Websites for a builders' merchant or trade supplier
Checked, priced and stocked before anyone picks up the phone.
We build websites for builders' merchants and trade suppliers across Bude, North Cornwall and North Devon: stock, trade prices and lead times a contractor can check before they ring, and a trade account they can open without waiting on hold. A website starts at £1,195, or we build it free from £25 a month.
From £25 a month, or from £1,195Every price
“The same three questions come down the phone all day: have you got it, what does it cost, can it be on site by Friday. Your website answers none of them.”
Stock, trade prices, lead times and a trade account online, so the contractor checks before they ring and the phone is free for the order that actually needs a person.
Your customer is running a site, not a Saturday.
The words below are the ones you use. We write the site in them rather than translating them into something a stranger would say.
The phone at the counter rings with the same three questions all day: have you got it, what does it cost, can it be on site by Friday. Every answer takes someone off the yard or off the till, and the contractor asking is usually stood in a van outside somebody else's job, working out which merchant to try next if you don't pick up.
Your customer is not browsing. They are pricing a job against a deadline, working from a list a foreman wrote on the back of a delivery note, and they do the admin whenever the tools are down, which for a lot of contractors is eight o'clock at night rather than nine in the morning. If your stock and your trade price are not on the page then, you are not even in the running for tomorrow's order.
So the site is not a shop window, it is the yard's second counter. Stock, trade price and lead time answer the call before it is made. A trade account, opened online, is the difference between a one-off sale and a contractor who reorders without ringing. And where the product itself is technical, a spec sheet or a quote configurator does the job a sales rep used to do over the phone, at whatever time the contractor is actually working.
- trade account
- trade price
- credit terms
- call-off order
- pallet quantities
- lead times
- the yard
- site delivery
- spec sheet
- collection slot
- bulk order
- the trade counter
National Buying Group and Insider Trends, Valuing Local Independent Trade Merchants in a Digital World, 2023
60.5%of UK tradespeople now buy their materials and tools both online and in-store
Source: National Buying Group and Insider Trends, Valuing Local Independent Trade Merchants in a Digital World, 2023. survey of 200 UK tradespeople, September 2022.
www.insider-trends.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/Valuing-Local-Independent-Trade-Merchants-in-a-Digital-World.pdfWhat your site actually has to carry.
Not a feature list. These are the things a customer of yours is trying to do, and where each one has to sit before they give up and ring somebody else.
| What it needs | Why, for you | Where it goes |
|---|---|---|
| Stock, trade price and lead time, on the page | A contractor who can already see what's in stock and what it costs rings only when the page can't answer, not to ask it. | First screen of the product or range, updated as often as the yard actually is |
| A trade account, applied for online | Credit terms and trade pricing are why a contractor keeps coming back; making them ring to set one up is a reason to try somewhere else. | Its own page, with the form that opens the account |
| Spec sheets and technical data, as downloads | A contractor or a specifier needs the datasheet before the order, not after, and a PDF buried in an email might as well not exist. | On the product page it belongs to, not a general downloads folder |
| Delivery areas and lead times, stated plainly | Half the calls are 'do you deliver to Kilkhampton' and 'how long will it take'; both are one sentence you only have to write once. | A page of its own, linked from every product page |
| A quote form for bulk or bespoke orders | A pallet quantity, a cut list or a precast spec is a list, not a call, and a form that takes the list saves the counter writing it down twice. | One page, built for the way you actually price a job |
| Photographs of what you actually supply | A contractor choosing between two suppliers picks the one whose product they can see used on a real job, not a stock icon. | Product pages and the site's own gallery |
What we’d do first.
Before a rebuild, before a rebrand, before anything with a monthly fee attached to it. In this order, for a builders' merchant or trade supplier.
Stock, trade prices and lead times on the page, so a contractor checks before they ring instead of after, and the phone is free for the order that actually needs it.
A trade account people can apply for online, with the credit terms and trade pricing that keep a contractor coming back instead of trying the next yard.
Spec sheets, delivery areas and a quote form for bulk or bespoke orders, so a pallet quantity or a cut list arrives as a list, not a phone call taken on scrap paper.
And what we wouldn’t bother with
A full online checkout for every product
Most trade orders are priced, not bought off a shelf: pallet quantities, credit accounts and site delivery need a quote or a call before a card gets charged. Put the budget into stock, trade prices and lead times instead, and add a basket only for the lines that are genuinely off-the-shelf.
The words your customers actually type.
Not keywords. Half-sentences, typed with one thumb, usually within a few miles of you and usually about to spend money.
builders merchant Bude
timber merchant Holsworthy
concrete products North Devon
roofing supplies Bideford
Every one of those is either a page on your site or a line on your Google Business Profile, and usually both. Local SEO and the Google profile is priced on its own, set up once and kept right through the season.
Read next: Wix or a web designer?
What that takes, and what it costs.
Every one of these has a published price. Where it’s a range, a short call turns it into one fixed figure in writing before any work begins.
- Website design and buildFree build from £25/month, or from £1,195Stock, trade prices, lead times and how to open a trade account, readable on a phone in the yard.
- Online shop and online orderingFrom £2,495Trade orders, bulk orders and collection slots taken on your own site.
- Local SEO and Google Business ProfileGoogle Business Profile setup £90Found for the product and the town, with the yard and trade counter hours right on Google.
- Care planFrom £60/monthHosting and backups, and from the Grow plan up stock and lead-time changes sent over on WhatsApp.
Most of what we can show you so far is holiday parks, glamping and holiday home sales, built by the same two people under our holiday-park name. The thinking is the same and the figures on each study are lab measurements, stated in full. See the work.
Care plans, marketing and the smaller extras are all on the pricing page. When you know what you need, start your project.
The questions we get, answered straight.
We sell to the trade, not the public. Do we still need a website like this?
Yes, arguably more than a shop does. In a 2023 survey of 200 UK tradespeople run for the National Buying Group, 60.5% said they now buy their materials and tools both online and in-store, and most said they use the web to check stock, prices and specs even when the order is placed at the counter. A contractor who can already see your stock and your trade price is the one who rings to buy, not to ask.
Can you show real stock levels on the site?
Only where there's a stock system to connect to. If there is, we wire the site to it so the numbers are real, not decorative. If there isn't, we say so rather than promise a live feed that drifts, and mark the fast-moving lines 'call to check' instead.
Can people apply for a trade account, or log in to reorder?
Yes. We build the application form and wire it to however you open accounts now, and if you already run a trade portal or an ordering system, we link to it rather than replace it. A bigger build with its own login and order history sits in the bigger-build band, not the small-site one.
What does a website like this cost?
A Fast-Track Website, from £1,195, covers your stock, trade prices, delivery areas and a quote form. A bigger catalogue, a configurator or a trade account login is a bigger build: a Bespoke Website, from £2,495. Google Business Profile setup is £90 on top of that. Hosting and updates are the care plan, from £60 a month. Or we build it free from £25 a month on a pay-monthly plan. Every price is on our pricing page, and a range is fixed in writing before we start.
Real sites we’ve built.
Every one of these is live. Click through and look at it on your own phone.
We reply within 24 hours
Send us your web address. We'll tell you what's costing you orders.
Built in Bude: The Bank at Bude, The Triangle, Bar Thirty Five. See all the work
We look at it the way one of your customers would: on a phone, in a hurry, on a Bude signal. Then you get an email from Leonard or Rebecca with the one thing to fix first and roughly what it would cost.
The check costs nothing and there is no sales call after it.