Do you actually need a website? An honest look at the spend

Search "do tradespeople need a website" and look at who wrote the answers.

When I did it, the entire first page was web design agencies. Every result. Not one consumer group, trade body, or piece of journalism — just companies whose business is selling websites to tradespeople, answering the question of whether tradespeople should buy websites.

That doesn't make them wrong. It does mean nobody in that genre has any reason to tell you the free option is usually enough. So here's the version written by someone who doesn't sell websites.

This is only about the spend decision — whether a site is worth paying for, what it does that a free Google listing doesn't, and where the money goes instead if the answer is no. If what you actually want is a survey of where work comes from, that's a different question, answered here.

What the evidence actually says

Short version: almost nobody has measured this properly, and the little UK evidence that exists is much less flattering to websites than the marketing suggests.

The most current number comes from research by the Federation of Master Builders and the HomeOwners Alliance in 2026. Homeowners who'd used a builder were asked what was most important in choosing them, and allowed three answers. Word of mouth came top at 55%. Online reviews and checking qualifications tied at 23%.

"The builder's website, branding and overall professional presentation" came tenth out of twelve, named by 9%.

Among under-35s that rises to about 20%; among over-55s it's about 5%. So there's a real generational split, and if your customers are younger the calculation shifts. But nothing in there supports the idea that a website is what wins the job.

Second piece: Citizens Advice surveyed 5,000 UK adults in early 2026, with 3,438 who'd actually used a trader in the previous 18 months. It published how people found their trader — 36% a referral, 27% someone they'd used before, 16% a recommendation site like Checkatrade, 11% social media — and how they checked them out: 31% met them, 29% read reviews, 23% got several quotes, 10% checked qualifications.

Looking at a website doesn't appear in either list.

I'd be careful with that. The report doesn't publish its full answer options, so I can't tell you whether "looked at their website" was offered and scored too low to report, or was never asked. Either way, it isn't among the things people volunteered.

There's one older number that points the other way, and it's worth handling honestly rather than ignoring. In 2015 the HomeOwners Alliance asked which checks people would do when hiring a tradesman, and 61% picked "check their website" — fifth of nine.

That is not evidence that things have got worse. It's a different question. "Would you glance at a website?" is nearly free to say yes to. "What were the top three things that decided it?" is not. A website can be commonly looked at and almost never decisive, and the two findings together are probably telling you exactly that: it's a backstop, not a source of work. People find you some other way, then look you up to check you're real.

Three statistics you will be quoted, and shouldn't believe

Because you'll meet these the moment you ask anyone about this.

"75% of people judge a business's credibility on its website design." This usually gets pinned on Stanford's web credibility research, and it doesn't survive a look at the two studies involved. The 2002 Stanford-Makovsky study, whose participants were mostly Finnish and American, doesn't contain the figure at all. The 2003 follow-up — 2,684 participants, mostly American, recruited in a way its own authors said wasn't representative — found design mentioned in about 46% of the comments people made. A share of comments, not of people, and not 75% of anything. Both are more than twenty years old.

"84% of consumers think a business with a website is more credible than one with only social media." That's from a 2015 survey of 787 US consumers, commissioned by Verisign — which runs the .com registry and sells domain names.

"78% of homeowners check your website before hiring." I couldn't find a primary source for this at all, in any variant. It gets quoted constantly and appears to trace back to nothing.

What it actually costs

The advertised prices are not the prices. This is the part worth being concrete about.

Doing it yourself. Squarespace is £16 a month, or £144 if you pay for the year. Google Sites is genuinely free and will map your own domain onto it. Wix's main pricing page shows US dollars even from a UK connection, so check the sterling figure — and what the cheapest plan leaves out — before you commit.

Paying someone. Here the spread is remarkable. On PeoplePerHour, a UK marketplace, live listings for multi-page business sites run from about £250 to £500. Agencies quote £1,000 to £3,000 for what is, on paper, the same thing. That's a four- to six-fold gap for the same deliverable, which tells you the number is set by who you ask rather than by the work. (You'll also see "the average UK small business spends about £3,200" — I could find no survey behind that figure at all.)

The running costs, which is where the advertised price falls apart. A domain at 123 Reg costs a penny for the first year and £12.99 to £18.99 to renew. Hosting at IONOS is £1 a month for twelve months and £9 after that — a nine-fold step up. Hostinger's £1.49 requires paying four years up front and renews at £7.99. All of those are before VAT, and the domain renewal and the hosting step-up tend to land in the same month.

A realistic ongoing figure for a small brochure site is £84 to £132 a year. Not £12. If you want email on your own domain rather than a Gmail address, add about £65 a year.

Two things worth knowing while you're at it. SSL — the padlock — is now included free by every host I checked, so a separate charge for it is a line worth querying. And if you're offered a "website for tradesmen" subscription at £49 to £100 a month, do the multiplication: three years of £85 is £3,060, and at the end you own nothing, because the site was never yours.

Who owns your address. If a freelancer registers the domain, it can end up in their account and in their name. A public lookup won't settle that for you: registration details are routinely redacted or replaced by a privacy service, so your name being missing proves nothing either way. Ask the registrar directly who the registrant is, and make sure you can log into the account yourself. If it genuinely is registered to someone else, getting it back once they stop answering emails is a real ordeal — so sort it out while they're still answering.

Will it help me show up on Google?

This is usually the real question, and the answer is properly interesting.

