The photographs that win extension jobs: the before, during and after routine, and the one picture that loses them

"Extension builders near me" is searched about 880 times a month in the UK, "house extension cost" 1,900 and "single storey extension cost" 2,400, and the bids on the first are among the highest in the trade, because an extension is a five-figure job and the homeowner shortlists three builders from their websites before anyone is rung. They shortlist on photographs. Not the number of them, the kind: the same room before, during and after, with the town and the month, and the builder in the picture at least once. A builder with eight such sets on a page beats one with eighty finished-kitchen shots, and the routine that produces the sets takes five minutes a visit. The one picture never to publish is the one the whole trade publishes: the stock render of a glass box in somebody else's garden.

Why the homeowner reads photographs and not words

They cannot judge your brickwork or your programme; they can judge whether the house in the picture looks like theirs, whether the site was tidy halfway through, and whether the finished room is the one they want. The before photograph tells them you take on houses like theirs. The during photograph tells them what living through it looks like, which is the fear behind the search. The after photograph tells them the result. One without the others is a brochure; the three together are a reference they can check.

The routine, five minutes a visit

1. On the first visit, before the quote: the rear of the house from the bottom of the garden, the room that will be opened up from the doorway, and the side access. Same three positions every job, so the pairs line up.
2. On the day the slab is poured, the day the steel goes in and the day the roof goes on: the same position from the bottom of the garden, plus one of the site at the end of the day with the tools away. That is the tidiness proof.
3. On completion, in daylight, from the same three positions, with the furniture in if the owner allows, and one with you or your foreman in the finished room.
4. The same week: the set goes on the projects page with the town, the month, what was done in a sentence, and roughly how long it took. Not adjectives; "a four-metre rear extension in Hoole, March to May, with the kitchen moved".
5. Ask the owner for the review while the photographs are being taken, and ask them to say the town. That is the sentence the next searcher reads under the pictures.

What the page does with the sets

Count the photographs on your extensions page that were taken at a job you did. If the answer is fewer than the stock ones, the page is selling somebody else's work, and the homeowner can usually tell.

The picture that loses the job

The render: the glass-box extension on a page with no address, no town and no builder in it, bought from a stock library or borrowed from a supplier's brochure. Homeowners have seen the same image on six sites by the time they reach yours. It tells them nothing about your work and something about your honesty, and if the finished job looks like the render they will expect the render's price. A slightly dim photograph of a real extension in a real garden in the rain is worth more, every time.

The during photograph, and why it is the one you are tempted to skip

The before is easy and the after is the one everyone takes. The during is the one that gets forgotten, because the site is busy and nobody wants a photograph of a muddy footing. It is the photograph that sells, because it answers the fear behind every extension search: what will my house and garden look like for three months, and will these people leave it tidy at the end of each day. A photograph of the steel going in with the site clean around it, taken at five o’clock, is proof no review can give. Take it on three fixed days per job, the slab, the steel and the roof, from the same spot at the bottom of the garden, and it takes less than a minute each time.

Put the during photograph in the middle of the set on the page with the date under it. A homeowner who sees the same garden on three dates believes the finished room; one who sees only the finished room believes nothing in particular.

The practical bits

A phone is fine; a consistent position is what matters, not the camera. Shoot in landscape. Keep the originals; the web versions get compressed. Ask the owner on the first visit whether the photographs can be used, and write it on the quote. Name the files with the town and the job before they go on the site, because the file name is read too. And never publish a house number or anything that identifies the family: the town and the month are enough.

What to expect

Photographs do not move rankings on their own; the facts under them do, and the town and the job in those lines are what the town and type searches match. What photographs move is the shortlist, which is the only number an extension builder needs to watch: enquiries that mention a project they saw on the site. Ask every enquirer which one, and you will know within a month which sets are working.