Plumber or electrician website: what goes on it

Someone has a leak, or a dead fuse board, and they are looking at their phone. They want to know three things before they ring: do you work in my area, do you do this kind of job, and is there a number I can call now. A website for a plumber or an electrician does not need to be much more than the answers to those, written clearly. Here is what I would put on it if the firm were mine.

Start with the area. Name the town and the places around it, or give a distance, "Västerås and 30 km around". People do not know whether your town counts as near. If there are places you will not go, say that too, it saves you a wasted call.

Then the jobs, in the words a customer uses. For a plumber that is leaks, a dripping tap, a blocked drain, a new toilet, boiler service. For an electrician it is the fuse board, sockets, lighting, an EV charger. People search for the job, so write the job. Add the jobs you do not take as well. "Repairs and replacements only, no new builds" is one sentence, and it keeps away the calls you would turn down anyway.

Next, how to reach you, and when. Put the phone number at the top, large enough to tap with a thumb, and write when you pick up: "weekdays 7 to 16, emergencies until 22". If you are two people on a van and often under a sink, say that calls may go to voicemail and that you ring back the same day. A customer who knows that waits. One who does not rings the next firm on the list.

Now what a stranger checks before they call someone into their home. They look for signs that you are a real firm. A name, a town, a face if you are comfortable with one, and your company registration number. If you hold an authorisation or a certificate, or carry business insurance, put it on the page, using your own wording and your own numbers exactly as they appear on your papers. Do not let a tool or a friend write that for you, and do not claim anything you cannot show if a customer asks. If you have no certificate to show, leave that line out rather than pad it. A page with fewer claims that are all true is stronger than one with many.

Prices are your choice. Some owners show a call-out fee or an hourly rate, others write "free quote, call to book a visit". If you show a price, write "from" and what it covers. If you do not, say how a quote works: you look at the job, then give a number before you start.

Here is the part owners ask me about. A Klarhimmel page today does not have a quote form, a booking calendar or online payment. There is no upload for a photo of the leak either. I would rather you hear that now than find it out after you have printed the address on your van. What trades people do instead is old and it works. Put the phone number and an email address on the page, and ask for the things you need in a sentence: "Email a photo of the problem and the address, and I will tell you if I can come this week." The customer sends it from their own phone, and you read it on yours. If you already take payment by invoice, card machine or Swish, say that on the page, so nobody is surprised at the door.

A few things to leave out. Skip stock photos of smiling men in hard hats. One or two real pictures of your van or your work beat them. Skip long paragraphs about being passionate about quality. A customer with water on the floor wants the number.

Be honest with yourself about what a page does. It does not, by itself, make you show up when people search for a plumber in your town. Getting found on Google is a separate job, and I have written about the free steps for it. What the page does is give you something clear to point to: the link on your van, your invoices, your Google profile, a message to a customer who asked "do you do bathrooms too?" A kept page lives at a Klarhimmel address, free, with a small "Made with Klarhimmel" line. Your own domain, like yourfirm.se, is not part of that yet.

To try it, paste a description like the ones below into the box at the top of our Business Launcher page. The link fills the box with the sample. Change the names and details to yours, then press Enter yourself. Nothing is built until you do. Read what comes back, and check the number, the area and every claim. What you did not tell it is left out, not made up, so read every line and fix what is not true. Then ask for changes in plain words, as you would to a colleague.

The two examples are made up. Testvik Plumbing and Bolin Electric are not real firms.

Try a plumber description

Try an electrician description

The type pages show what a first page looks like: plumber and electrician. For getting found, read the article on getting found.