Who this is for
I design and rebuild websites for businesses that sell a service: contractors and home service companies, holiday and outdoor lighting installers, healthcare groups, franchise brands, restaurants, real estate firms, professional practices and nonprofits. Some have one owner and one truck. Some have many locations. Most have no marketing department. They need a site that explains what they do, shows where they work and gets the phone to ring.
You work with one person from the first call to launch and after it. I am based in Seekonk, Massachusetts, on the Rhode Island border, and I build sites for businesses and organizations across the United States and Canada.
What a visitor must find on the first screen
Most visitors decide whether to stay before they scroll. On a service business site, the first screen on a phone has to answer five things without any effort from the reader.
What you do, in plain words. "Tree health care" or "Christmas light installation", not a slogan.
Where you do it. Your town, county or service area, named.
One clear next step: call, text or request a quote. The phone number is a tap-to-call link.
A reason to trust you: a review rating, a license, years in business or a recognizable affiliation.
A real photo of your work, your crew or your building, not a stock image.
Everything below the first screen supports that decision: services, service area, proof, answers to common questions and an easy way to get in touch.
What each page of a service business site has to do
A service site is a small set of page types, and each one has a job. When a page tries to do another page's job, visitors and search engines both lose the thread.
Home. Says what you do and where, gives the next step, and routes people onward. It links to every main service and to the service area, and it shows proof early. It is a front door, not the place for every detail.
Service pages. One page per service, so each can match a specific search. Each page says what the service is, who it is for, what is included, how the job goes from first call to finished work, and what it looks like in photos of your own jobs. It ends with the questions customers ask about that service and a way to request it.
Service area pages. One hub that lists the towns you serve, and a page for a town when you have something true to say about working there: the services you offer in it, the kinds of properties, local conditions, nearby jobs. Google's spam policies describe pages aimed at different cities that only funnel visitors to one page as doorway abuse, so a town page has to be useful on its own.
About. Who owns the business, who shows up at the door, how long you have done the work, and your licenses, insurance and affiliations. Real names and real photos. This is the page people read right before they call a company they have not used before.
Reviews. Reviews as customers wrote them, with the source named and a link to your Google profile so a reader can check them. I never write or adjust a review.
Contact. A tap-to-call number, a text option if you take texts, a short form, your hours and your service area. The form asks only for what you need to reply, and the page says what happens after someone sends it.
How a project runs, step by step
Discovery. You tell me what you sell, who buys it, where you work and which jobs you want more of. I review your current site, your Google Business Profile and what already brings in visitors.
Sitemap and copy. I plan the pages first: one page per service, a service area structure, and the pages buyers expect such as about, reviews and contact. Then I write the copy, or edit yours, so each page answers the questions a customer asks before calling.
Design. You see a real homepage and one inner page with your content in place, on desktop and on a phone. You give feedback and I revise the design.
Build. I build the full site, set up forms and test that every lead reaches your inbox or phone.
SEO setup. Each page gets its own title, description, heading structure and image alt text. I add structured data, a sitemap and Google Search Console. For more than the basics, see local SEO.
Redirects. On a redesign, every old address is mapped to its new page before launch.
Launch. I connect the domain, test forms and links on real devices, and submit the sitemap.
After launch. I watch Search Console for crawl errors and missed redirects and fix what turns up.
What I need from you
The pace of a project is set mostly by how fast these arrive. None of it has to be polished.
Your logo and any brand colors or fonts you already use
Photos of real jobs, your crew, your vehicles and your building. Phone photos are fine.
A list of your services, what each includes, and which ones you want more of
The towns or area you serve
Licenses, certifications, insurance and affiliations you want shown
Access to the domain, the current website and your Google Business Profile, plus Search Console and Analytics if they exist
One person who can answer questions and approve pages
How the content is written
Most owners do not have time to write a website, so I write it. I start with a conversation about how your jobs go: what customers ask first, what they worry about, what goes wrong when the work is done badly. I spent years managing food service and hospitality operations and a year inside a lighting company handling sales, scheduling and service calls, so I ask the questions a customer would.
Each page is then written to answer those questions in plain words, with the answer first. Google's guidance on helpful content asks whether a page shows first-hand expertise and offers original information. For a service business that means your process, your photos and your service area, not general text that could describe any company. Every fact about your business comes from you, and you check each page for accuracy before it is published. I do not invent claims, numbers or reviews.
What is included
A custom design built around your content, not a filled-in theme
Layouts designed for phone, tablet and desktop
Service pages and service area pages written for the searches your customers make
A call, text or quote request action on every page
Quote and contact forms tested end to end
Page titles, descriptions, structured data and sitemap in place at launch
Google Search Console connected and verified
Choosing the platform honestly
Every site I build is a custom design, not a template with your logo dropped in. Templates are a separate, optional product, covered under Wix Studio templates. A custom design is also not tied to one builder. I hold Wix's top partner tier, Wix Legend Partner, and I build on Wix Studio often, but the platform should follow the job.
Wix Studio fits most service businesses. Hosting is included, there are no plugins to patch, the built-in CMS can drive hundreds of service and town pages from one design, and layouts are set per screen size. If you want one bill and nothing to patch, this is usually my recommendation.
WordPress fits when you already have a WordPress site your staff knows, need a specific plugin or integration, or want full control over hosting and code. The Christmas Decor franchise site is a WordPress build.
