.

02 Put the proof where the decision happens

Accreditations, service detail and contact routes all moved to where a contractor actually looks for them. On Express the CHAS and Constructionline badges sit in the footer of every page, so whichever one somebody wants, they are not hunting for it.

Which accreditations decide a contract varies by buyer and by job, and the people who know are the contractors you already work with. Worth asking them which ones have come up. What does not vary is that gathering all your proof onto one page means it sits somewhere almost nobody visits.

03 Use your own yard and your own crews

The photography on the Express about page is their yard and their teams. For a site services firm that matters more than stock ever would, and a contractor can tell the difference in about half a second.

Stock imagery of somebody else's plant is the most common mistake in this sector and the easiest to fix. If the choice is between one honest phone photograph of your own kit and a polished library shot of a site you have never been to, use the phone.

04 Structure around the enquiry, not the org chart

The Express rebuild was eight pages, restructured around what somebody is trying to do instead of how the company is organised internally. That means a page per service, each able to stand on its own in search, and contact routes on all of them.

A site built around the company reads as a brochure. A site built around the enquiry reads as a supplier who has done this before.

Mistakes that cost enquiries

  • A single sprawling services page. No page per service means nothing to rank for and nothing to send a specific enquiry to.
  • No phone number in the header. The person reading is often on a site with one hand free. Make it a tap-to-call link.
  • A contact form as the only route in. Some buyers will never fill one in.
  • Coverage area left implied. If someone has to guess whether you cover their postcode, some of them guess no.
  • A logo that falls apart at small sizes. Express needed theirs reworked before anything else could be built on it, because it had to hold up from a browser favicon to a site hoarding.

What a rebuild costs and how long it takes

Eight to twelve pages is the usual shape once every service has its own page, plus about, accreditations and contact. On my commissioned builds that starts from £2,000, and page count is what moves the number most. Copy, photography and any identity work sitting with me rather than with you moves it as well.

Four to eight weeks is realistic, and content is almost always what decides where in that range you land. Booking half a day on a live site for photography before the build starts is the single most useful thing you can do to keep it at the short end. There is more on all of this in the cost guide.

If the up-front cost is the obstacle, a pay monthly site at £75 a month gets a smaller firm looking credible without a build fee.

Questions people ask

What should be on a construction site services homepage?

What you supply, where you cover, who you have supplied, and the accreditations. Then a phone number visible without scrolling. Everything else can wait for the second page.

Do we need a page for every service?

If you want to be found for them, yes. A contractor searching for one specific service will not land on a combined page that mentions it in a list, because that page is competing with pages written about nothing else.

Is it worth paying for professional photography?

For a site services firm, yes, and it is usually the highest-return line in the budget. Your own yard, your own crews and your own kit do a job no stock library can, and the photographs outlive the website.

How often does the site need updating?

The service pages rarely. Accreditation renewals, new certifications and any vacancies need to be current, so those parts should be editable by whoever knows they have changed rather than requiring a call to a web designer.