This guide covers what homeowners, developers, main contractors and public procurement teams actually check on a construction company website before they put you on a shortlist. It lists the pages worth building, what goes on each one, and where the money usually gets wasted. It covers both the US and the UK, because the checks differ.
A construction company website needs project pages with scope, location, duration and your role, a sectors page, a credentials page with numbers buyers can verify (license, company number, accreditations, insurance), a health and safety page, a downloadable capability statement, and a clear way to request a quote or send tender documents. Fast-loading photos matter more than video or slogans.
Who actually checks your construction website
Most contractor websites are written for one imaginary visitor: a homeowner who wants "quality you can trust". In reality, at least four different people land on the site, and they are looking for different things.
- A private client or small developer comparing three builders for an extension, a fit-out or a small block of flats. They want to see similar work, a rough idea of scale, and someone to call.
- A main contractor's commercial or supply chain team checking a subcontractor before adding them to an approved list. They want accreditations, insurance, trade scope and capacity.
- A public sector procurement officer or a housing association buyer. They want the legal entity, company registration, health and safety evidence, and projects of similar value in similar sectors.
- A site manager, estimator or tradesperson looking for work with you, and a supplier or subcontractor wanting to get on your list.
None of these people read your homepage slogan. They open the site with a checklist in their head, look for proof, and leave when they can't find it. A general contractor website that works is basically a well-organised evidence file with a phone number on every page.
| Page | Who relies on it most | What it must show |
|---|---|---|
| Project pages | Everyone, developers and procurement teams first | Sector, location, duration, your role, finished photos |
| Credentials | Procurement and supply chain teams | License or company number, accreditations with certificate numbers and expiry dates |
| Health and safety | Main contractors, public buyers | Schemes held, who is responsible, how sites are managed |
| About | Public buyers, larger private clients | Legal name, years trading, insurance, directors, typical project size |
| Sectors and service areas | Private clients and developers | Relevant projects per sector, where you work |
| Quote and tender pages | Clients and estimators on their side | Short form, named contact, a route for large files |
| Careers and subcontractors | Job seekers, trades, suppliers | Vacancies, trades used, documents needed |
Swipe sideways to see the whole table.
The rest of this guide goes page by page. The order matters: project pages first, because that's where the shortlist decision is usually made.
Project pages that prove what you've built
A gallery of 60 unlabelled photos tells a buyer almost nothing. They can't tell if you built the whole building or installed the windows, whether it took six months or three years, or whether it was a £200,000 job or a £20 million one. A proper project page answers those questions in the first screen.
- 1Building type and location in the title
- 2The facts a buyer checks first, in one strip
- 3Real photos of the finished work
- 4What you built, in plain words
- 5A named client quote, or leave it out
- 6One clear next step
Example layout with sample details. Six to ten pages like this do more than forty unlabelled gallery photos.
What every project page should show
- A title that includes the building type and location, such as "18-unit residential block, Leeds" or "Medical office fit-out, Sacramento".
- A key facts strip near the top: sector, location, duration, contract type if you're allowed to say it, and your role.
- Your role, stated plainly. Main contractor, design and build, subcontractor for groundworks, M&E package, or construction manager. This single line is what a procurement team checks first.
- A value range, only if the client has agreed. "£1m to £2m" is enough. Never publish a figure the client hasn't approved.
- The scope in plain words: what was demolished, built, extended or refurbished, and anything unusual (a live hospital site, a listed building, a tight urban plot).
- Photos of the finished building, plus a few progress shots if you have good ones. You don't need people in them.
- A short challenge and solution section, two paragraphs at most.
- A client quote, only if it's real and you have written permission to use it with a name and company.
Google's own guidance on creating helpful content asks whether a page "clearly demonstrate[s] first-hand expertise" and mentions photographs as evidence. For a contractor, a detailed project page is exactly that. It also gives Google something specific to rank for searches like "school extension contractor Bristol", which a generic gallery never will.
