Websites for groundworks contractors
Websites for groundworks contractors: pass the two-minute check a main contractor runs on you
Groundworks is bought differently. A developer or main contractor who has your name looks you up before the pre-qualification form and wants accreditations, insurance, plant and evidence of programme, in that order, in two minutes. A homeowner with a drainage fault wants a number that is answered from the cab. One site, with a front door for each, written for what each buyer checks.
The buyers
Four buyers, four checks, one site
Each buyer arrives with a different question. The homepage sends them to the page that answers theirs.
- Main contractors and developers
- They check accreditations, insurance, plant and capacity before they check anything else. CHAS, Constructionline, SMAS, CITB, the insurance limits, the number of teams. On one page, above the fold.
- Housebuilders
- Foundations, drainage, roads and sewers, plot work, and whether you can hold a programme. Case pages with the number of plots and the timeline.
- Homeowners and self-builders
- Foundations for an extension, a driveway, a soakaway, a drainage fault. Plain-English pages, a from-price logic, and a phone number that is answered from the cab.
- Farmers and landowners
- Access tracks, drainage, concrete yards, ponds. A separate page, because the search and the buyer are different.
The services
A page per service, written for the person who buys it
Foundations for a housebuilder and foundations for an extension are two searches and two buyers. The pages are split the same way.
- Foundations and footings: strip, trench-fill, raft, piled, with the ground conditions you work in
- Drainage: foul and surface water, soakaways, connections, CCTV surveys and repairs
- Site clearance, muck away, reduced-level dig, cut and fill
- Roads, sewers and plot works for small developers
- Driveways, patios, concrete bases and slabs
- Plant: what you run, what you hire in, what it means for the programme
The capability page
The page a main contractor reads first. It replaces the six emails before a pre-qualification form.
- Accreditations with the dates: CHAS, Constructionline, SMAS, CITB, as you hold them
- Insurance limits: public, employer's, contractors' all risks
- Plant list: owned and hired-in, with operators
- Teams, capacity and the radius you work
- Case pages: plots, programme, what went wrong and how it was handled
- A document pack link: certificates, policies, capability statement
Search
The domestic searches are real, and mostly uncontested
“Groundworks contractor” and “drainage contractor” with a town, “soakaway installation”, “foundations for extension”: real searches, mostly answered by directories and one-page sites. A proper page per service with the town and a photo of the job tends to rank in months, not years. The profile and the pages are kept moving by the monthly work.
Questions builders ask us
Groundworks buyers are not searching Google. Why a website?
The commercial ones are checking, not searching: a main contractor who was given your name looks you up before the pre-qualification form. The site is where the accreditations, the insurance, the plant list and the case pages live, so the check takes two minutes and passes. The domestic ones are searching, and 'groundworks contractor <town>' is a real search with little competition.
Can the site handle tenders and pre-qualification?
It can hold the document pack a buyer asks for: insurance certificates, accreditations, policies, a capability statement as a PDF, and a plant list. One link instead of six emails.
We do groundworks and general building. One site or two?
One site, two front doors. The groundworks pages speak to contractors and developers, the building pages to homeowners, and the homepage sends each to the right one. Two sites split the reviews and the authority.
What about photos of holes in the ground?
They work better than you think when they show scale: the dig with the machine in it, the drainage run before backfill, the slab poured, the finished plot. Captioned with the site, the town and the month.
Pass the check before the pre-qualification form
Send your site, or say you have none, and what you do. You get a review of what a main contractor and a homeowner each see, and a quote.