Contractor Website Checklist: 25 Things a Site Needs to Turn Visitors Into Quote Requests

Homeowners rarely land on a contractor website by accident. They found you on Google Maps, got your name from a neighbor or saw your truck, and now they're checking whether you're legitimate and whether you do work like theirs. Most will look at your site on a phone, quickly, possibly next to two competitors' sites.

This checklist is organized around that visit. Go through it on your own phone, not a desktop. Each item takes a few minutes to check.

1. What you do and where, in one line. "Roof replacement and repair in Lakewood and west Denver." Not "Quality you can trust." A visitor should know within seconds whether you're the right kind of contractor.

2. A phone number that's tappable. Visible at the top on mobile, and it should start a call when tapped. Test it.

3. One clear quote button. "Get a quote" or "Request an estimate," in a color that stands out. One primary action, repeated down the page.

4. A real photo of your work or crew. Not a stock photo of a smiling model in a hard hat. Homeowners recognize stock, and it undermines everything else.

5. A trust line. A short row near the top: years in business, licensed and insured, star rating with review count. Only claims you can back up.

6. License number, where your state or city requires one. In the footer and on your about page. Some homeowners will look it up.

7. Insurance. State that you carry general liability and workers' comp (if you do) and offer the certificate on request.

8. Reviews, recent ones. Show a few real reviews with first names and towns, and link to your Google profile so visitors can verify them. BrightLocal's 2026 survey found 74% of consumers pay most attention to reviews from the last three months, so avoid a testimonials section that hasn't changed in years.

9. A real about page. Who owns the business, how long you've been doing this, photos of the actual team. People hire people.

10. Warranty in plain language. What's covered, for how long, and what the manufacturer covers vs your workmanship warranty.

Never post reviews you can't back up. The FTC's 2024 rule bans fake reviews and testimonials, including AI-generated ones.

11. Individual project pages, not just a gallery. Each job gets its own page with a title like "Deck Rebuild in Oviedo, FL." See the nine things each needs in our contractor portfolio guide.

12. Matched before-and-after pairs. Same spot, same angle, same zoom. A slider works well on mobile. Our photo guide covers how to take them.

13. Recent work. At least a few projects from the last few months. A portfolio that stops in 2023 makes people wonder if you're still in business.

14. Projects linked from service pages. Your roof replacement page should show your best roof replacements. This helps visitors and search engines connect services to real work.

15. The problem and the solution in words. Two or three short paragraphs per project: what was wrong, what you did, how it turned out. Photos without context don't persuade as well.

16. One page per main service. Not a single "Services" page with a list. Roof replacement, roof repair and gutters each get a page that answers common questions and shows real projects.

17. Unique, descriptive page titles. "Roof Replacement in Lakewood, CO | Summit Roofing," not "Home" or "Services." Every page gets its own.

18. Consistent name, address (if shown) and phone. Exactly the same as your Google Business Profile and major directories.

19. Service area, honestly. A clear list of the towns you serve. Town pages only where you have real projects to show; Google's spam policies treat pages that only swap the city name as doorway pages.

20. Structured data for your business. LocalBusiness markup tells search engines your name, address or service area, phone, hours and more in a standard format. Many website builders add it automatically; ask whoever runs your site.

Our local SEO guide for contractors goes deeper on each.

21. Fast on a phone. Google's Core Web Vitals treat these as good, measured at the 75th percentile of real visits: the main content loads within 2.5 seconds (Largest Contentful Paint), the page responds to taps within 200 milliseconds (Interaction to Next Paint), and the layout doesn't jump around (Cumulative Layout Shift of 0.1 or less). Oversized photos are the most common problem on contractor sites.

22. A short quote form that works. Name, phone or email, town, a sentence about the job, and an optional photo upload. Every extra field loses people. Submit a test request every month to make sure it arrives.

23. HTTPS. The padlock in the browser. Without it, browsers may warn visitors, and forms feel unsafe.

24. Readable on a small screen. Text large enough to read without zooming, buttons big enough to tap, no sideways scrolling. Try it one-handed.

25. Indexed by Google. Search site:yourdomain.com. If your main pages don't appear, something is blocking them. Set up Google Search Console (free) to see what Google has indexed and which searches bring visitors.

Write down every item that fails, then fix them in order: first screen, trust, proof, then SEO and technical.

• A beautiful homepage and nothing behind it. No service pages, no projects, no reason to believe the claims.
• Stock photos. They make you look like everyone else.
• Hidden phone number. Tucked in the footer or only on the contact page.
• Long forms. Ten fields and a captcha on a phone is where leads go to die.
• Out-of-date everything. Old reviews, last project from years ago, a copyright year that's three years old.
• Slow pages. Uncompressed 8 MB photos straight from the camera.
• A site nobody can update. If adding a project needs a web developer, it won't happen weekly.

The last one is the root of many of the others. Pick a setup your team can update from a phone after a job.

1. 1Fix the first screen (items 1 to 5)
2. 2Add license, insurance and recent reviews (items 6 to 8)
3. 3Publish your best six projects as pages (items 11 to 15)
4. 4Split services into their own pages (item 16)
5. 5Compress photos and test speed (item 21)

That alone puts most contractor sites ahead of the local competition. Then build the habit of adding a project page every week. If you'd like those pages built from your job photos automatically, see how DonePages works.