Right, here’s the full post. Roughly 950 words, written in your voice as best I can read it from the homepage rewrites we’ve done. Edit anything that doesn’t sound like you when you read it back.
Here’s a conversation I have at least once a month.
A plumber, electrician, or builder rings me up. They’ve had a website for two or three years. Maybe it cost them a few hundred quid, maybe it cost them two grand. Either way, it sits there doing nothing. No phone calls. No enquiries. No emails. They might as well not have a site at all.
When I ask them what they want from a new site, the answer is always the same: “I just want it to actually bring in work.”
If that sounds familiar, this post is for you. There are three reasons most tradesperson websites don’t get leads, and all three are fixable. Let me walk you through them.
Open your own website on your phone right now. Look at the top of the page. Can you ring your business in one tap?
If the answer is no, that’s reason number one.
Most tradesperson websites bury the phone number in a footer or hide it inside a contact page. By the time a visitor scrolls down to find it, they’ve already lost interest and clicked back to Google. The next plumber they see, the one with a big phone number at the top of the page, gets the call.
The fix: your phone number should be visible on every single page, in the header, big enough to tap with a thumb. Not “Contact Us” linking to a form. The actual number. A form is for office workers buying software. Tradespeople and the people hiring them want to ring someone.
I rebuilt a Killarney plumber’s site last year and the only meaningful change to the homepage was making the phone number a sticky button at the top. Calls went up before we’d even finished the rest of the rebuild.
This is the one nobody tells tradespeople about, so most don’t realise it’s a problem.
Your old web designer probably told you they’d “do SEO” and got you ranking for terms like “plumbing services Ireland” or “best plumber Kerry.” Sounds great. Except those terms are either too broad to bring buyers, or they’re being searched by other plumbers checking their own rankings.
The actual phrases your customers type into Google look more like this:
These are buyer searches. The person typing them needs a plumber RIGHT NOW, not next week. They’re not comparing five quotes, they’re ringing the first plumber whose number they can find.
The fix: open Google Search Console (free, takes ten minutes to set up), and look at what people are actually searching when they find your site. If you’re getting 500 impressions a month for “best plumber Kerry” and zero clicks, that’s a vanity metric. If you’re getting 10 impressions a month for “emergency plumber Killarney” and three clicks, that’s gold. Build more pages targeting the second kind of search and ignore the first.
This is the uncomfortable one.
Most tradesperson websites in Ireland use the same WordPress theme, the same stock photos of toolboxes, the same generic copy about “professional service” and “competitive prices.” A Kerry homeowner deciding between three plumbers can’t tell the difference between any of them, so they pick the one with the most Google reviews and ring that.
If you’re not the one with the most Google reviews, you lose by default.
The fix has two parts. First, make your site look like your business, not like a template. Real photos of you, your van, your team, jobs you’ve finished. Not stock images. A homeowner in Killarney wants to see the actual plumber who’s coming to their house, not a man in a hard hat from a Shutterstock library.
Second, give people a reason to choose you that isn’t price or reviews. Maybe you offer same-day callouts. Maybe you guarantee a fixed quote with no surprise charges. Maybe you’ve been working in Kerry for 20 years and your dad did it before you. Whatever it is, put it in the hero of your homepage in plain language. “Killarney’s only plumber who guarantees same-day callout, every time” beats “Professional plumbing services” by a country mile.
Three quick checks. You can do all three in fifteen minutes.
Check 1: open your site on your phone and try to ring your business in one tap. If you can’t, you’ve found problem one.
Check 2: log into Google Search Console (or ask whoever built your site to give you access). Look at the top 20 search terms bringing people to your site. How many of them are searches a customer would actually type when they need to hire someone? If the answer is “less than half,” you’ve found problem two.
Check 3: open three of your competitors’ websites in tabs alongside your own. Squint your eyes so you can’t read the text. Can you tell which one is yours just from the design? If they all look the same, you’ve found problem three.
If your website is failing on one of these, it’s probably fixable without a full rebuild. If it’s failing on all three, you need a new site, and you need it built by someone who understands that a tradesperson’s website is a lead generation tool, not a brochure.
I’ve been building websites for Kerry tradespeople, accountants, and small businesses for 13+ years. If you’ve got a site that isn’t bringing in work and you want a straight answer on what’s wrong with it, ring me on 083 1985 855. The first conversation is free, twenty minutes, no obligation, and I’ll tell you honestly whether you need a new site or whether what you have can be fixed.
You’ve already paid for one website that doesn’t work. Don’t pay for another one.
Call Tommy on 083 1985 855 or email tommy@designmywebsite.ie
