How to Choose a Web Designer for Your Trade Business

A web designer who has built sites for restaurants, law firms and tech startups may be excellent at their craft — but do they understand trades and local service businesses? A tiler's website needs a portfolio organised by project type, a plumber's site needs emergency call-out information front and centre, and a builder's site needs to demonstrate range and credibility for high-value work.

Ask to see live websites they have built for businesses like yours. Not screenshots — actual sites you can click through. Do the pages load quickly? Can you find the phone number? Does the portfolio feel relevant to what you do?

At Hello Website, the focus is specifically on web design for trades and local businesses — not corporate sites or e-commerce stores. You can see the AMJ Tiling case study for an example of what a trade-focused approach delivered: page 1 rankings and organic phone enquiries in around two months, with no ad spend.

A beautiful website that nobody finds on Google is an expensive business card. SEO is not an add-on — it should be baked into the site from the start. When you talk to a designer, ask specific questions:

• How will you set page titles and meta descriptions?
• What heading structure will you use, and why?
• Will you include schema markup (structured data)?
• How will the site signal to Google where I work and what I do?

If the answer is "we'll sort that out later" or "SEO is a separate package," that is a warning sign. Technical SEO foundations — clean URLs, proper heading hierarchy, schema markup, fast load times — are far easier to build in during construction than to retrofit later.

At Hello Website, SEO is part of the build, not an afterthought. You can read more about the approach in the guide to Local SEO for small businesses.

This is one of the most common problems tradespeople encounter. You pay for a website, and then discover that the designer owns the domain, the hosting account, or the content management system. If you want to move to a different provider, you have to start over — or pay a hefty fee to buy back what you thought was already yours.

Before you agree to anything, ask: Who owns the domain registration? Who controls the hosting account? Can I access the full site files if I need to? The answer should be that you own everything, and the designer has your permission to manage it on your behalf.

At Hello Website, the domain is registered in your name and you own all the content and site files. If you ever decide to move on, you take everything with you — no lock-in, no exit fees.

What happens the day after your site goes live? Who fixes it if something breaks? How quickly will they respond? Is there an ongoing monthly fee, and what does it cover?

Some designers offer a launch-and-leave service — you pay once, and after that you are on your own. Others bundle hosting and support into a monthly fee, which can range from reasonable to eye-watering. Neither approach is inherently wrong, but you need to know which one you are getting before you sign up.

Ask what the ongoing hosting and support arrangement looks like, and how it compares to how much a small business website should cost over the first year and beyond.

Over 60% of local service searches happen on a phone. Your potential customer is standing in a kitchen, searching for a plumber on their mobile, and comparing three results. If your site is slow, has tiny text, or requires pinching and zooming to find the phone number, they will be on the next result in seconds.

Do not trust screenshots or a designer's assurance that the site is "mobile-friendly." Ask for URLs of sites they have built, open them on your own phone, and try to find the contact details. If you cannot make a call or fill in a form within ten seconds, neither can your customers.

At Hello Website, every site is built mobile-first and tested on actual devices — not just in a browser emulator. Fast load times, tap-to-call phone numbers and thumb-friendly buttons are standard, not optional extras.

The purpose of your website is to turn visitors into enquiries. That means the contact path needs to be obvious, fast and friction-free. Look at the designer's existing sites and check:

• Is the phone number visible without scrolling?
• Is there tap-to-call on mobile?
• Is there a simple contact form — not a ten-field interrogation?
• Is WhatsApp available as an option?
• Does each service page have its own call to action?

A good trade website makes it effortless to get in touch. If the designer's existing sites bury the contact details or use vague buttons like "Learn more" instead of "Get a quote," that tells you what your site will look like.

Building a website is a collaborative process. You will want changes — sometimes because you have had a better idea, sometimes because something does not read right when you see it in context. The question is: how many rounds of revisions are included, and what happens after the site is launched?

Some designers offer two rounds of revisions and charge for anything beyond that. Others are more flexible. Some treat post-launch tweaks as billable work; others include a short window of adjustments. There is no single right answer — but you need to know the rules before you start, not when you get the invoice.

At Hello Website, the revision process is collaborative and clearly agreed up front, with a defined set of rounds included in the project price. Post-launch content changes are handled under the ongoing support arrangement — no surprise invoices for fixing a typo.

The initial build cost is only part of the picture. Most websites have ongoing costs: domain renewal, hosting, SSL certificates, plugin or platform subscriptions, and sometimes a monthly retainer for updates or support. Some designers are transparent about these; others bundle them into a single monthly fee that is not always clearly itemised.

Ask for a full breakdown: What do I pay up front? What do I pay monthly or annually? What happens if I want a new page or a content change next year? A designer who cannot answer these questions clearly is one who will send you a vague invoice later.

For context on what is reasonable, read about how much a small business website should cost— including build fees, ongoing hosting and the difference between value-based pricing and overcharging.

Some tradespeople want to update their own website — add a new project photo, change a phone number, post a seasonal offer. Others would rather never log in to a content management system and prefer to email changes to their designer. Both are valid preferences, but you need to know which one you are getting.

If the designer uses a proprietary system that only they can access, every change — however small — goes through them, and may carry a charge. If the site is built on a standard platform like WordPress or a modern headless CMS, you can make basic edits yourself if you choose to.

At Hello Website, sites are built on standard platforms with clear documentation. You can make simple content edits yourself, or you can send changes through and have them handled for you — whichever you prefer. There is no proprietary system designed to keep you dependent.

A website without analytics is a website flying blind. You need to know how many people visit, where they come from, what they search for, and — most importantly for a trade business — how many of them pick up the phone or fill in the form.

Ask whether the designer sets up Google Analytics, Google Search Console, and conversion tracking as part of the build. These are not optional extras for a business website — they are how you measure whether the investment is paying off. If the designer does not mention analytics unless you ask, that is a sign it is not part of their standard process.

At Hello Website, Google Analytics, Google Search Console and conversion tracking are set up as part of the initial build. You get access to your own data — it is your website, and you should be able to see what it is doing.