Roofing Website Checklist for Australian Roofing Businesses

A hailstorm rolls through the Adelaide Hills on a November afternoon, and by the next morning half of Stirling and Aldgate has dented Colorbond and cracked terracotta. Nobody sits down and compares three roofing companies that week — they call whoever answers the phone and can get a tarp up before the next front comes through. That's one search a roofer's website has to win. The other happens months later, when the same homeowner decides to reroof properly before it fails again, and this time they'll read four or five sites end to end before they ring anyone.

We build websites for Australian trades out of Adelaide, and roofing is the trade where the gap between those two customers is the widest we see — wider than plumbing, wider than sparkies. Build the site for only one of them and you lose the other, and roofing businesses lose more than most because the planned job is usually the bigger invoice.

Two roofs, two decisions

The storm customer has water coming through a ceiling or a tree branch through a valley. They're not comparing quotes. They want someone who can turn up today, get a tarp on, and start the insurance conversation. Their visit to your site lasts long enough to find a number and confirm you're not interstate.

The planned customer is doing the opposite. Their roof is twenty-five years old, the tiles are starting to slip, and they're deciding between a restoration and a full switch to steel. They'll look at your photos, read about warranties, and think about it for a fortnight. Neither customer should have to dig through the other's content to find what they need.

The first call after a storm

For the storm half, get these above the fold on mobile:

• A tap-to-call number, visible without scrolling and still there as they scroll down.
• A plain statement of how fast you can respond — same day, next business day, whatever's true — not a vague "prompt service" line.
• A short note that you can tarp or make safe before the full repair, if that's something you offer. People calling after a storm often don't know that's a separate, faster service.

Say your service radius in real suburb names here too. Someone in Uraidla checking a website mid-storm wants to know you'll actually drive out to them, not read a paragraph about "greater Adelaide."

Make the insurance side less painful

This is the one piece that's specific to roofing and we don't see it done well often. After a hailstorm, most of the job's value gets decided by an insurance assessor, not by you or the homeowner. The roofer who can hand over a properly itemised scope of works, dated and timestamped photos, and who's dealt with loss adjusters before, wins jobs even at a higher quote — because the alternative is the homeowner doing all that paperwork themselves while stressed and time-poor.

Put a short, plain-English section on your site about how you handle insurance work: whether you provide a scope document, whether you'll speak to the assessor directly, and roughly what the homeowner needs to do versus what you'll take off their plate. It costs you one paragraph and it's the difference between "another quote" and "the one who actually knows this process."

The planned reroof needs its own page

Reroofing in Colorbond steel and restoring an existing tile roof are different products with different price points, different lifespans and different worries attached. Bundling them into one "roofing services" page with a dot-point list does neither any favours. Give each its own page: what the job actually involves, roughly how long a house takes, and what changes the price — roof pitch, access, how many layers of old roofing need to come off first.

Then show the roof, not the ute. Ground-level photos barely tell a visitor anything about ridge capping or valley condition. A handful of ordinary drone shots, even taken on a phone-controlled drone, will do more for a roofing site than a professional photo of the team standing in front of the truck. We've written more on this in the piece on before-and-after photos for trades websites, and roofing is one of the trades where the difference between a good and bad photo set is largest, because the whole product is normally out of sight.

Licence, insurance and warranty — say them out loud

Roof plumbing work — gutters, downpipes, box gutters — is licensed the same way as other plumbing work in most states, through Consumer and Business Services in South Australia, the Victorian Building Authority in Victoria and the QBCC in Queensland, and roof tiling or cladding usually sits under the same state building licensing schemes. People working at height also want to know you're covered: state your public liability and workers' compensation plainly, because a homeowner who's about to have someone walking on their roof is thinking about what happens if that goes wrong.

Warranty matters more here than in most trades, because a leak might not show up for two years. Say what you personally guarantee on workmanship, and if you're installing a branded product like Colorbond, point people to the manufacturer's own warranty terms rather than guessing at a number. A vague "quality guaranteed" line does nothing; a specific one builds the kind of trust that gets you the booking over a competitor who said nothing at all.