There are two different competitions on a local search results page. The map results at the top, and the ordinary blue links underneath.

The map results are mostly a Business Profile competition. Google's published factors are relevance, distance and how well known the business is, and having a website isn't a requirement for appearing. It isn't irrelevant either: links from other sites count towards how well known you are, and Google draws business information from official websites when it builds profiles. In the annual survey of local search practitioners — informed opinion, not measurement — the factors at the top for map results are your primary category, how close you are to the searcher, your business name, the city you're in and whether you're open, with website authority well down the list.

The blue links underneath are much more of a website competition. There, the top factors are a dedicated page for each service, content about the area you cover, and links from other sites.

So for the map results a website is optional and can help at the margin. For the blue links, it's close to the whole game.

And here's the case for buying it, which is the strongest pro-website argument I found, and one that comes out of how Google describes local results rather than out of a sales pitch.

If you work from home, Google asks you to hide your address and set up as a service-area business. Distance from the searcher is one of its three published factors. Your service area can list up to twenty towns, but listing a town doesn't guarantee you'll rank there — distance works alongside everything else, and Google publishes no rule about where the line falls.

So a sparky in Falkirk who lists Edinburgh shouldn't count on turning up in an Edinburgh homeowner's map results. The blue links are an additional route to the next town over, and that's the competition a website is built for. If your work is genuinely local, that's an argument for not bothering. If you want to pull work from a wider patch, it's the clearest thing your money buys.

The awkward one nobody mentions

A quirk worth knowing before you spend anything.

UK e-commerce regulations require a commercial website to make its name, geographic address and contact details easily and permanently accessible. There's genuine legal nuance about how far that stretches to a pure brochure site with nothing for sale, so don't take this as settled — but the standard reading is that a business website publishes an address.

Meanwhile Google requires a home-based trade to hide its address.

Which means the free option protects your home address and the paid one may well expose it. If you work from the house and would rather the internet didn't know where you live, that's worth an hour of thought before you buy a domain.

What the money goes on instead

If you decide against a site, the spend has better homes.

Set the free listing up properly. Most of what people want a brochure site for — who you are, what you do, where you cover, photos of your work, your hours, a phone number, reviews — a Google Business Profile does for nothing. It's also the thing that shows in the map results, which is the half of the page a website on its own won't get you into. There's a full walkthrough in setting one up without a shopfront.

A Facebook or Instagram page is closer to a website than people think. Facebook pages are crawled by Google, and Instagram has published sitemaps for public professional accounts since July 2025, so both are findable by name. What you give up is control — but you were giving that up with Google too.

Reviews. On the evidence above, they're doing more work than any website would.

And if you're still weighing the directories, our numbers on what those actually cost are in how much Checkatrade costs.

When a site does earn its keep

Not never. Specifically:

• Commercial and trade clients vet suppliers. A letting agent, a builder subcontracting you, a facilities manager — they'll look, and an absence is more conspicuous than it is with a homeowner.
• Work that needs showing. Bespoke joinery, landscaping, high-end bathrooms. A gallery is the sell, and a Business Profile's photos are a thin substitute.
• Reaching beyond your immediate patch, as above.
• Hiring. People look up an employer.
• You want an enquiry form you control, going to your own inbox rather than a platform's.

If none of those describe you, the honest answer is that the money is better spent elsewhere, and you should be suspicious of anyone who tells you otherwise for a living.

And if you're wondering how common it is

Government figures disagree with each other, which is its own answer. A 2026 government business survey has 76% of sole traders saying they have a website — but it's drawn from a business marketing database, which structurally over-samples businesses that already market themselves, and its question doesn't distinguish a real site from a Facebook page. The last Office for National Statistics figure, from 2019, put website ownership among businesses with under ten employees at 41%, and flat for six years running.

The truthful range is somewhere between a quarter and over half of sole traders with no website, and nobody measures it well. Either way: if you haven't got one, you're in a lot of company, and it isn't the thing holding you back.

What is worth getting right is what happens after somebody does get in touch — how fast you come back to them, and whether the quote turns up while they still care. That's what grafter.ly is for, and you can try it free for 30 days, no card to start.

---

Sources. Federation of Master Builders and HomeOwners Alliance research on choosing a builder, June 2026, drawn from the HomeOwners Alliance Homeowner Survey 2026 (Opinium, 2,000 UK adults, fieldwork 13–18 February 2026); the HomeOwners Alliance Homeowner Survey 2015 (YouGov, 2,214 UK adults, fieldwork 4–5 March 2015); Citizens Advice, Built to fail, July 2026 (Opinium, 5,000 UK adults, 3,438 who used a trader, fieldwork February–March 2026); the Stanford web credibility studies, Stanford-Makovsky 2002 and Fogg et al. 2003; the Verisign online survey, September 2015; published pricing from Squarespace, IONOS, Hostinger, Krystal and 123 Reg's registrar comparison; PeoplePerHour live listings; Google Business Profile Help on local ranking and where business information comes from, and Google Sites Help on custom domains; Whitespark Local Search Ranking Factors 2026 (a survey of practitioner opinion, not measurement); the DSIT UK Business Data Survey 2026 and ONS E-commerce and ICT Activity 2019; the Electronic Commerce (EC Directive) Regulations 2002, reg. 6. Prices and figures checked 10 September 2026.

Nothing here is legal advice, and the point about what a website must publish has real nuance — if your home address is the concern, check it properly before you commit.