What to cut from your contractor website

Most contractor websites do not have a “too little” problem. They have a “too much” problem.

Somewhere along the way, a web designer, a plugin, or a well-meaning relative added a feature. Then another. Each one seemed harmless on its own. Together they make the site slower, more confusing, and a little less trustworthy — and none of them help a homeowner decide to call you.

Here is what is safe to remove. In most cases, removing it makes the site better.

The fake “chat” bubble

You have seen these. A little bubble in the corner: Chat with us. It looks like live support. A homeowner opens it, sees a text box, types out their question — and gets back “Thanks, we’ll respond as soon as we can.”

Not an actual chat. It looks like live support, but it is a contact form behind a bubble.

It was never live chat. It was a contact form wearing a costume.

The homeowner now feels slightly tricked, right at the moment they were trying to reach you. That feeling sticks to your business. If you cannot staff real-time chat — and most contractors cannot, because you are on a jobsite — do not pretend to. A plain contact form that is honest about being a form does less harm than a chat bubble that overpromises.

The AI chatbot

AI chatbots earn their keep on enormous websites — a phone carrier, an insurance company — where the information a visitor needs is buried somewhere in a thousand pages, and a bot can shortcut the search.

A contractor website is not that. Your services, your area, and your contact information are — or should be — short, clear, and already on the page. There is nothing for a bot to dig up that a homeowner cannot find by scrolling.

These bots are also trained only on the content you feed them, so they cannot answer much beyond what the site already says, and they almost always carry a monthly fee. The one fair use is after-hours lead capture — but a short contact form and a clearly posted phone number do that same job, for free, without the risk of a bot inventing an answer about your pricing.

For an existing customer who needs you right now, the answer is not a chatbot. It is your cell number.

The “CAPTCHA protected” tab

Some sites have a little tab clinging to the side of the screen: Protected by CAPTCHA, or a small security seal you can expand.

This is usually a relic of an older form plugin. It does nothing for the visitor, and it does not warn off bots — bots do not read badges. At most, it is a disclosure that some spam-protection tools ask you to show, and modern tools handle that invisibly or with one line of small text.

It is not harmful. It is just clutter — and clutter on a contractor site quietly reads as “nobody has looked at this in a while.” Remove it.

Auto-playing video and rotating slideshows

Two cousins here.

A hero video that plays automatically — especially with sound — is a fast way to make a visitor reach for the close button. It also slows the page down and burns the mobile data of a homeowner standing in their driveway.

A rotating hero slideshow has a quieter problem: almost nobody sees slide two. You spent effort on five rotating messages, and the homeowner saw exactly one of them — chosen at random by a timer. Pick your single strongest message and let it sit still.

The copyright year from three years ago

Small thing. Big signal.

A footer that says © 2021 tells a homeowner that nobody has touched this website in years — which makes them quietly wonder whether anyone is running the business, either. It is a thirty-second fix, and it should really update on its own. Make sure it does.

What you are left with

Strip those out and you do not have a worse website. You have a faster, calmer, more honest one — a site that loads quickly, says what it does, and gives a homeowner one clear way to reach a real person.

That is the whole job. Everything that does not serve it is weight.