J.J. & A.W. Skeet
Surfacing and groundworks across Ryedale, York and Scarborough. Built to prove a family firm is exactly that.
Web design for builders
They are not choosing a builder. They are choosing who to let into the house.
An extension is the biggest cheque most people will write outside of the house itself, and it comes with six months of somebody living in their garden. The website has to answer that anxiety, not just list what you do.
- From £400
- Project galleries done properly
- Content written for you
The problem
What the customer is really weighing up
Building work has the longest, most anxious buying process of any trade. Months, not minutes.
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The fear is not price, it is abandonment
Everyone knows somebody whose builder took the deposit, started, and drifted away to a bigger job. That is the fear your website has to settle, and it is settled with finished projects, a clear process, and evidence you have done this before and turned up at the end.
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They are shortlisting long before they call
By the time you get an enquiry they have looked at four or five builders and ruled out three. That happened on the website, without you, and it happened on things like whether the photographs looked like the job they want doing.
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Two people are deciding, not one
Extensions get decided by couples, and they are looking for different things. One wants to know it will be finished properly and on budget; the other wants to see something that looks like the room they are imagining. The site needs to do both.
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They want to know if you do their kind of job
A builder who does barn conversions and a builder who does kitchen extensions are not interchangeable, and a customer with a listed cottage needs to know within seconds whether you are the right firm.
What it needs
What a builder's website needs
Evidence, process, and specificity.
Project pages, not a gallery
A grid of thumbnails is decoration. A page per project: what the customer wanted, what was involved, what it looks like now, with before shots if you have them, is the single most persuasive thing you can publish. Two or three done properly beats thirty photographs.
How the job actually runs
Survey, drawings, planning or permitted development, quote, start date, stages, payments, sign-off. Setting out the process calms the exact fear that stops people committing, and almost no builder bothers.
What you do and do not take on
Saying "we do extensions, renovations and barn conversions, we do not do new-build estates" makes you the obvious choice for the right customer and saves you quoting for the wrong ones.
Structure
The pages we would build
Builders usually want the ten-page package, because the project pages are the site.
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Home
Your best finished project, what you do, where you work, and how to start a conversation.
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Services
Extensions, renovations, conversions, new builds, groundworks. One page each where you genuinely do them and want more of them.
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Projects
The index, then a page per project. This is where the work is won.
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How we work
The stages from first call to handover, including how payments are staged. Directly addresses the fear.
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About
Who you are, how long you have been building, who is on the team. Faces help enormously here. This is a trade where people are letting you into their home.
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Areas covered
Where you work and roughly how far you travel.
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Contact
Phone, form, and what happens after they send it.
Mistakes
Where builders' websites go wrong
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Photographs taken mid-job
Skips, scaffolding, mud, a half-rendered wall. Understandable, and the wrong thing to lead with. Go back and photograph two finished jobs in decent light. It is worth a Saturday morning.
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No indication of scale
A homeowner with a £40,000 extension budget cannot tell whether you are interested. A line about the typical size of job you take on saves both of you a wasted quote.
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Silence about planning
Planning permission is the thing customers understand least and worry about most. A builder who explains it plainly looks more competent than one who does not mention it.
Work
Sites we have built
A & J Plant Sales
A filterable machinery listing with a page per machine and a sold archive, run entirely by the dealer.
Pricing
What it costs
The same published prices as everyone else pays. No sector premium.
Essential
Up to 5 pages
£400
- Designed for your business, not a template
- Every word written for you
- Fast on a phone, where most people find you
- Enquiries land straight in your inbox
- Built so Google can read it
- Domain, hosting and email sorted
- One round of revisions
Recommended
Complete
Up to 10 pages
£800
- Everything in Essential
- A page per service, so each one can rank
- An areas page, so nearby customers find you
- A fuller work section to win the job
- More internal linking between pages
- One round of revisions
Advanced
Bespoke build
£1,200+
- Everything in Complete
- Built around what your business actually does
- Filterable listings, bookings or directories
- Connected to systems you already use
- Scoped and quoted before anything starts
Need a page or two more than the package allows? We will quote for the extra pages before you commit to anything, so you know the full cost up front. See the full comparison.
FAQs
Questions from builders
I have got a two-year waiting list. Why would I want a website?
To choose better work. A full order book is exactly when a website earns its keep, because it lets you attract the jobs you actually want rather than taking whatever comes. A site full of high-end renovations attracts high-end renovations.
My photographs are all on my phone. Is that a problem?
Not at all. Phone photographs of finished work are fine and often better than staged ones. Send us the lot and we will pick and crop. What does not work is only having pictures from halfway through the job.
Can customers see my prices?
You would not publish a fixed price for an extension and nobody expects it. What helps is honesty about the range you work in, so the enquiries you get are from people whose budget is real.
What if I do not want more domestic work?
Then the site should say so. A page aimed squarely at architects, developers or commercial clients will bring in different enquiries from one aimed at homeowners. Being specific is how you filter.
Advice
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