Free, instant, no email
A website score check for builders, and what the number actually means
Put your address in and you get a grade from A to F in about a minute, with the findings under it: speed on a phone, whether Google can index the pages, titles, structured data, the basics of accessibility. Nothing is stored and no email address is asked for. The rest of this page is the part the tool cannot tell you, which is what a given grade means for a building firm and which fault to deal with first.
Runs on Quence, our own audit tool. It opens in a new tab and reads the site live.
What you get back
A letter grade, the individual checks that produced it, and the specific pages that failed each one. It is the same tool we run before quoting on any job, which is why it is on the site rather than behind a form.
Takes about a minute
Longer on a big site, because it fetches the pages one at a time rather than guessing.
No account, no follow-up
There is nothing to sign up to and nobody rings you. If you want our written view afterwards you ask for it on the quote form.
The grades
What each grade means for a building firm
The letter on its own is not worth much. What matters is which kind of problem it points at, because the fix for a slow gallery and the fix for a missing job page have nothing in common.
Grade A: Nothing urgent
Loads fast on a phone, every job page is indexed, the profile matches the site. Spend the money on content and photographs instead.
Grade B: One or two real faults
Usually the gallery weight or a handful of pages Google has not indexed. A morning's work, not a rebuild.
Grade C: The site works, the search side does not
Typically one Services page doing the work of six, and a town that appears nowhere. This is the most common grade on a trade site.
Grade D: Losing enquiries you already paid for
Slow on a phone, the number is not tappable, or the quote form goes to an address nobody reads. People arrive and leave.
Grade E: Google has most of it, and shows none of it
Indexed but invisible: duplicate titles, thin pages, no local signal at all.
Grade F: Not really in the game
Blocked from indexing, broken on a phone, or so slow the test gives up. Worth checking the site is not simply misconfigured before assuming the worst.
Why the score came out low
Five things that sink a builder’s score, in the order we find them
These are not general web faults. Each one is a consequence of how trade websites get built: in a hurry, by someone who does not do the work, from photographs taken on site.
The gallery is the heaviest thing on the site
Photographs go up straight off a phone at three or four megabytes each, twenty of them on one page. It is the single most common reason a builder's site scores badly on mobile, and it is the easiest to fix: the pictures do not need to be smaller on screen, only smaller in bytes.
One Services page doing the work of six
Extensions, lofts, renovations, groundworks and driveways listed as bullet points on a single page. A homeowner searching for a loft conversion in your town never sees it, because there is no page about loft conversions. This is the difference between a website and a brochure.
The phone number is not a link
Set as an image, or as plain text in a header graphic. On a phone it cannot be tapped, so the person has to memorise eleven digits and switch apps. Most do not.
No town, anywhere
No address in the footer, no county in the copy, nothing in the markup. Google has no way to work out where you work, so it does not put you in the map for the towns you drive to every day.
A Checkatrade badge instead of reviews
The badge is a link to somebody else's website, which is where the reader then goes. Reviews written on your own pages, with the job and the town named, do the same trust job and keep the visitor.
What to do first, whatever the grade said
The order matters more than the list. Every one of these is cheaper than the one after it, and a building firm that does the first three and nothing else is usually ahead of the competitors who paid for a redesign.
Re-save the photographs
Same pictures, a fraction of the bytes. On most trade sites this alone moves the mobile score more than everything else put together, and it costs an afternoon.
Make the number tappable and the form work
Then send yourself a test enquiry from a phone, on mobile data rather than the office wi-fi. A quote form that quietly fails is the most expensive fault on this list and the one nobody notices.
Give each kind of job its own page
One for extensions, one for loft conversions, one for whatever you want more of. Name the towns you actually drive to. This is what turns a brochure into something that can be found. It is also what our builder websites are built around.
Claim and fill in the Google Business Profile
For local work the profile often decides more than the website does, and it is free. There is a whole guide on it: the profile setup builders get wrong.
Only then think about rankings
Search work on a site that loses visitors is paying to fill a leaking bucket. What that work costs is on the pricing page rather than behind an enquiry, and SEO for builders explains what it involves.
Where it stops
Three things the score cannot tell you
Which searches you already sit close to
Queries at positions five to twenty are the cheapest ranking gains available, and they only exist in Search Console. No live crawl can see them, ours included.
Whether your Google Business Profile is the real problem
For extensions and renovations in one town, the profile frequently decides more than the website. A site can score an A and still be invisible in the map.
Whether the writing is any good
A page can pass every technical check and still read like it was written by someone who has never stood in a trench. That is a judgement, not a measurement.
Questions about the score check
Is the score check actually free, and do I have to give an email address?
It is free and no email address is asked for. You type the address, the tool reads the site live in your browser and shows a grade with the findings under it. Nothing is stored here. If you then want a written view of what to fix first, that is the quote form, and that is a separate decision.
What does the check actually look at?
It runs against the live site: how fast the main pages are on a phone connection, whether they can be indexed at all, titles and meta descriptions, structured data, security headers and the basics of accessibility. It reads what a visitor and a crawler would both see.
What can it not see?
Search Console data, which is where your actual queries and impressions live. It cannot tell you which searches you already sit at position eleven for, and that is often the cheapest win on a building firm's site. It also cannot see your Google Business Profile, which for local jobs frequently matters more than the website does.
My site scored badly. Does that mean I need a new one?
Usually not. Most low grades on trade sites come from three or four specific faults, and the gallery weight alone accounts for a lot of them. We would rather tell you it is a morning's work than sell you a rebuild you do not need. Where a rebuild genuinely is the answer, it is because the site has no job pages to rank and adding them to the existing one is more work than starting again.
Will you ring me after I run the check?
No. The tool does not collect a number and running it does not start anything. If you want us to look at it properly you send it through the quote form and we reply by email.
I have no website at all. Is there any point?
None for the tool, but the answer is on the pricing page instead. The smallest site we build starts at £599 and that is home, a page for each kind of job you want more of, projects, about and a quote form.
A grade is a starting point, not a verdict
Send us the address and your town. You get a plain-English note on what a homeowner sees, what Google sees, and which one of the five faults above is costing you most, with a fixed price to put it right.