Web / 7 min read
What a contractor's website has to do before the bid
A bid invitation is rarely the first contact. By the time it arrives, somebody has already read the website and decided the contractor is worth the trouble of asking.
A bid invitation is not the first contact between a contractor and the person who sends it. Before it goes out, somebody has read the website. On public and larger private work that is a prequalification reviewer working through a checklist. On a subcontract it is a general contractor's project manager looking for evidence that the contractor does this kind of work. On residential and small commercial jobs it is an owner looking for a reason to let a stranger into their building.
Those three people want different things from the same site, and most contractor websites are written for none of them. They are written for the contractor. This article takes each reader in turn and sets out what they are checking. It then goes page by page through what belongs where and what to leave off. It ends with how the bid request form should behave when a real drawing set arrives.
Three readers, three checklists
- The prequalification reviewer
- Works from a list and wants each item answered in the order it appears. Licence number and classification, insurance coverage types, bonding where the work requires it, and the legal name of the entity. The reviewer is not reading for tone. A fact that is present but hard to find counts as absent, because the reviewer has a stack of other firms to get through.
- The general contractor's project manager
- Wants to know whether the contractor has done this scope on this kind of building, and whether it works where the job is. The project manager searches by scope, so a projects page filed by scope answers the question and a page filed by year does not. Photographs of the contractor's own work with the scope named in the caption do more than any paragraph of description.
- The homeowner or small building owner
- Is checking that the contractor is real and reachable. A named person, a photograph of the people who will turn up, an address, a phone number that is answered, and evidence of work on buildings like theirs. The owner also reads the licensing page, but for reassurance rather than verification.
Page by page, what belongs where
Each page has a first reader. Write it for that reader and the others still find what they need.
| Page | First reader | What it has to carry | What to leave off |
|---|---|---|---|
| Home | All three | What the contractor does, where it works, and a route to the trade pages and the bid request within one screen. | A full services list, a history paragraph, and any claim the rest of the site does not support. |
| One page per trade | Project manager | The scope in the words a general contractor uses to let it, the building types it is done on, and the projects that show it. | Copy that could move to another trade page by changing one noun. |
| Projects | Project manager, owner | The contractor's own photographs, filed by scope, each captioned with the scope, the building type and the role the contractor played. | Stock photography, uncaptioned galleries, and any photograph the client has not agreed to publish. |
| Licensing and insurance | Reviewer | Licence number, issuing authority and classification as text. Insurance coverage types and how to request a certificate. | A scan of the licence as the only copy of the number, and any figure the contractor has not confirmed. |
| About | Owner, reviewer | Who is behind the firm, the legal entity name, and a photograph of the people rather than of a building. | A founding story with no names in it. |
| Service area | Project manager, owner | The counties, cities or states the contractor actually travels to, stated plainly and repeated on each trade page. | A map with a circle drawn on it and no list behind it. |
| Request a bid | All three | A form that takes a drawing set, confirms receipt, and sits beside a phone number and an email address. | A budget field before a scope field, and a form that ends in silence. |
Licence and insurance evidence belongs to the contractor
We do not hold a contractor licence and we do not carry the contractor's insurance, so nothing on this page originates with us. The contractor supplies the licence number, the issuing authority and the classification exactly as they appear on the licence. They are set on the page as text a reviewer can copy into the authority's public lookup. A photograph of the licence can sit beside the text, but it is never the only copy of the number, because a reviewer cannot search an image.
Insurance is handled the same way. The page states the coverage types the contractor carries and explains how to request a certificate naming the reader as certificate holder. Limits and carriers go on the page only where the contractor has confirmed them in writing. The page carries no date of its own, so it cannot go stale on its face. The contractor remains responsible for saying when a number, a classification or a carrier changes. The page should then be checked against the contractor's documents at each renewal.
What to leave off, on every page
Each of these is common on contractor sites, and each one costs the reader something.
- Stock construction photography captioned as the contractor's own work. Project managers recognise it instantly, and it puts every real photograph on the site in doubt.
- Pages marked as unfinished or not yet published. An unfinished site reads as an unfinished firm.
- A single services page listing everything the contractor could do. A project manager searching a scope lands on a list and leaves.
- Testimonials and client names published without written permission from the client, per use.
- A licence number that exists only inside an image, where the reviewer cannot copy it.
- A form that asks for a budget before it asks for the scope. The person holding the drawings does not have a budget yet, and the question reads as a filter.
- A phone number that is not answered during the hours the site says it is.
- Any claim about years, project counts or accuracy that the contractor cannot document on request.
How the bid request form should work
The form is the one page all three readers reach, and it is usually the weakest page on the site. It has to survive a real drawing set.
- 01
Ask for what an estimator needs, in that order
Project name and location, the bid due date, the scope the sender wants priced, and how the work is being let. Everything else can wait for the reply. A form that opens with contact details and a message box gives the estimator nothing to start with.
- 02
Take the drawing set
The upload takes several files at once and shows progress while they transfer. It also accepts a link to a plan room or a shared folder as an alternative. Some sets are too large to send through a browser, and the person sending them knows it before the form does.
- 03
Confirm receipt, on screen and by email
The confirmation lists the files that arrived by name and size, so the sender can see whether one is missing. The same list goes to the sender by email and to the contractor's inbox. Silent failure on an upload loses jobs, and the sender rarely tries twice.
- 04
Say who will reply and by when
The confirmation names the person or the role that will respond and the working hours during which they do. A sender with a bid due date needs to know whether to wait or to call.
- 05
Keep the phone number and the email address beside the form
Not everybody wants to fill in a form, and a reviewer sometimes only needs to ask one question. The fallback belongs on the same page, not behind a contact link.
- 06
Test it with a real set before launch
A full drawing set, a slow connection and a phone. If the form has never been tried with the kind of file it will actually receive, it has not been tested.
How we approach it
We price contractors' work, so we already know what a scope is and what a project manager is looking for when they search one. That is the basis for how we structure a contractor's site. The trade pages are written around the scopes the contractor actually bids, the projects are filed by scope, and the licensing page is built from documents the contractor supplies.
What the contractor receives is a page structure agreed before any design starts and copy drafted from their own licence, insurance and project information. They also receive a bid request form built and tested with a real drawing set, and ownership of the domain, the hosting account and the code. The contractor supplies the photographs, the permissions and the licence details. We supply the structure, the copy, the build and the test.
Want this applied to your set?
Send it over and we will tell you what it costs to price properly.