Most tradies do not need a new website because a designer said so. They need one because the site they have cannot take a booking, does not appear for the suburb they work in, and sends every enquiry to an inbox nobody checks on site.
A visitor cannot book without calling. If the only action on the page is a phone number, you lose everyone who is quoting three tradies at lunchtime and will not make three calls. Booking has to happen on the site.
The site has no page for the suburbs you serve. One page that lists fifteen suburbs does not rank for any of them. A page per service area is how local search works, and a template cannot create those pages for you.
Enquiries land in one inbox. A site that emails every enquiry to a shared address means the first person to open it wins, and nobody knows what happened to the rest. Enquiry tracking is the difference between knowing your cost per job and guessing.
It fails on a phone. Most tradie traffic is mobile and most of it arrives from a search result while someone is standing in a driveway. Test your own site on your own phone with one hand before reading the rest of this.
Reviews are not on the page. A homeowner comparing three tradies reads reviews before they call. If yours live only on a directory you do not control, you are sending your best proof to a competitor's doorway.
You cannot change anything yourself. If updating a price or a photo means emailing someone and waiting, the site will be out of date within a month. That is a structural problem, not a service problem.
A redesign is not a rebrand. The work is moving the things that earn calls onto a site you can run, which means service area pages, reviews, booking, enquiry routing and photos.
The redirects are the part most migrations get wrong. Every old page that had traffic needs a permanent redirect to its replacement, or the new site starts from zero. Ask what happens to existing URLs before work starts, and ask to see the redirect map.
Three anchors matter, and none is a market average. Know what a done-for-you system costs, what an agency anchor looks like, and what directory lead spend reaches, because those are the three numbers in the decision.
The table sets the four anchors side by side, and every figure in it is published on the pricing page with its terms.
| What you compare | Annual figure | Note |
|---|---|---|
| TradesPro Starter | $360 a year | $49 a month, locked intro rate of $30 |
| TradesPro 90-Day Lead Launch | $1,491, or 3 x $497, then $59 a month | Adds the local lead system and setup |
| Agency equivalent anchor | $7,280 a year | An anchor for comparison, not a quote from any specific agency |
| Directory lead spend | up to $9,600 a year | HiPages spend can reach this for a busy trade |
A traditional agency equivalent is commonly anchored around $7,280 per year. That is an anchor for comparison, not a claim about what any specific agency charges, and quotes vary widely. Directory lead spend is the third anchor, and HiPages spend can reach $9,600 a year for a busy trade, which is the number most tradies are actually comparing against without realising it.
Every one of those figures is published on the pricing page with terms, and the terms matter more than the headline. Read them there rather than from this page, because prices change and this article is dated.
Launch takes 48 hours from approved content, which is the constraint most tradies care about because a website that takes six weeks is six weeks of enquiries going to someone else.
Enquiries stop relying on memory. The system captures enquiries and follows up. It does not ring your phone for you, and anyone who tells you software will chase a homeowner on the phone is selling you a call centre.
You can see cost per job. Once enquiries are tracked against jobs, you can tell which service area pays and which one you should stop buying leads for. That is the number that decides where next month's money goes.
One Melbourne electrician went from 0 to 8 jobs a month and added about $6k a month, starting from 12 Google reviews where there were none. One Sydney plumber saved $870 a month against HiPages, with a 2,900 percent ROI and cost per customer falling from $225 to $300 down to $5 to $6.
Those are two trades in two cities, and they are not a forecast for yours. The honest version of a case study is a demonstration that the mechanism can work, not a promise that it will repeat in your suburb at your prices.
Ask to see the redirect map for every URL that currently gets traffic. If the answer is that the old site will be taken down, walk away.
Confirm who owns the domain and the content. If the agency owns your domain, you do not have a website, you have a subscription with a hostage.
Test the booking flow on a phone before signing, not after. Two taps to book, or it will not be used.
Ask what happens when you want to leave. Keep the files is the answer you want, and it should be in writing.
The pricing page carries the plans, the intro rate and the launch terms. The migration guides cover moving from a specific platform. If you want a second opinion on your current site before spending anything, start here and tell us what your site does not do. Finding out whether the template is really the constraint costs nothing.