Is a website worth it for plumbing?

The math, with your numbers and not mine

$299 to build and publish your website. You see your homepage free first and pay only if you want it online. Domain and hosting are included for 3 months. Then $39 a month with maintenance and changes, or $69 a month with Google Business Profile and SEO. Your homepage arrives within 24 hours; publication follows approval and receipt of missing material.

$299 to build and publish your website. You see your homepage free first and pay only if you want it online. Domain and hosting are included for 3 months. Then $39 a month with maintenance and changes, or $69 a month with Google Business Profile and SEO. Your homepage arrives within 24 hours; publication follows approval and receipt of missing material.

Put your own number over mine. Charge less and the job count goes up; charge more and it goes down. It still clears either way, and that is the whole point of it being one-time.

What changes when they come back

In plumbing a customer is not a one-time thing. They come back every year and a half, and that is where the business is.

Counted that way, a good customer is worth around $1,200 over two years. That is 4 times the cost of the site, off one customer. Which is why in your trade the question is rarely whether it clears.

The expensive mistake is judging the site by the first job that comes in. The first job is the sample. The money is in the two years after it.

When the answer is no, and I mean it

You do not need to spend this if you live off two or three builders who call you direct and you do not want residential work.

If that is you, a website fixes nothing, because being found is not your problem. Keep the money and come back when you want to grow, or when one of those steady accounts goes away.

We say this before taking your money, not after. Call us and if that turns out to be your situation, you will hear the same thing on the phone.

What actually makes the phone ring

A plumbing site that works is one where you can see a phone number you can tap without hunting for it, and someone who picks up without hunting for it.

The rest is decoration. With that in place the visitor calls. Without it they go to the next result, however good the design looks.

Why it did not pay off for some people

When somebody says they paid for a page and it did nothing, it nearly always had putting the phone number inside the logo, as an image, where nobody can tap it. It went live, it looked fine, and it never did the one thing it was there for, which in plumbing is getting people to ask you for a leak or a clogged drain.

The math cannot work out that way. What changes the outcome is the page carrying a phone number you can tap without hunting for it, and someone who picks up where it shows, and that is not about spending more: with a leak or a clogged drain at $150 to $600, that placement is what decides whether it pays, not the budget.