Websites for carpenters Websites that win jobs. Your website, built by a Google specialist and an energy insider.

How people find and choose a carpenter

Almost nobody types "carpenter" and stops there. They type the job: "fitted wardrobes Wakefield", "internal doors fitted", "media wall near me", "alcove cupboards". Then they open three or four websites, look for about as long as it takes the kettle to boil, and ring one.

That gives a carpenter's website two jobs. First, show up for the job they typed, which means having a page about that job. Second, win the side-by-side comparison with the other three, which comes down to photos, reviews and how easy you are to get hold of.

It helps to know who's looking. Carpentry customers tend to fall into three groups, and each wants something different:

• Homeowners with a quick job. Doors, skirting, a loft hatch, boxing in pipes. They want to know you do it and roughly when you're free, and they want to ring you now.
• Homeowners planning something bigger. Fitted wardrobes, alcove units, a media wall, a deck. They take weeks to decide, look at your work several times and often show it to someone else before they get in touch.
• Builders, landlords and managing agents. First and second fix, fire doors, repairs between tenancies. They want reliable, carded and available, and they come back if you are.

One "all aspects of carpentry" page can't talk to all three. Separate pages can.

What good carpentry website design looks like

Good carpentry website design isn't about clever effects. It's about putting the right proof in front of the right person, quickly, on a phone. This is what each part of the site has to do.

The quote form matters more than people think. For fitted furniture, ask for rough measurements and a couple of photos of the space. You can often give a ballpark from those and skip the evening visit to someone who was only browsing.

Bespoke joinery portfolios and photos that sell

On fitted and bespoke work, your portfolio is the sales pitch. Someone about to spend a few thousand pounds on alcove units wants to see units like the ones they're picturing, in a house like theirs.

So we build the portfolio around projects, not a wall of thumbnails. Each project gets a short write-up: the room, what the customer wanted, the materials (sprayed MDF, oak, painted pine), any awkward bits you solved, like a sloping ceiling or a wall that's 20mm out, and the town. That gives people something to read and gives Google real words to work with.

How to photograph carpentry on your phone

1. Shoot in daylight. Open the curtains, turn off the yellow ceiling light and skip the flash. Daylight shows the true colour of timber and paint.
2. Clear the room. Tools, dust sheets and offcuts out of shot, and ideally before the customer fills the shelves.
3. Get one wide shot, straight on. Stand back, hold the phone level and get the whole piece in. Wonky angles make straight joinery look crooked.
4. Then get close. Scribes against the wall, mitres on architrave, the shadow gap round a door, the joints on a drawer. This is where you beat the cheaper quote.
5. Show it working. Doors open and closed, drawers pulled out, the inside of a wardrobe with its rails and shelves.
6. Take a before from the same spot. An empty alcove next to a finished one tells the story without a word.
7. Hold the phone sideways. Wide photos fit a website far better than tall ones.

Ten good photos of three jobs beat a hundred dark ones. And skip the stock photos: homeowners can spot a catalogue kitchen a mile off, and it makes them wonder what your real work looks like.

Winning work from builders, landlords and managing agents

Trade work is steadier than one-off domestic jobs, and the people handing it out still check your website. A builder who's been let down by a carpenter wants to see that you do first and second fix, which areas you cover, whether you hold a CSCS card and how much notice you need. Give them a page of their own, with a direct number.

Fire doors are worth a page too, if you do them properly. Since 23 January 2023, the Fire Safety (England) Regulations 2022 have required whoever is responsible for a block of flats with a top floor more than 11 metres up to check communal fire doors at least every three months and flat entrance doors every year. Managing agents need carpenters for the repairs those checks turn up, and they search for them.

A fire door page should say which work you take on (hanging, adjusting, seals and closers, full replacement), how you record it, and any third-party certification you hold, such as BM TRADA's Q-Mark Fire Door Installation scheme. If you don't hold one, the page says what you do and leaves it there. We only put certificates on a site when you actually have them.

What websites for carpenters cost, and when they're worth it

There are three usual routes. Build it yourself on a website builder, which is cheap in money and expensive in evenings. Hire a big agency, which often runs into thousands. Or hire specialists who build for trades.

Our website is £600 one-off, or £50 a month for 12 months, with no VAT and no deposit. The first year's hosting is included. After that, hosting is £20 a month if you keep it with us. You see your homepage design within 24 hours of the set-up call, before you pay anything.

A worked example, with made-up numbers. Say you're a carpenter in Wakefield and a set of fitted alcove units leaves you £600 after materials. If the site brings in two extra sets in its first year, it has covered itself and a year of hosting, with some left over. Put your own figures into the calculator above.

And the honest bit. If builders and word of mouth keep you booked three months ahead with work you enjoy, you may not need a new site yet. A site earns its keep when you want more of one kind of job, more homeowners in a new area, or less reliance on a single builder.

Five mistakes we see on carpentry websites

1. One page for everything. A page about doors, decks and wardrobes all at once is a weak match for each of them. Split them up.
2. No town names. If the site never says where you work, Google has to guess. Say it plainly, and give your main towns their own pages.
3. Photos with no story. Eighty unlabelled images make people work. Ten projects with a couple of lines each sell better.
4. A hidden phone number. Someone wanting a door hung this week wants to ring, not hunt for a contact page. Put a call button on every page.
5. Carpentry and joinery jumbled together. If you make staircases in a workshop and hang doors on site, both can go on the site, but each needs its own page. If joinery is your main trade, our page on websites for joiners is the better fit.

Getting the finished site in front of more people is a separate job, and that's what SEO for carpenters covers, month to month, if and when you want it. Everything that comes with the build is on the main website page, and if you'd like to see your own site before deciding anything, ask for a free website mockup.