Name the suburbs, and say why

"Adelaide and surrounding areas" ranks for nothing and tells a reader nothing. It's more useful, and more honest, to explain what you actually see in different areas: the hills suburbs — Stirling, Aldgate, Lobethal, Uraidla — get more hail and storm work, while the older brick-veneer suburbs like Elizabeth, Salisbury, Findon and Clearview have a lot of original tile roofs from the sixties through the eighties now old enough to need restoration or replacing. Writing that in ordinary sentences does more for your local rankings than stuffing a suburb list in the footer, and it reads like you actually work there, because you do.

Loads fast, one-handed, standing near a ladder

Whoever's looking at your site after a storm is often standing outside in bad weather on a phone with wet hands. A slow, image-heavy homepage loses that visitor before it finishes loading. Hand-coded pages with properly sized images load in around a second on an ordinary mobile connection, which matters more here than the photos themselves. We've covered what Google actually measures in the piece on Core Web Vitals for Australian trades websites, and the same checklist for electricians covers a lot of the same fundamentals if you want the broader version.

The checklist

1. Tap-to-call button in the header, sticky on mobile, on every page.
2. A plain response-time statement for storm and emergency call-outs.
3. A short, honest section on how you handle insurance claims and paperwork.
4. Licence details plus public liability and workers' comp stated in the footer.
5. Warranty terms on workmanship, and manufacturer warranty details for branded products.
6. Reroofing, restoration and gutter work each on their own page, not one shared list.
7. Ten or more of your own roof photos, ideally including drone shots, before and after.
8. Suburbs named in sentences, tied to what actually happens there.
9. Reviews shown on the page, with the customer's suburb next to them.
10. A quote form that asks for roof type, rough age, and lets them attach photos.
11. Under two seconds to load on a mobile connection.

If you only get to three of those this month, do the response-time line, the insurance section and the licence and insurance details in the footer — they cost the least time and lose you the most work when they're missing.

What it costs and how long it takes

Most roofers do well with the three-page build: $899 one-time, with separate pages for reroofing, restoration and storm response. A simpler one-page site is $399, and a larger business site with room for gutters, insurance work and a proper photo gallery is $1,499. Hosting is $30 a month with no lock-in contract, and no GST is added, because we aren't registered for GST. The full breakdown is on the pricing page, and there's a wider look at what small business websites cost in Australia if you want to compare against other builders.

Every site here is hand-coded in Australia, and pairing it with a properly set up Google Business Profile matters just as much for roofers as the website itself, since the map pack is usually what gets checked first after a storm.

Frequently asked questions

Will a roofer's website actually help with insurance claims after storm damage?

It can, if you use it to explain how you work with insurers before anyone rings. A page that says you provide a written scope, timestamped photos and can speak directly to the loss adjuster tells a stressed homeowner that you've done this before. That reassurance often matters more than being the cheapest quote.

How much should a roofing website cost in Australia?

A one-page site is $399 one-time and a three-page site is $899, with hosting at $30 a month and no lock-in contract. No GST is added. A larger business site with separate pages for reroofing, restoration and gutters is $1,499.

Should reroofing and roof restoration be on the same page?

Not if you want either one to rank or convert well. They're different decisions with different price points and different worried questions attached, and mixing them into one generic services page makes both look like an afterthought.

What's the biggest mistake on roofing websites?

Ground-level photos that don't actually show the roof. A phone shot from the front lawn tells a visitor almost nothing about the condition of the ridge capping or the state of the valleys. A handful of drone shots, even ordinary ones, will outperform a professional photo of the truck.

How long does it take to get a roofing website live?

Most roofing sites are live five to ten days after we have your licence details, insurance information, service area and photos. A larger site of up to 8 pages usually takes two to three weeks. Roofers are usually the trade with the best photos on hand, since most already take before-and-after shots for their own records or for insurers.