How many project pages you need
Six to ten well-written project pages beat 40 thin ones. Pick projects that match the work you want more of. If you want to move into education and healthcare, lead with the two school jobs, even if most of your turnover came from retail fit-outs.
Group them on a projects index that can be filtered by sector. A buyer from a housing association should reach three residential projects in two clicks.
A procurement officer wants one thing from your project pages: proof you've done this exact type of job before, at this size, in the role they need.
Credentials and accreditations buyers can verify
This is the page most contractor websites get wrong, usually by showing a row of logos with no numbers. A logo proves nothing. A buyer wants a number they can type into the issuer's own lookup tool. The checks differ by country.
In the UK
- Your registered company name and number, so buyers can look you up on Companies House and see filing history, officers and accounts. Companies House notes it "does not check the accuracy of the information filed", so buyers will cross-check against your own documents.
- Health and safety pre-qualification such as CHAS or SafeContractor, both of which run schemes recognised under SSIP (Safety Schemes in Procurement). SSIP is the arrangement that lets one health and safety assessment be accepted by other member schemes.
- Constructionline membership, which many main contractors and public bodies use to pre-qualify suppliers. Constructionline works with PAS 91 (a standard pre-qualification questionnaire) and the Common Assessment Standard.
- ISO certificates: ISO 9001 for quality, ISO 14001 for environmental management and ISO 45001 for occupational health and safety. State the certification body and certificate number, because ISO itself does not certify companies; certification is done by external bodies.
- Trade body memberships, only if they're current.
In the US
- Your state contractor license number and classification. In California, anyone can check a license on the CSLB license check by number, business name or personnel name. The CSLB's advertising guidelines say licensed contractors must include their license number in "all forms of advertising", and that covers any website that solicits business. Other states have their own rules and lookup tools, so check yours.
- Bonding capacity and insurance. The SBA explains the surety bond types buyers ask about: bid, payment, performance and ancillary bonds. As of September 2026, SBA-guaranteed bonds cover contracts up to $9 million for non-federal work and up to $14 million for federal work.
- For federal work, your SAM.gov registration and Unique Entity ID. SAM.gov says a full registration is what lets you bid on government contracts, and it has to be renewed each year. An expired one on your website looks worse than none.
- Safety record. OSHA publishes inspection data through its public data pages, including an establishment search. Assume a serious buyer has looked, and make your safety page consistent with what they'll find.
e.g. CSLB licence check, California
required in California advertising
federal work
e.g. CHAS, SafeContractor
PAS 91 / Common Assessment Standard
For every credential, show who issued it, the number and the expiry date.
Show each certificate's issuer, number and expiry date, and set a calendar reminder to update the page when it renews. An accreditation that expired in March and still shows on your site in October is the kind of detail a supply chain manager notices, and it makes them doubt everything else on the page.
The health and safety page and your pre-qualification pack
A health and safety page doesn't need to be long. It needs to show that safety is managed, not just promised. Include:
- Your accreditations and certificate numbers (link them to the credentials page instead of repeating them).
- Who is responsible: the role of your safety lead or external adviser, and their qualification.
- How you handle site inductions, method statements and toolbox talks, in two or three sentences each.
- Your safety record, stated the way your insurer or accreditation body reports it, if you're happy to publish it.
Skip the stock photo of a smiling worker in a hard hat. It adds nothing and every competitor has the same one.
Offer a capability statement as a PDF
Procurement teams build files. Give them something to put in the file. A two to four page capability statement (called a capability statement in the US, often a company profile or pre-qualification pack in the UK) should include your legal name, company or license number, years trading, sectors, typical project value range, three to five headline projects, accreditations with numbers, insurance levels, and a named contact.
Put a direct download link on the About page, the credentials page and the footer. Don't hide it behind a form. A buyer who has to hand over an email address to read your insurance level will usually just move to the next contractor on the list.
In the UK, public sector suppliers now keep their core information in one place. The Procurement Act 2023 came into force on 24 February 2025, and under the Central Digital Platform suppliers register on Find a Tender and enter core business information, including accreditations and financial details, which can be reused across bids. The factsheet also states Find a Tender is free to use. Your website and your platform entry should say the same thing. When the company name, address or accreditation list on your site doesn't match what's in the tender portal, you create questions you then have to answer in clarifications.
