Search for a roofing website and you will find companies selling one already built: pick a design, send your logo and photos, live in a week, a few hundred up front or a monthly fee. We sell something in this category, so read the rest with that in mind.
Templates are a sensible way for a roofing company to buy a website. The question is which parts of the offer are real and which are the same three sentences on every one of those sales pages.
What you are actually buying
A layout that somebody has already thought about, filled in with your details. That is worth money, because the layout is the part most self-built sites get wrong: the order of the sections, the number in the right place, the towns named in plain text.
What you are not buying is anything unique. Somewhere between a handful and a few hundred other contractors are on the same design. In practice that matters less than it sounds, because your customers are comparing you to two other local roofers rather than to a catalogue, and your photographs do more to distinguish you than the layout ever will.
The five questions that separate the good offers from the rest
- Who owns the domain? It should be registered to you, in an account you can log into. See who owns your website.
- What does a change cost? New number, a service added, ten new job photos. Get the answer in writing, because this is what the next three years feel like.
- What happens if I stop paying? On a monthly template deal the honest answer is often that the site goes off. That can be a fair deal, but you should know it before rather than after.
- Is the content mine? Especially any words they wrote for you.
- Can I see two live roofing sites you have built, and can I open them on a phone?