Why does a builder's website need to be different from a plumber's?
Because the decision takes months, not minutes. A homeowner choosing a builder for a new build will come back to your site six or seven times over a season, show it to a partner, check your licence on a government register, and put you next to two others. Your site is not closing a sale in one visit. It is surviving a long inspection.
Mid-size renovations run four to twelve weeks from first enquiry to signed contract. Custom new builds run three to twelve months. That is the longest consideration window of any trade on this site, and it changes what the website is for.
A site with one job, being findable and callable, is enough for some trades. Yours has to still be answering questions in week fourteen, when the buyer is at the kitchen table with your quote and two others, working out who is going to be easiest to live with for a year.
So we build for the second and sixth visit, not just the first.
Why does every project on your site need a date on it?
Because a homeowner about to hand you several hundred thousand dollars is checking whether you are still building. Undated photos and a portfolio that last moved years ago read as a business winding down, not one with a waiting list. Put a month on every project, add the last one you finished, and keep the feed moving.
This is the check nobody tells you they are running: is this builder still trading, still winning work, still answering the phone. A stale portfolio answers no by accident.
A project entry needs the month it finished, the suburb, the build type, the approximate scale, and photos that are not all of the kitchen. That is enough for a buyer to work out whether you have built anything like the thing they want.
Most builder portfolios go stale because adding one project means emailing a web person and waiting weeks, so it does not happen. With Dreamy you tell the site instead: describe the finished job, attach the photos, it goes live with the date and suburb attached, from the ute, between jobs.
Figure 1
The same portfolio, fourteen months on
Should your licence number be on the website?
Yes, with a link to the register. In New Zealand, restricted building work has to be carried out or supervised by a Licensed Building Practitioner, and homeowners are pointed by government to the public register to check one themselves. Publish your LBP number and licence class, and link straight to the register. In Australia, publish your state licence number and name the body that issued it.
Restricted building work is work that affects a building's structure or weathertightness, and it is regulated because getting it wrong is expensive. The public register exists so a homeowner can check you in about twenty seconds. Make those twenty seconds easy: a short credentials line near the top of the page, licence class, number, and a link out.
Australia does not have one national builder's licence. Queensland licenses through the QBCC, New South Wales through Fair Trading, Victoria through its own building regulator, and other states run their own schemes. A builder working near a border can hold more than one licence, and a buyer near a border does not know that unless you tell them.
Leaving your licence off the site does not read as neutral. It reads as something to go and check.
Does a Master Build or Halo badge actually do anything on your site?
Only if you explain it. A logo in the footer means nothing to a homeowner who has never heard of the scheme. Name it, say what it covers, say for how long, and link to the scheme itself. Master Build Guarantee in New Zealand is described by the scheme as a 10-Year Guarantee. NZCB runs the Halo scheme. In Queensland, the Home Warranty Scheme is run by the QBCC.
This is the part of a builder's website that does the work reviews do everywhere else, and it does it harder, because a scheme like this is backed by an industry body or an insurer rather than a star rating from a stranger.
Write one short paragraph per scheme you actually hold: what it covers, roughly, and where a buyer can read the full terms for themselves. Then link to the scheme's own page.
Two rules. Only name a scheme you currently hold, and never imply cover you do not have. A homeowner who finds out a badge was decorative stops trusting everything else on the page as well.
What does your process page actually need to say?
The whole road, with real timeframes. A buyer sitting inside a months-long decision needs to see where they are and what comes next. A call-to-action is not a process. If you cannot put a firm timeframe on a stage, give the range and say what moves it.
- 1
Enquiry
The first contact, ideally already qualified by build type, suburb, investment band and start date.
- 2
Site visit
Walking the section or the existing house before anything is priced.
- 3
Concept
An early design direction, before detailed drawings.
- 4
Quote
A priced proposal against the concept.
- 5
Contract
The signed agreement that starts the build proper.
- 6
Consent
Council approval, the stage you do not control. Say so, and say what you do to keep it moving.
- 7
Build
The construction itself, with the milestones you report against.