A tender-ready About page, sectors and service areas
The About page on most builder websites is a founder story and a mission statement. That's fine for a homeowner. For a buyer, the About page should read like the first page of a pre-qualification questionnaire.
What a tender-ready About page includes
- Registered company name, trading name if different, company number (UK) or license number (US), and registered address.
- Year founded and years trading.
- Headcount, split into direct staff and regular subcontractors if you can.
- Insurance: employer's liability, public liability and professional indemnity in the UK, general liability and workers' compensation in the US, with cover levels if you're comfortable publishing them.
- Directors or principals, with a line on each person's background.
- Typical project size and the largest job you've delivered as main contractor.
You can mark up the same details for search engines. Google's Organization structured data supports properties such as legalName, vatID, taxID and sameAs. Structured data is code that describes your business in a format Google reads directly. For a firm with a yard or office that clients visit, LocalBusiness markup needs only a name and address, and schema.org has a specific GeneralContractor type under HomeAndConstructionBusiness.
Sectors page
One page per sector you actively want (education, healthcare, residential, commercial, industrial, heritage). Each should list relevant projects, any sector-specific experience such as working in occupied schools or clinical areas, and the right contact. These pages also pick up searches that include the sector, which a single "Services" page can't.
Service areas
Say where you work. "London and the South East" or "Northern California, Sacramento to the Bay Area" is enough. A contractor who lists 80 towns on one page, each with a near-identical paragraph, isn't helping anyone, and those pages tend to get ignored by Google. If you want a page per area, give each one real projects from that area. If your site isn't appearing at all for local searches, this guide on why a website doesn't show up on Google covers the usual causes.
Quote requests, tender documents, careers and subcontractors
These are four different jobs. Putting them all through one "Contact us" form is how tender documents end up in the same inbox as CVs and sales pitches.
Request a quote
Ask for what your estimator needs to call back usefully: project type, location or postcode, approximate size, planning status, target start date, and a phone number. Leave budget optional. Six to eight fields is plenty.
Send tender documents
Tender packs are big. Drawings, specifications and bills of quantities can easily run into hundreds of megabytes, and many website forms and hosting setups limit upload sizes well below that. A process that works:
- Give tenders their own page with a named contact and a direct email address for your estimating team.
- Offer an upload link to a file-sharing service you already use (a shared folder request link, for example) instead of forcing files through the website form.
- Ask for the tender return date, the client, the project name and the form of contract in a short form.
- Send an automatic confirmation that says who will review it and by when.
- Log it in whatever you use to track bids, so nothing gets lost when someone is on leave.
Careers and subcontractor sign-up
Keep these separate from client enquiries. A careers page with current vacancies and a general application route helps recruitment. A subcontractor and supplier page should explain which trades you use, the regions, what documents you need (insurance, accreditations, method statements) and how to apply to your approved list. That page quietly tells clients you manage your supply chain properly.
The same audience-split approach applies in other B2B trades. Our guide to logistics company websites uses it for quote requests and carrier sign-ups. Home-service trades need a different first screen, built around the phone, which is covered in the guide to plumber, electrician and HVAC websites.
Photos, speed and site phones
Construction sites are heavy on photos, and photos are what make most contractor websites slow. The person opening your site might be a site manager on a phone with two bars of signal in a car park. A 12 MB hero image straight from a drone or a DSLR will take a long time to load there.
- Resize before upload. A photo shown at 1,600 pixels wide doesn't need to be uploaded at 6,000.
- Use modern formats. web.dev's guidance on choosing image formats says WebP and AVIF "will generally provide better compression than older formats, and should be used where possible".
- Lazy-load gallery images further down the page, but not the first large image. web.dev's article on lazy loading is direct about it: "Don't lazy-load images that are likely to be in-viewport when the page loads".
- Show 8 to 15 strong photos per project, not every photo from the handover folder.
