Roofing enquiries arrive either as an emergency or as a considered job worth thousands. They want opposite things from a website. What to build instead.
Two people land on a roofer's website, and they could not be less alike.
The first has water coming through a bedroom ceiling. They are on a phone, standing up, and they will ring whoever answers. They are not reading anything. They want a number, a sense that someone will actually come, and roughly when.
The second is planning a full re-roof. It is a five-figure decision they have been putting off, they are on a laptop, and they are looking at four roofers. They are not ready to ring anybody. They want to know whether they can afford it before they have a conversation about it.
Most roofing websites are built for neither. They open with a stock photo of a tiled roof, a paragraph about being family run since whenever, and a contact form at the bottom. The emergency caller has to hunt for the number. The re-roof buyer learns nothing they can act on and leaves to find someone who will tell them something.
Serve the emergency in the first screen
The urgent visitor needs three things above the fold and nothing else: the number, tap-to-call so it dials rather than copies, and a plain sentence about response — whether you cover emergencies at all, what hours, and what area. If you do not do emergency call-outs, say that too. Being told no in five seconds is a better experience than a form submitted into silence.
Everything else on the page can wait, because this visitor is already gone — ideally onto your phone.
Give the re-roof buyer a number to work with
The considered buyer is the one worth designing for, and the thing they want is the thing most roofers are least willing to put on a website: an indication of cost.
The reluctance is understandable. Roofs vary enormously — pitch, access, whether it is a scaffold job, tile against slate, how much of the timber turns out to be rotten once you are up there. No honest roofer wants to be held to a figure quoted off a web page.
But refusing to say anything does not make the question go away. It moves it to a competitor who will answer it. And the answer does not have to be a fixed price. A range, tied to what actually drives the cost — roof type, rough size, whether scaffolding is needed, whether it is a repair or a full strip and re-cover — tells someone whether they are in the right ballpark without committing you to anything. Then the enquiry that comes through has those details already in it, and the survey you do is a real survey rather than a fact-finding call.
What that looks like built
There is now a roofing example on our public showcase, and it is this argument built as a page: two doors at the top, one per visitor. The emergency door leads with the number, tap-to-call and a plain sentence about response. The planning door leads to a survey, because a five-figure re-roof is priced from a roof, not a dropdown. Every control on it is shaped like the real thing and labelled as an example — the call button dials nobody.
What it deliberately does not carry is a quote calculator. The range tool described above — pitch, access, scaffold, strip or overlay, answered with a bracket rather than a promise — is the piece we would build first for a real roofing firm, around your own rates. The first build in a trade tends to be the one the trade gets designed around, and nobody has claimed it yet.
What it costs
Right now that is £99 to build and then a monthly that starts at £17.99 just to keep it online, or £35 — about £8 a week — to have it looked after and kept current. That is a launch price for the first ten trades who take it, not a standing rate, and the site and the domain are in your name from the day it goes live rather than after some qualifying period.
The build includes the quote tool, your photos, your copy, your domain and going live. We build it before you pay anything, so what you are deciding on is a finished site rather than a description of one.
The short answers
- How much does a roofing website cost?
- £99 to build, then a monthly from £17.99 to keep it online — or £35, about £8 a week, to have it looked after and kept current. That is the launch price for the first ten trades, not a standing rate, and nothing is paid until the site is built and you have seen it.
- Should a roofer put prices on their website?
- A range, yes — a spot price, no. A range tied to what actually moves the cost (pitch, access, scaffolding, repair against full strip and re-cover) tells a buyer whether they are in the right ballpark without holding you to a figure quoted off a page, and the enquiry that comes through carries those details already.
- Is there a roofing example I can look at?
- Yes. The roofing example on our public showcase splits the page for the two visitors this guide describes — number first for the leak, survey first for the re-roof — and everything on it is labelled as an example. Open the roofing example ↗