What a Plumbing Company Website Needs

What the site is actually for

Most people looking for a plumber are not browsing. Water is coming through a ceiling, the hot water has stopped, or a drain has backed up, and they are holding a phone.

They want to know three things quickly: whether you will come, how soon, and whether they can trust you inside their house.

A smaller group is planning a new water heater, a bathroom, or repiping an older home. They read more, compare two or three companies, and take days to decide.

The site has to serve both, in that order.

The first screen on a phone

• The phone number, as text that dials with one tap.
• Your hours, including what happens after them.
• The area you cover, in town names people recognise.
• The kind of work you do, residential, commercial or both.
• One reason to trust you, such as certification or years in business.

The first is the one most often broken. A number set inside a header image cannot be tapped, and a number tucked behind the menu icon makes an anxious visitor hunt for it.

Emergency hours, stated honestly

Emergency service around the clock is promised on a great many plumbing sites, and it means very different things.

If calls after six go to voicemail until morning, the site should say so. Somebody with water through the ceiling at midnight who reaches a recording will call the next number, and remember.

State what actually happens: the hours the phone is answered, which problems you will come out for after hours, and that after-hours work costs more, if it does.

Callers forgive limited hours far more readily than a promise that ends in a recording.

What to do before you arrive

One page earns its place on almost every plumbing site: how to shut off the water.

Explain where the main shut-off usually is, typically where the water line enters the house, often in a basement, crawlspace or utility room, and what it looks like.

Add the valves under sinks and behind toilets, and what to do about a leaking water heater.

Somebody standing in an inch of water will search for exactly that. The page helps them limit the damage, and shows that the business knows its trade.

The towns you serve

Name them in text, on the home page and in the footer. People scan for their own town, and a map image tells them less than a list.

If you travel further for planned work than for emergencies, say so, and say whether distance adds a charge.

One page naming the towns works better than a separate, near-identical page for each of thirty of them, which reads as padding to visitors and is the kind of page Google's guidelines warn against.

The work you do and do not do

List services in the words customers use: water heaters, tank and tankless; blocked drains and camera inspections; leaks; fixtures; sump pumps; gas lines, if you are qualified for gas work.

Give common jobs a page each. Replacing poly-B, the grey piping in many BC homes built in the 1980s and 1990s, is a good example: some insurers ask about it, so owners search for it by name.

Then say what you do not do. No septic systems, no new construction, no commercial work. It saves wasted calls on both sides, and it makes everything else on the list more believable.

A worked example

A plumbing company with five vans had a banner promising emergency service at any hour across the top of every page.

In practice, the phone went to voicemail after six, checked before the first job the next morning. On phones, the number sat inside the header graphic and could not be tapped.

The morning call-backs told the story. Several each week reached people who had needed someone overnight and had already found another plumber.

The header now says the phone is answered from seven to seven, every day, and that the on-call plumber takes burst pipes and no-water calls overnight at an after-hours rate.

The number is now text that dials, a new page explains how to find the main shut-off, and the company's own vans replaced the stock photograph.

The site now promises what the business actually does at night, which is the only promise worth making.

Credentials, insurance and guarantees

A homeowner letting a stranger cut into a wall wants to know who is responsible if it goes wrong.

Say what qualifications your plumbers hold, such as Red Seal certification, and whether you are certified and licensed for gas work. State that you carry liability insurance and workers' compensation coverage, and take out permits where needed.

Add your guarantee on workmanship in plain words. A line in the footer, with the details on the about page, is enough.

Real vans and real people

Stock photographs of a plumber with a wrench in a spotless kitchen make a business look like a referral service. Customers can tell.

Photograph your own vans with the name and number visible, since people watch for the van to arrive. Photograph the crew in uniform, and the work: a tidy water heater installation, a repiped basement, a finished bathroom.

Phone photographs are fine if they are sharp and well lit. What matters is that the person in the picture is the person who might knock on the door.

The counter-case

Not every plumbing company serves the urgent caller.

A firm working only on new construction or commercial maintenance contracts has a different audience: contractors and property managers who want project lists and references rather than a tappable number.

A one-person operation may start with a single, well-made page and grow from there, which is a question of scope rather than of doing without a proper site.

For a company that takes calls from homeowners, though, the urgent caller comes first: the number, honest hours, the towns, and real photographs.

What to build first

1. Put the phone number in text at the top.
2. State your real hours and after-hours terms.
3. Name the towns you cover.
4. List the work you do and do not do.
5. Show credentials and insurance in the footer.
6. Replace stock photographs with your vans and crew.
7. Add a page on shutting off the water.

Step two is the one callers judge you on. Everything else improves the site, but honest hours decide whether the person calling at midnight trusts you next time.

Checking that all of this works on the phone most callers are holding is covered in the phone version nobody at the office has seen.

Frequently asked questions

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