Shopify fits when selling products online is the main job of the site.
Squarespace fits a small, simple site that the owner wants to edit alone.
Weebly and other public builders. If your site runs on Weebly or any other builder or platform available to the public, I can design on it and maintain it there.
An older or legacy platform. A site built years ago on a previous agency's system does not have to be moved to be improved. I can redesign and optimize it in place, as I did for Tree Medics, a tree health company in Southern Maine.
If your current platform is working, I will say so. SEO, AEO and GEO work can be done on the CMS you already use, without a rebuild.
Redesigns that protect the rankings you already have
A redesign is the easiest time to lose search traffic. Pages get renamed, merged or dropped, and the old addresses that Google and your customers know stop working. I plan for that before any design starts.
I list every existing URL and check which pages bring in search visits and leads. Those pages are kept, with their topic and core content intact.
Where an address must change, the old URL gets a 301 redirect to the closest matching new page. A 301 tells browsers and search engines the move is permanent, and Google uses it as a signal that the new address should replace the old one in results.
Redirects stay in place. Google's guidance is to keep them as long as possible, generally at least a year.
After launch I submit the new sitemap in Search Console and check for pages that return errors.
Some movement in rankings is normal while Google recrawls a rebuilt site. Careful mapping keeps that short and avoids the permanent losses that come from broken addresses. I cannot promise positions, and nobody honestly can.
Multi-location businesses and franchise brands
A business with many locations, or a franchise brand with many owners, needs the same things as a single-location company plus a structure that scales. I have built more than 30,000 location pages, worked with more than 50 lighting companies and built the Christmas Decor franchise site.
One design system, so every location page looks like the brand and no location drifts off on its own.
Location pages driven from a database. On Wix, one dynamic page design serves every item in a collection, each at its own address, so adding a location means adding a row.
Content that is specific to each location: its address or service area, its services, its staff, its photos and its reviews. Pages that differ only by the town name are the kind Google's spam policies warn about.
A clear split between what the brand controls and what a local owner can edit.
Internal links that let a visitor browse from the brand to a state or region to a location, and back.
The method for building location pages at volume is covered under programmatic SEO.
Prepared for AI search
People now get answers from Google's AI Overviews and AI Mode and from AI assistants, not only from a list of links. Google states that there are no additional requirements to appear in its AI features and no special markup or files to add. A page has to be indexed and eligible to show with a snippet, and the usual fundamentals apply. So I build those fundamentals in from the start.
Important content is on the page as text, not locked inside images or video.
Each page answers its main question directly near the top, then gives the detail.
Common customer questions are answered in full sentences that make sense when quoted alone.
Structured data matches what a visitor can see on the page.
Internal links make every page easy to reach, and crawling is not blocked.
Your business name, phone number, services and service area are stated the same way everywhere.
No one can promise that an AI system will cite a given site. What can be done is to make your pages clear, complete and easy to quote. The deeper work is described under answer engine optimization and generative engine optimization.
Mobile and accessibility basics
Google indexes and ranks the mobile version of a site, so the phone layout is not a reduced copy. It carries the same content, headings and structured data as desktop. Buttons are large enough to tap, text is readable without zooming and forms are short.
I build to the basics of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines: text contrast of at least 4.5 to 1, alt text on meaningful images, a logical heading order, labeled form fields and menus that work from a keyboard. These help people using screen readers, and they help everyone else reading on a phone in sunlight.
Rush timelines
Expedited timelines are available when a deadline is real. That is common for seasonal and time-sensitive businesses: a lighting company that needs its site ready before the holiday season, or a business with an opening date. Tell me the date in the first message. A rush project runs through the same steps in the same order. What changes is that your content and feedback need to come back quickly, and the first version may launch with the core pages while the rest follow.
One consultant or an agency
I am one person, and that has advantages and limits you should know about.
The person you talk to is the person who plans, writes, designs and builds the site. Nothing is handed from a salesperson to an account manager to a junior designer.
Decisions are fast, and the reasons behind them are explained by the person who made them.
One person can only run so many projects at once. If my schedule cannot meet your date, I will say so before you commit.
If you need work outside the services listed on this site, or a large team working on many things at the same time, an agency with those departments is the better fit.
Ongoing maintenance
A site that is not updated goes out of date quickly. After launch I can take care of text and photo changes, new service or town pages, seasonal offers, form and tracking checks, and platform updates on WordPress sites. You send a text or an email with what you need. If you later want to grow your service area, programmatic location pages can be added to the same site.
Work you can look at
Each project is scaled to the size of the business, large or small. The planning is the same whether a site needs one service area page or several hundred location pages.
Tree Medics: a redesign for a tree health company in Southern Maine, with 8 service pages and a service area page covering 16 towns.
Greater Boston Psychiatric Services: a full site for a telehealth practice in Medway, Massachusetts, including all content and more than 300 location pages.
Curb Infusion: a Massachusetts lighting contractor, with local SEO covering more than 100 towns.
Christmas Decor: the franchise brand's website, built on WordPress.
Four Echoes at Grist Mill Pond: website, print and signage for a landmark event venue in Seekonk.
Emerge Mentoring: a site for a nonprofit that mentors foster youth.
Start with a free proposal
Tell me about your business and what the current site is not doing. I will reply within 24 hours with questions or a written proposal. Call or text 508-244-0403, email joshua@websitedesignma.com, or use the contact page.