I write a lot on this blog about strategy and planning, so this week I want to show you instead of tell you. Let’s walk through a real client project: the website for Woodworth Electric, a family-run electrician serving New Hampshire and Maine.
Go take two minutes with the finished site — woodworthelectric.net — and come back. I’ll wait.
Every build starts with the reader, not the client
The first question I ask on any project is the same: who is looking at this site, and what’s going on in their head when they do?
For an electrician, the honest answer is that most visitors aren’t casually browsing. Something in the house isn’t working, or they’re planning a project — a generator, a hot tub wiring job, a panel upgrade — and they’re deciding who to call. They want three answers, fast:
- Can this company actually do the job?
- Do they seem trustworthy?
- How fast can I reach a real person?
Woodworth Electric is a veteran-owned, multi-generational family business, and those facts answer the trust question before anyone reads a full paragraph. But only if visitors actually see them. So that’s what the homepage leads with — right alongside the phone number.
Decisions you can see right on the page
The phone number is impossible to miss. It’s in the header, it’s in the footer, and there’s a Call Now button sitting next to the services. That’s deliberate. For a trades business, the conversion is a phone call — not a newsletter signup, not a contact form somebody fills in at 9pm and forgets. When someone’s ready to hire, the site’s job is to get out of the way.
Services are pages, not bullet points. Residential, commercial, panel upgrades, hot tubs, generators — each one gets its own page, written the way an actual customer would search for it. When a homeowner types “hot tub wiring near me,” a real page about hot tub wiring is what earns the click. One long services page with a bulleted list does none of that work.
Trust sits on the surface. “Licensed and insured” is stated plainly, not buried in an About page. There’s a promise on the site that when you call, a real person answers — no phone tree. And pricing is described as competitive and transparent. A homeowner comparing three electricians makes a gut decision in about a minute. Those lines do more work in that minute than any animation or slider ever will.
The hero speaks to the moment. “Don’t be left in the dark. Trust Woodworth Electric.” That’s the whole pitch in one sentence, and it mirrors exactly what the customer is afraid of. Good copy meets people where they already are.
The branding came along with it
Alongside the website, I designed a new logo for Woodworth. A lot of small trades businesses are running on a logo their cousin made in 2009, and it shows up shrunken and blurry everywhere — on the truck, on the estimate sheet, on the site. A clean, simple mark that scales down to a hat and up to a website changes how a business feels to strangers. It’s one of the highest-value pieces of a rebrand, and it’s part of why the site feels like a real company and not a template.
Why it’s built on custom WordPress
The site runs on WordPress because I want it to still be an asset in ten years, not a monument to a 2026 design trend. Adding a service page when they add a service, a blog post about generator prep before storm season, better search visibility as the business grows — none of that means starting over. And as with every site I build, Woodworth owns it all outright: the domain, the hosting, the content. Nothing is locked behind me, and they got my standard 90 days of support after launch while the site settled in.
What to take from this
If you run a trades business, open your own website tonight and ask three questions. Can a stressed homeowner find my phone number in five seconds? Can they tell I’m licensed and insured without digging? Do I have a real page for the exact service they just searched for? If any answer is no, that’s the fix — and it’s worth less than one good customer.
If you’d like a site that works like Woodworth’s does, I’d enjoy the conversation. Reach me at apexdesignservices.com or call 603-973-4094.
