Straight answers for local service businesses
Hire someone to do the whole thing and give them four things: your phone number and service area, your list of services, photos of your work, and access to your domain if you already own one. A done for you website service handles hosting, the domain setup, the writing, the mobile layout, and the updates after launch. Your total involvement is usually one phone call and a folder of photos. The only tech you must not hand off completely is ownership of your domain name and your Google Business Profile.
Most tradespeople who put off getting a website aren't lazy. They're busy, and every option they've looked at ends with them sitting in front of a laptop at 10pm trying to figure out what a nameserver is.
You can skip all of that. Here's what actually has to happen, who does which part, and the small number of things you should never let someone else own.
It means someone else handles every step that involves a login screen. That list is longer than most people think:
A real done for you website covers all of it, including that last one. Plenty of people will build you a site and then disappear, which leaves you with a tech problem six months later instead of today. That's not done for you. That's deferred.
Four things. That's it, and none of them require a computer.
A landscaper in a town of 20,000 can pull that together in an afternoon between jobs. Everything after that is somebody else's problem.
Two things, and this is the part nobody warns you about.
Your domain name. It should be registered in your name, on your email address. Whoever builds the site can manage it, configure it, renew it, all fine. But the account should be yours. If the relationship ends, you take the domain and go. If your builder owns it, you're renting your own business name.
Your Google Business Profile. Same rule. You should be the owner; anyone helping you should be a manager. That profile holds your reviews. Reviews take years to earn and one bad breakup to lose access to.
Everything else, hosting, the site files, the plugins, the analytics, let someone else carry it. Those are replaceable. Your domain and your reviews are not.
Ask one question before you pay anybody:
"It's 8pm on a Friday. My phone number changed. Who fixes it, and how fast?"
The answers sort people fast:
Follow it with: what's included each month, what counts as an extra, and what happens to the site if I stop paying. Honest answers to those three questions tell you more than any portfolio.
You don't need to be. The best pages on a trade website are just clear answers to the questions you already answer on the phone ten times a week.
A good builder will get those out of you by talking, not by sending you a homework document. If someone hands you a 40-question worksheet and asks you to write your own service descriptions, they've quietly moved the hard part onto your plate.
What helps: spend fifteen minutes writing down the last five jobs you did and why the customer called. Real jobs, real reasons. That's better raw material than anything a copywriter can invent.
For a normal local service business, plan on two to four weeks from first call to live site. Not because building takes that long, but because photos, review rounds, and your actual work schedule take time.
A reasonable process looks like:
If you're being asked to do something in week three that isn't reading a draft and replying, something's off.
Don't try to salvage the old one yourself. Two things matter: get your domain login recovered, and find out where your current site is hosted. Anyone competent can take it from there, rebuild fresh, and move the domain over without your phone ever going quiet.
And if you can't find the login for a domain you bought in 2016 from a guy who no longer returns calls, say so up front. It's a common situation with a known fix. It's not a reason to keep putting this off.
The whole point is this: your job is to be good at the trade and to answer a few questions about it. Everything with a password belongs to somebody else.
Yes. Whoever builds your site can register one for you in a few minutes, usually for around $15 to $20 a year. Just make sure it's registered under your name and your email address, not theirs.
No. With a done for you service, you text or email the change and they make it. If you'd rather have the ability to edit things yourself, ask for it, but don't let it be the only option.
Phone photos are fine and usually better than stock images. Start taking before and after shots on your next few jobs. In the meantime, a photo of you, your truck, and your crew carries real weight with local customers.
For most trade businesses, one call plus gathering photos, so roughly one to two hours total. Then maybe twenty minutes reviewing the draft. If it's taking much more than that, the builder is pushing work onto you.
It depends entirely on the agreement, so ask before you sign. Some services let you take the site files with you, others shut it off. Either way, if you own your domain name, you can always rebuild elsewhere without losing your web address.
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