How many enquiries does a tradesperson's website really bring in?

There's a number floating around trade Facebook groups that goes something like "my website brings me ten enquiries a week, you need to get online." It's nice marketing. For most people in most trades most months, it's not the truth — and repeating it does you no favours when you try to plan the next few months of work.

So let's do what the industry rarely does: give you honest, grounded numbers. Not what a website can do in a perfect town on a perfect month, but what it usually does — and, more usefully, what actually moves that number for roofers, electricians, plumbers, gardeners and builders across the UK.

The honest range for a new trade website

A brand-new website for a roofer, electrician, plumber or landscaper, three to six months after launch, is doing well if it's pulling a handful of enquiries a month. Yes, a month. Not a week. I know that's not the answer the ads give you, but it's the answer the call logs give.

Here's how those first months usually break down when the site is built sensibly and tied to a proper Google Business Profile:

• Month 1-2: nearly nothing. Google is still working out who you are, where you cover, and whether to trust you. You might get the odd call from someone who already knows you — van livery, word of mouth — and then finds the site to double-check. That's still valuable, just not "ten leads a week".
• Month 3-6: this is where it starts moving — 3-8 enquiries a month is common, often on longer-tail searches like "emergency roofer Wigan" or "electrician rewire Oldham", especially in areas where competition is thin. The profile and the site start reinforcing each other. Our piece on what you need to rank in 2026 explains why that combo matters.
• Month 6-12+: builds from there. Page one on less competitive local keywords, a steady trickle of calls, reviews starting to stack. Some months spike — after a storm, re-roof enquiries jump; in summer, garden and exterior jobs do. Winter is different for heating and insulation. Seasonality is real.

Anyone promising ten enquiries a week to a brand-new trade website, without mentioning area, competition, season or reviews, is either selling you something on top or counting every spam call as a "lead". You're welcome to screenshot this paragraph and send it back.

Why do some trades get more than others?

Two words: supply and demand — plus, honestly, how booked-up your competitors are and whether they answer the phone. A niche with three other firms in your patch is a very different game from a city centre where forty companies fight for the same "builder near me" search.

• Higher-intent trades — emergency plumbers, drain unblockers, domestic electricians — convert better, because people search at the moment of panic. The phone intent is huge.
• Higher-ticket trades — full re-roofs, extensions, kitchen fits — get fewer enquiries but bigger jobs. Five good enquiries a month can keep you solidly busy all summer if you close two. Do the maths on job value, not just call volume.
• High-competition, high-volume trades — general builders, cleaners, handymen — need sharper local targeting and more patience. You don't win "builder Manchester" on week three, but you can win "single-storey extension Stockport" with the right location page and gallery.

Location density matters too. Covering London as one blob is almost impossible early on — you'd be better targeting two or three boroughs you actually serve and building pages for them, rather than trying to own the whole city on day one. That's exactly how we structure our Birmingham and Leeds examples: specific, not vague.

What actually moves the number (in order)

You can't make a website hot-air your way out of reality. But you can do the things that genuinely shift the needle, in the order that actually works:

1. Get your Google Business Profile sorted. A website alone isn't local SEO. Your Business Profile plus your website is a combination that actually works. Keep NAP identical, add categories honestly, add photos weekly. This is non-negotiable — see point one in our ranking checklist.
2. Collect reviews from day one. Three reviews moves you past competitors with zero. Ten changes your click-through completely. We tell every new site owner: ask the last three happy customers this week, not "sometime". Put them on the site too - social proof on the page helps the person who already clicked.
3. Target your actual patch, not "the UK". "Roof repairs" is not a keyword you can win. "Roofer in Walsall" is. Your site needs pages and titles built around the towns you cover. That local structure is built into our build process, not bolted on later.
4. Keep it current. Google notices when sites rot, and so do customers. Fresh gallery photos, updated services, recent reviews — they all count. This is why we wrote why so many businesses never update their site - staleness is a silent killer. Included edits on our £29.99 plan exist to solve exactly that.
5. Pick a service you can dominate first. "Guttering repairs in [your town]" beats "everything roofing" every single time when you're starting out. Own one narrow search, then expand.

Let's put numbers on a proper example

Take a typical ToolStay customer: a roofer with one van, based in Wigan, covering Wigan, Bolton, Warrington, Leigh. Budget no big ad spend, just the website and a GBP.

Months 1-2: maybe 1-2 calls, mostly branded ("your business name") or people who saw the van. Months 3-4: profile gets 6-9 reviews, site gets two service pages and a gallery update with March jobs — now 4-6 enquiries a month, mix of calls and form fills. Months 7-12: one service page starts ranking on page one for "flat roof repairs Wigan", another ranks for "guttering Wigan" - now 8-12 a month, some weeks quiet, some weeks three calls in two days. The "ten a week" myth isn't needed; 8-12 quality enquiries where you close 30-40% keeps a small team booked. Read how that math stacks up against paying for leads in the hosting trap and the cost comparison in roofer costs.

Why bother, then, if early months are slow?

Fair question, because those honest numbers sound smaller than the adverts. Here's the part the marketing people leave out: even a few enquiries a month from your own site are enquiries you didn't pay per-lead for. No Checkatrade subscription, no Bark credits, no MyBuilder fees where you pay even when you don't win the job. And they compound — unlike a leads platform where you pay again next month for the same spot.

Beyond the phone calls, the site is your credibility engine. Customers don't just find you; they check you before they call. Five minutes after they get your number from a mate, they Google you. No site? They call the next name. Dated site? Same result. A clean, current site with recent photos and reviews doesn't just bring work in - it stops work walking away. That's why a subscription that stays fresh matters so much. We're blunt about it in why a £2k site and a £29.99/month site are the same website - the ongoing freshness is the value.

We had an electrician in Nottingham we built for in March. Month two he rang to say "nothing's happening". We checked: three calls, two were price shoppers, one became a £900 rewire. He was expecting fireworks. By month five he stopped calling, because he was quoting two days a week just from inbound. That's a quiet win, not a viral one, but it pays the mortgage.

Set the right expectations and you'll actually use it

If a designer tells you a website alone will transform your phone in six weeks, treat the price tag the same way you'd treat a "guaranteed page one" promise. Realistic expectations are the difference between using a website as a tool and quietly resenting it because a promise was never kept.

Get online properly. Get your profile on Google right. Get reviewed relentlessly. Stay consistent for a year. Keep the site fresh - which, on ToolStay, means just sending us new photos and letting us do it as part of your monthly edits. That's the honest path, and it's the one that actually works month after month, not just for a week.

Want a blunt take on your patch and trade? Tell us your trade and towns - we'll look at competition for your actual keywords and tell you what a realistic 6-month arc looks like. No hard sell, just the numbers we'd be working towards.