Almost every plumbing website I open is designed for somebody sitting comfortably at a desk. Your actual visitor is standing in a utility room with a torch, one bar of signal and wet hands, and they will give the page about four seconds. Design for that person and the site works for everyone else too. Design for the desk and you lose the emergency.
01The first screen What has to be on screen before anything else.
Four things, and if they are not visible without scrolling then nothing further down the page gets a chance.
- The number, tappable, without scrolling One thumb, one tap, ringing. Not an image of a number, not a number that only appears after a menu opens. This is the single most common fault I find on plumbing sites and it wastes every visitor who had already decided.
- Whether you are available right now Not "24/7 emergency service" in a banner that has been there since 2019. Something that reads as true today, the hours you actually answer, and what happens if they ring outside them.
- Where you go The towns, written out. Somebody with water coming through a ceiling will not work out whether they are inside a service radius. If your town is not on the page they assume it is a no and ring the next one.
- Your Gas Safe number as a number Not the logo, the registration number, in text. The register is public and a nervous customer can check it in twenty seconds. A logo proves nothing and everyone has one.
Notice what is not on that list. Your logo at half the screen height, a slideshow, a welcome message, and the phrase "your local plumbing specialists" all belong further down or nowhere.
02The split Two completely different customers, one website.
This is the structural problem specific to plumbing, and it is why a template built for "home services" never quite fits.
The emergency. No hot water, a leak, a blockage. Decides in under a minute, on a phone, and is not reading anything. Wants the number and reassurance you will actually turn up.
The planned job. A new bathroom, a boiler replacement, a system upgrade. Thinks about it for six weeks, looks at photographs, gets three quotes, and often will not ring at all until they have decided you are the one.
Those two need opposite things from a page. The mistake is averaging them, a site that is slightly too slow and wordy for the emergency, and slightly too thin and urgent for the bathroom. It has to be built as two routes from the first screen, not one compromise.
03The inventory The pages a plumbing site actually needs.
Not a services page with a list on it. A page each, because these are searched separately by people with different problems and different budgets.
Boiler installation is the big one and deserves the most work, prices, brands you fit, how long it takes, what happens to the old unit. The boiler-on-finance companies own this search precisely because they answer those questions and most plumbers do not.
Then boiler repair and servicing, emergency call-outs, bathroom installation, blockages and drainage, and landlord gas safety certificates. That last one is the quietest and the most reliable, because it is a legal requirement on a repeating cycle and it brings landlords who own several properties.
Then a page for each town you genuinely cover. Not thirty towns, the ones you would actually drive to on a Sunday, with a real response time on each.
04The cheap ones What the template sites get wrong.
They are not ugly. That is the thing people expect and it is rarely the problem. They are slow, they are identical, and they were written by somebody who has never been under a sink.
Slow matters more here than in any planned trade, because your visitor is on mobile data in a house with thick walls. A page builder loading six seconds of scripts has lost the call before it renders.
Identical matters because the same template is sold to plumbers in forty towns. Google has already got those words. There is no version of that page it has a reason to rank above the others.
And the copy gives it away to customers, not just to Google. "We pride ourselves on quality workmanship" appears on thousands of plumbing sites and means nothing. What a customer actually wants to know is whether you turn up when you say you will.
07700 900531
Mobile
Included, and it runs on its own
A missed call still becomes a job.
This is the same system every site here is wired into. The text goes out whether you remember or not.
- It fires in about eight seconds Before they have scrolled to the next name in the results.
- They reply while it is still in their head And it is waiting for you when you come down off the job.
- You do nothing at all Evenings, weekends, and the days you leave your phone in the van.
05The price What it costs.
£297 a month, and the website is only part of it. Missed-call text-back, the review funnel, follow-up, one inbox and a business number come with it. The full list is on the pricing page.
No build fee, which for a plumber is worth spelling out: the site gets built and goes live before you have paid for a build, because there is not one to pay for.
If getting found is the bigger problem rather than the site itself, the plumbing SEO page covers that side, the national competitors, the map pack and the winter timing.
06The awkward ones Common questions about plumbing websites.
01 How is this different from the SEO page for plumbers?
That page is about being found, who you are competing with, the map pack, and when to start before winter. This one is about the site itself: what goes on it, in what order, and why. Most people need both eventually, but they are different jobs and it is worth knowing which one is your actual problem.
02 Should I put my call-out fee on the website?
I would. Plumbing has a reputation problem built on people being quoted one number at the door and charged another, and a published call-out fee separates you from that immediately. You will lose a few price-shoppers. You will win the ones who were nervous about ringing at all.
03 Do I need a contact form if most people ring?
Yes, but not for the emergencies. Nobody with a burst pipe fills in a form. The form is for the bathroom that is being planned for the spring. Those people often will not ring, and if there is no form they simply leave.
04 What photographs actually help on a plumbing site?
Finished bathrooms, a clean van, and you. Not stock photos of pipes. The bathroom photos do the most work because a bathroom is the one thing you do that a customer looks at and wants, and it is the job worth the most.
05 Is a one-page website enough for a plumber?
It is enough to look tidy and not enough to be found. Boiler installation, emergency call-outs and bathrooms are searched by different people and one page cannot rank for all three. If budget is the reason, start with three pages done properly rather than one page covering everything.
06 My site was built five years ago. Does it need replacing?
Open it on your own phone, on mobile data, standing outside. If it takes more than about three seconds or you have to pinch to read the number, that is your answer. If it passes, the problem may not be the website at all, and I would rather tell you that than sell you one.
Send me your current site before the call and I'll open it on a phone the way your customer would. Twenty minutes, and you'll get a straight answer about whether it needs replacing. Book a call. Tell me what's going on.