Websites for renovation and alteration companies

What this service is

A complete website for a company that renovates, extends or alters existing homes. Kitchen and bathroom specialists, villa and bungalow renovators, re-cladding firms and general alteration builders all fit. The site is the same size as a builder site, eight to fifteen pages, and starts at NZD 6,800, plus GST where applicable.

What changes is the emphasis. A renovation client is living in the house, has a budget that may move, and is trying to picture what their own rooms could become. The site is planned to answer that.

Built around the before and after

Consider giving each finished job a page shown in pairs: the room as it was, the room as it is. Done well, a pair explains the work clearly. Done carelessly, it can mislead, for example when the before photo is darker or taken from a worse angle than the after.

The Fair Trading Act does not allow a business to mislead people about its services, and the official consumer guidance makes the point that it does not matter whether the trader meant to. For photo pairs, that means a few simple habits we build into the page template:

• before and after shots taken from the same position where you have them
• a caption that says what was done, so the photos are not left to imply more
• a clear note when an image is a design render or a mood image rather than a finished job
• no retouching that changes the work itself

Each photo also gets alt text that describes what it shows, so the comparison makes sense to someone using a screen reader. The W3C guidance treats informative images that way, and Google's image guidance also asks for descriptive alt text.

Pages for each kind of job

If you take on several kinds of renovation work, a single services page cannot describe all of it well. We set up a page for each job type you want to attract, for example kitchens, bathrooms, extensions, re-cladding or whole-house renovations. Each one explains:

• what the job covers and what it does not
• the questions you need answered before you can price it
• whether the work needs a building consent, linked to the council or building.govt.nz guidance rather than stated by us
• one or two finished projects of that type

Quotes, estimates and what the site says about them

Renovation pricing is hard to pin down before someone has seen the house. The Commerce Commission draws a clear line between a quote, a firm offer at a stated price, and an estimate, the nearest figure you can give, which has to rest on reasonable grounds. Your site should use those words the way you use them in practice. If you give free measures or paid design consultations, the enquiry page says which, before anyone books.

For residential work, building.govt.nz explains that a builder must give the client a disclosure statement and checklist on request, and must hand them over unprompted when the work is worth $30,000 or more including GST. A renovation site can mention that you provide them, and link to the official checklist, without trying to explain the law itself.

What is included

• a site plan and page layouts drawn around your projects
• job-type pages for up to six kinds of renovation work
• a project section built for before and after pairs, set up with your first jobs
• an enquiry form that asks about the room, the rough timing and the address area, not the full address
• about, contact and policy pages
• page titles, descriptions and structured data on every page
• phone, keyboard and image checks before launch, then a written handover

Before the build starts

Photo pairs are the hard part. Before we start, we ask you to look through past jobs for sets where you have both a before and an after from a similar angle, and to check with the owners that they are happy for the photos to be published. The project caption builder helps you write the caption and alt text for each pair and reminds you about permissions.

We also need the job types you want more of, the areas you cover and who answers enquiries.

Left out of the price

No photography, no hosting or domain costs, and no advice on consents or building law. We do not write design renders into project pages as if they were finished work. Later work on the site: quoted separately, or charged at NZD 160 an hour plus GST where applicable.