- 8
Handover
Practical completion, the point the house is finished enough to live in.
- 9
Defects liability
The window after handover where you come back and fix things.
How do you stop driving out to quote jobs you were never going to win?
Ask four things before the call: project type, suburb, investment range, and when they want to start. An unqualified enquiry for a builder is not a wasted phone call, it is a wasted half-day on site plus the drive. Put those fields on the form, make the range a band, and let the wrong jobs take themselves out.
Build type
New build, renovation, extension or fit-out. Tells you whether it is even the work you do.
Suburb
Tells you whether it is in the area you actually build in and consent through.
Investment band
A set of bands, not a blank box. People will pick a band; very few will type a number.
Start date
Separates someone planning for next year from someone ready to sign this month.
Want to know what this looks like for your business? Fifteen minutes is usually enough to tell you.
Should you list every service you can do?
No. Pick the thing you want more of and build the site around it. A page listing new builds, renovations, extensions, decks and fit-outs tells a homeowner you are not a specialist in the one thing they care about. Depth in one category reads stronger than a list of twenty.
Construction buyers judge on demonstrated depth in a category, not general capability. Nobody hires the builder who can do anything. They hire the builder who has done this, several times, near here.
So choose: architectural new builds, knockdown rebuilds, heritage villa renovation, transportable homes, whatever you want more of in twelve months. You keep doing the other work; you just stop giving it equal weight on the website.
If you genuinely run two distinct businesses, new builds and renovations, they want two properly built pages with different content, because they are different buyers with different worries.
If you are not sure which category to lead with, that is a 15-minute call. Tell us the work you want more of next year and we will tell you what the site has to do to get it.
Do location pages actually work for builders?
Yes, when they are genuinely different. No, when they are one page with the suburb swapped. Your work is physically tied to council areas, so real local content already exists: the council you consent through, typical section size and slope, and the jobs you have actually finished there.
Consenting through one council is not the same experience as consenting through another. A hill site and a flat section are different builds with different costs. In Australia the local government area changes what you can do and how long approval takes.
The rule we work to: one location page per area you have actually built in, and every one carries at least one real completed project from that area. If you have not built there, do not make the page. A thin location page is worse than no location page.
Where do builder enquiries actually come from?
Referral first, then a verification search. Someone gives your name at a barbecue, and the next thing that happens is your name typed into Google. What comes back, your Google Business Profile, your reviews and your website, gets judged as one thing. That search is the one your site has to win.
Referral is the base layer in this trade more than in most, and it is also the reason people trust it too much: referral alone does not fill a pipeline through a slow patch. What fills the gap is being findable and checkable once someone has already heard your name.
We will say the uncomfortable version out loud. If your Google Business Profile is half-finished and your reviews are thin, that is very likely a bigger problem than your website, and we will tell you that before you spend anything with us. We do not manage your profile; that decision and that work stay yours.
What we will not do is promise a ranking. Nobody can. We commit to doing everything known to influence ranking and citation, and none of the things known to hurt it.
Why does your website read like a building contract?
Because it was written the way you talk on site. Homeowners do not search for restricted building work or practical completion. They search for a builder near them, and whether their builder is licensed. Lead with their words, use the correct term once, name it, translate it, and move on.
| Industry term | Plain meaning |
|---|---|
| Practical completion | The day the house is finished enough to move into. |
| Variation | A change that changes the price. |
| Defects liability period | The window after handover where the builder comes back and fixes things at their cost. |
| Code Compliance Certificate | Council confirming the build met its consent. |
| Restricted building work | Structural or weathertightness work that has to be done or supervised by a licensed practitioner. |
Which build does a building company actually need?