If you're rebuilding an older site that already ranks for a few project or area searches, protect those URLs. How to redesign a website without losing your Google rankings walks through redirects and what to check before launch.
Common mistakes and what's a waste of money
Some of these cost money up front. Others cost you shortlists later.
- An autoplaying drone video as the homepage hero. It looks good in the design meeting, loads slowly on a phone, and pushes the actual information below the fold. A single strong photo and a clear line about what you build does more. Put the video on a project page where people choose to play it.
- Stock photos of hard hats, handshakes and blueprints. Buyers recognise them instantly and it suggests you don't have your own photos.
- Copy like "quality you can trust" and "no job too big or small". Every competitor says it. Replace it with a fact: "Main contractor on 14 primary school extensions since 2016" (if that's true for you).
- Accreditation logos with no numbers, or logos for schemes you've let lapse.
- Project galleries with no text, so neither buyers nor Google can tell what the job was.
- A capability statement locked behind an email form.
- One contact form for everything.
- Paying for 50 near-duplicate "areas we cover" pages.
- Publishing a project value or client name without written permission. That can cost you the next job with that client.
One trade-off to admit: a small residential builder working mostly on referrals doesn't need all of this. Three good project pages, a license or company number, insurance details and a phone number that gets answered will do most of the work. The full structure pays off once you're bidding for commercial, public or main-contractor work. For a sense of what different builds typically involve, see how much a small business website should cost.
Where to start
If your current site is a gallery and a contact form, the fastest improvement is usually the credentials page and three rewritten project pages, then the capability statement PDF. BerdisDev builds business websites with project galleries, sector pages and quote forms set up for this kind of structure. If you'd like a view on what your current site is missing, send us the link.
Frequently asked questions
What should be on a construction company website?
At minimum: project pages with scope, location, duration and your role; a sectors page; a credentials page with license or company number, accreditations and insurance; a health and safety page; a downloadable capability statement; and separate routes for quotes, tender documents, careers and subcontractors. Add service areas if you work in a defined region. Fast-loading photos of finished work matter more than video or slogans.
Do I need to show my contractor license number on my website?
It depends on your state. In California, the CSLB's advertising guidelines say licensed contractors must include their license number in all forms of advertising, including websites that solicit business. Other states set their own rules, so check with your licensing board. Even where it isn't required, showing the number lets buyers verify you quickly, which helps you get shortlisted.
Should I put project values on my construction website?
Only with the client's written permission. When you have it, a range such as "£1m to £2m" or "$3 million to $5 million" is usually enough for a buyer to judge if you can handle their job. Without permission, describe the scale in other ways: floor area, number of units, duration and your role as main contractor or subcontractor.
What is a capability statement for a contractor?
A capability statement is a short document, usually two to four pages, that summarises your company for buyers. It covers your legal name and registration numbers, years trading, sectors, typical project values, headline projects, accreditations, insurance and a named contact. Offer it as a direct PDF download from your website so procurement teams can save it straight to their file.
Which accreditations do UK buyers look for on a contractor's website?
Commonly an SSIP-recognised health and safety scheme such as CHAS or SafeContractor, Constructionline membership, and ISO 9001, 14001 or 45001 certificates. Buyers also look up your company number on Companies House. Show each accreditation with its issuer, certificate number and expiry date so it can be checked, and remove any that have lapsed.
Sources (18)
- Google Search Central: Creating helpful, reliable, people-first content
- Companies House: Find and update company information
- CHAS
- SafeContractor (Alcumus)
- Constructionline
- ISO: Certification
- CSLB: Check a License
- CSLB: Advertising Guidelines for Contractors (PDF)
- SBA: Surety bonds
- SAM.gov: Entity registration
- OSHA: Data
- GOV.UK: The Procurement Act 2023, a short guide for senior leaders
- GOV.UK: Central Digital Platform factsheet
- Google Search Central: Organization structured data
- Google Search Central: Local business structured data
- Schema.org: GeneralContractor
- web.dev: Choose the right image format
- web.dev: Browser-level image lazy loading