Web design for carpenters and joiners, from £395
Ten years of work that sells itself on sight, sitting in a camera roll, while the person who wants fitted wardrobes books a national firm with a call centre.
We build joinery sites around the photography: detail shots at full size, loading instantly on a phone, with from-prices and lead times stated so you stop quoting all evening. One of our live clients is a joinery business.
The work is the sales pitch, and it is stuck on your phone
Joinery is one of the few trades where the product does the selling on its own. Nobody needs persuading that a well made staircase is better than a bad one. They can see it. The problem is almost never the quality of the work, it is that the photographic evidence of ten years of it is sitting in a camera roll, occasionally posted to Facebook, and invisible to anybody who has not already met you.
Meanwhile the person who wants fitted wardrobes in the alcoves either side of a chimney breast is searching, finding a national company with a call centre, and booking a consultation with a salesman on commission. You would have done it better and probably cheaper. They never knew you existed.
So the job of a joiner's website is narrow and clear. Get the work in front of people at full size, fast, on a phone, with enough context that they understand what they are looking at, and make it obvious how to ask you for the same thing.
What goes on a carpentry and joinery site
Six things, and the biggest one is the photography.
A gallery built for detail
Wide shots and close crops together, compressed properly, so the grain match and the joint are visible on a phone rather than implied.
Fitted work and made pieces, split
Wardrobes, staircases, kitchens and doors on one route. Tables, benches and bespoke pieces on another. Different buyers, different worries.
From-prices with the honest caveat
A starting figure and one line on what moves it. Stops you quoting all evening for people expecting a flat-pack number.
Your lead time, stated
Booked three months out is a recommendation when you say it and a lost enquiry when you hide it.
Work in progress, not just finished
A half-built staircase in the workshop proves it is yours. Finished-only galleries look like stock photography and people are right to wonder.
An enquiry with the right questions
Room, rough dimensions, timber preference, timescale, photographs of the space. You quote from facts instead of a conversation.
Thelwall Carpentry and Joinery
A joinery business we build for, live on its own domain.
Thelwall Carpentry and Joinery
Live at thelwallcarpentry.co.uk, built by us, on a monthly care plan, with our footer link on the site. The whole build is image-led, so every photograph is served at the size it is actually displayed at rather than shrunk in the browser.
For a joiner that is the difference between the work being seen and the work being skipped. Read the Thelwall case study, or see all of our live clients.
The searches a joiner should want
Almost nobody searches for joiner. They search for the thing: fitted wardrobes, alcove shelving, oak staircase, bespoke dining table, sash window repair, garden office. Each of those is a different customer with a different budget, and each deserves a page that talks about that job specifically rather than a services list where it appears as a bullet.
That is also where the money is hiding. A firm known locally for second fix and door hanging often has a whole line of higher value work it never advertises, because it lives on the homepage as one word in a list. Giving the bespoke furniture its own page, with its own photos and its own from-price, tends to change the mix of enquiries within a couple of months.
See it built before you decide
Send us your business name and a dozen photographs of work you are proud of. Within 48 hours you get a link to a real working site with your pieces on it. If it is not right, you say so, and you owe nothing. No card and no call to sit through first.
A clean portfolio site with an enquiry route is £395. £650 gets you separate pages for each line of work with the depth to rank for them. £1,200 is for something larger, with a made-to-order or shop element. The site is yours either way.
After that, £45 a month keeps it maintained and current if you want that, with no minimum term. If you would rather add each finished job yourself, we will set it up so you can and leave you alone.
What joiners ask us
I make things. Should the site be a portfolio or a sales page?
A portfolio that sells. The mistake joiners make is one or the other: either a gallery with no way to buy and no prices, or a wall of text about craftsmanship with three photos at the bottom. What works is finished pieces, large, with the detail that shows the joint or the finish, and next to each one a plain sentence about what it was, what it is made of and roughly what that kind of job costs. Craft sells itself if you let people look properly.
Fitted work and made pieces are different jobs. One site or two?
One site, two clear routes, because the people are genuinely different. Somebody wanting fitted wardrobes is buying a service and a date in your diary. Somebody wanting a dining table is buying an object and will wait for it. Same workshop, different worry: one is asking will you turn up and make a mess, the other is asking will it be as good as the photo. We split the site at the top so nobody has to read past what they came for.
Do I need to give prices for bespoke work?
Give a from, never a fixed number. Bespoke genuinely varies and pretending otherwise causes arguments on the day. But a page with no numbers filters nothing, so you end up spending evenings quoting for people who thought a solid oak staircase might be eight hundred pounds. A from-price plus one honest line about what moves it most, usually timber, size and finish, saves you more time than anything else we put on a joiner's site.
How do I show workmanship on a phone screen?
By shooting fewer things closer. A whole fitted kitchen on a six inch screen is a beige rectangle. A close crop of the drawer front, the grain matched across two doors, or a hand-cut joint is where the quality actually becomes visible. We build joinery galleries around detail shots and wide shots together, and we compress them hard so they arrive instantly, because craftsmanship that takes six seconds to load is craftsmanship nobody sees.
How far ahead should the site say I am booked?
Say it, whatever it is. A lead time of three months reads as a problem if it is hidden and as a recommendation if it is stated. Joiners routinely lose enquiries from people who assumed they were available next week and went elsewhere when they were not, and lose time to people who needed it done on Friday. One honest line near the enquiry form solves both.
Towns with a page of their own
We are a Southampton studio and we work wherever the job is. These towns have a page of their own on what the local market looks like and who you are up against.
Other trades, and four plain guides
Each trade has a page of its own. The guides cover what a site costs, how a directory listing compares, your Google listing, and paying in parts.
Get your free preview
Your name, your business and a way to reach you. We build a real preview of your site inside 48 hours, and you see it before you pay anything.
Got it, thank you.
We will reply within 24 hours and your preview follows inside 48.
See your joinery site before you pay for it
Send us a dozen photos and we build a real preview in 48 hours. Builds from £395, care plans from £45 a month, no minimum term. Don't like it and you owe nothing.