Three builds, and the difference is scope, not polish. Most builders land on the full website, because the dated project feed and the four-field enquiry form are the two things that change your week. A landing page suits one build type in one area. Custom is for builders whose site has to talk to the project or client management software they already run. A full site takes 7 days, a landing page takes 5. Tell us the work you want more of on a 15-minute call and we will tell you which one your job is, and what it comes to.
| Build | Delivery | Suits you if | Built for a builder |
|---|---|---|---|
| Landing page | 5 days | You want one build type in front of one area, and you want it this week. | One page, a qualifying enquiry form, mobile-first and SEO-ready. |
| Website | 7 days | Referral is bringing your name up and you need the search that follows to hold. | A dated project feed, the four-field enquiry form, a process page with timeframes, a licence and scheme block with links out, location pages for areas you've actually built in. |
| Custom | Dedicated project manager, unlimited revisions | You run project or client management software and the site has to feed it. | Everything in Website, plus complex integrations for builders running project or client management systems. |
Have you built for builders before?
Yes. Residential construction, custom homes, luxury and architectural builds, and renovations, is the largest single sector in our client base, in both Australia and New Zealand. Names, logos and figures are not published on this page yet, because we do not publish a client's name until they have given written permission, and we are collecting that now.
What we can tell you today without borrowing anyone's name: enquiries from the sites we build route through our own systems, so we see them land. We host, back up and monitor those sites, and fix things before the client notices.
What we will not do is publish a lift percentage or a traffic figure we cannot evidence. We have no analytics access for these sites and no baseline was recorded, so any number here would be decoration. When a client supplies their own figure, it goes here with their name on it.
Where the rules actually come from
A homeowner checking a builder does not take Dreamy's word for any of this. These are the same public registers and scheme pages they check themselves, which is why the page links out to them rather than restating them as fact.
- Licensed Building Practitioners register (MBIE)New ZealandHomeowner-facing tool to search the public LBP register. Confirmed live and functional by direct fetch on 2026-09-19: the page states "You can search the public register of Licensed Building Practitioners (LBPs)."
- Restricted building work and LBP licence classes (Building Performance, MBIE)New ZealandGovernment definition of restricted building work and the seven LBP licence classes. Confirmed live via search on 2026-09-19.
- New Zealand Certified Builders, marketing guidance for membersNew ZealandIndustry body's own advice that referral alone does not fill a pipeline. Verified reachable by direct fetch on 2026-09-19.
- Master Build GuaranteeNew ZealandPrimary source for the scheme. Direct fetch on 2026-09-19 confirms the guarantee is described as a 10-Year Guarantee covering problems if things go wrong during a build or renovation. No satisfaction percentages appear on the page, so none are published here.
- Master Builders AustraliaAustraliaNational industry body reference for the Australian licensing and warranty landscape. Verified reachable on 2026-09-19.
- Queensland Home Warranty Scheme (QBCC)AustraliaStatutory regulator's own insurance search tool for the scheme. Direct fetch on 2026-09-19 confirms the page does not state a dollar threshold, so none is published here.
- NSW Fair Trading, home building contractsAustraliaState regulator page used as the New South Wales example of the state-by-state licensing split. Verified reachable on 2026-09-19.
Draft quote. Nobody said this. Replace before publishing.
The enquiries come in with a suburb and a budget on them now. I stopped driving out to jobs that were never going to be jobs.
Questions, answered.
Related
- Run a free audit of your current site
- See what each build includes
- get a figure for your next build in 15 minutes
- talk to us before you commit to anything
- book a look at the design
- more questions, answered
- if renovations and new builds are two different businesses for you, they want two pages: the renovation-led one is here
- landscapers face the same council and site-specific problem, and get the same answer
- Websites for property developers
- Websites for roofers and skylight installers
We build more websites for builders than for anyone else #000080
Residential construction, custom homes, luxury and architectural builds, and renovations, is the largest single sector in our client base, in both Australia and New Zealand. We are not naming clients on this page yet: we do not publish a name or a figure until the business it belongs to has said yes in writing, and we are collecting that now. What we can tell you without borrowing anyone's name: enquiries from the sites we build route through our own systems, so we see them land, and we host, back up and monitor those sites ourselves. We will not publish a lift percentage or a before-and-after number we cannot evidence. When a client hands us their own figure, it goes here with their name on it.
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