Web design for electricians.
A service call and a commercial tender are two different sales, and a single website trying to win both usually wins neither. We have built the residential version and the industrial version, for two different contractors.
An electrical contractor is usually running two businesses off one phone number. One of them sells a panel upgrade to a homeowner in a bungalow who found you on a phone in their kitchen. The other one answers a request for quote from a plant that needs a shutdown scheduled around production. Different buyers, different objections, different proof.
Most electrical websites are built as though only one of those people exists. That is the first thing we fix, because it decides the structure of everything else.
Two buyers, two front doors
The residential visitor wants a price, a date, and the feeling that somebody will actually show up. They have three other contractors open in other tabs and they will choose whoever removed the most friction. Flat rates on common jobs, a booking step that does not require a phone call, an arrival window, a name.
The commercial and industrial visitor wants evidence you can carry the job. Scope, which disciplines you hold in house, the size of service you have installed, insurance limits, licence status, safety record, and a person to call who will not have to call someone else. None of that sells to the homeowner, and nothing on the homeowner's list survives a procurement review.
So the site gets two paths from the home page, each with its own services, its own proof and its own form. Within one click the visitor has told you which conversation they are in.
Compliance detail is conversion copy
Most electricians put the licence number in the footer beside the copyright year. It belongs much higher.
A homeowner who has been warned about unlicensed work is looking for that number. A buyer at a plant is checking the same thing for a completely different reason. Put the licence, the liability limits, the workplace insurance clearance, and whether you pull permits as a matter of course into one block that repeats on every service page. If you hold contractor prequalification for industrial clients, name the systems you are registered in, because the procurement person searching for you is often searching for exactly that phrase.
It is the cheapest credibility available to you. Nothing needs to be created, only published.
Emergency work does not belong on the planned work page
Somebody with no power in half the house is not reading your copy. They want a phone number big enough to hit with a thumb, a line that says whether you are answering tonight, and the towns you will drive to. Everything else on that page is in the way.
Planned work is the reverse. A service upgrade, a generator, a vehicle charger, a knob-and-tube replacement: these carry a consideration window of days or weeks, questions about permits and utility scheduling, and a homeowner who wants to understand the job before committing to it. That page can run long and should.
Put both on one page and the urgent visitor scrolls past patient explanation while the patient visitor gets shouted at.
What the quote form has to capture
Name, email and message gets you a message that says "need a quote" and then a day of phone tag. Ask properly instead.
- Job type, from a short list a homeowner recognises: panel or service upgrade, vehicle charger, pot lights, generator, old wiring replacement, troubleshooting, renovation rough-in, commercial or industrial.
- Property type and age. A 1950s house is a different job from a 2015 subdivision and you both know it.
- Postal code. Drive time is your margin, and the form should protect it before the call does.
- Photos. One picture of a panel label answers more than any text field.
On the commercial path, add the site, the timing window and whether a shutdown is involved. That is the version of the form a maintenance manager will actually finish.
What we have built in this trade
DCB Electrical is a Brantford contractor working industrial and commercial, where the reader is often a plant manager with a line down. Insurance, licence status and safety record sit at the top of their own section, because that is the gate on every request for quote. Eight service pages, so a shutdown, a service upgrade and a controls job each have somewhere to land rather than sharing one paragraph.
McGeoch Electric is residential and commercial across Hamilton, Guelph, Cambridge and the Waterloo Region. The build makes one argument: book it online, know the price before anyone arrives, stop waiting at home all day. Flat rates on common jobs sit high on the page because that is the wedge against every competitor who will not give a number without a visit.
Same trade, opposite buyers, no shared template. Both are live and you can open them from our work page.
Getting found for electrical work
Search volume in this trade splits the same way the business does. Residential terms are high volume, local, and decided largely in the map pack, which means your Google Business Profile and your review flow matter more than your home page. Commercial and industrial terms are lower volume, longer, and decided by whether a page exists that matches the exact phrase somebody typed.
That second half is where almost every electrician leaves money on the table. One services page listing nine things ranks for none of them. Nine pages, each written for one job and one buyer, is slower to produce and the only approach that compounds. We usually pair the build with search work for that reason.
Cost and timeline
Builds start at $5,000, and most electrical contractor sites land in the $5,000 to $15,000 band depending on page count, how much copy we write and whether you need booking and dispatch wired in. You get a fixed quote in writing first and you pay per phase as it ships. We do not bill hourly, because hourly billing rewards us for being slow.
Turnaround is 1.5 to 3.5 weeks once the brief is signed off. If you want the full breakdown of where the money goes before you talk to anybody, we wrote it out in what a website costs. When you are ready, tell us which half of your business needs the work.
On the same site, yes. On the same pages, no. Give each one its own path from the home page with its own services, proof and form. A homeowner and a procurement buyer have almost no overlapping questions, and copy written to satisfy both satisfies neither of them.
Somewhere a nervous homeowner will find it without hunting, which means a trust block repeated on every service page rather than a line in the footer. Put the insurance limits and clearance certificate beside it. It is already true, it costs nothing to publish, and most of your competitors do not bother.
Yes, and it should be the shortest page you own. Somebody with half a house dark at nine at night needs a tappable number, a straight answer about whether you are answering tonight, and your drive radius. Explanation on that page is friction, not reassurance.
If you have them, they are the strongest thing you can publish. Most of your competition refuses to quote without a visit, so a real number next to a common job removes the one objection that sends people to the next tab. Publish the common jobs and keep the rest on estimate.
Job type from a short list, property type and age, postal code, and a photo upload. A picture of a panel answers more than four text fields ever will. Keep the budget question on the commercial path only, because residential customers genuinely do not know and asking makes them leave.
A week and a half to three and a half weeks, brief to launch, and what stretches it is almost never the code. It is waiting on job photos and a decision about pricing. We draft the copy, so you are approving sentences rather than writing them.