What a Roofing Supply Yard Website Needs

Who is actually visiting

A supply yard site gets visited by roofers, framers, and the occasional homeowner who found it by accident.

The trade visitor is on a phone, in a truck, and wants to know whether it is worth driving over.

The homeowner wants to know whether you sell to the public at all, which is a one-line answer.

So the site is a reference for people who already know what they want rather than a sales page for people deciding.

The questions that arrive by phone

• Are you open right now.
• Do you carry this brand.
• Do you have enough of it.
• Can you deliver to a site.
• Do you sell to the public.

Four of those five are answerable on a page and the third is not, which is the honest constraint. A yard that publishes live stock levels is rare and one that publishes what it carries is achievable.

Hours belong at the top

Which sounds trivial and is the most requested piece of information you have.

Trade hours are frequently early, which is exactly when somebody is checking.

Publish the opening time, the closing time, the Saturday hours, and whether the counter closes before the yard does.

That last one catches people, since a yard loading until five with a counter closing at four thirty produces a wasted drive.

Statutory holidays and the week between Christmas and New Year need saying explicitly rather than being left to guesswork.

Put it on the home page rather than only on a contact page.

List the brands, not the products

Since a full catalogue is a project and a brand list is an afternoon.

A roofer knows which manufacturers they specify and wants to know whether you stock them.

So a page listing every brand you carry, by category, answers most of the availability question without any inventory system.

Note which are stocked and which are ordered in, since that distinction changes whether somebody drives over today.

Update it when a line changes, which is a few times a year rather than daily.

That page will be among your most visited within a year.

A worked example

A yard had a site with a photograph of the building and a telephone number.

They added three things: hours including the counter closing time, a brand list by category, and a line saying they sell to the public with an account not required.

Telephone calls asking whether they were open dropped noticeably, and calls asking whether they carried a particular brand dropped more.

The counter staff got the time back, which was the actual benefit.

New trade accounts also rose, since the account application had previously been a form you had to attend in person to collect.

None of it required an inventory system.

Make the account application downloadable

Which is the one conversion this site has.

A new trade customer opening an account is worth years of purchases, and the process is usually a paper form.

Put it on the site as a document and as a page explaining what is needed: business number, references, credit terms offered.

Say how long approval takes, since somebody starting a job next week needs to know whether to wait.

And give a named person to send it to rather than a general address.

That page is the only part of this site with a direct return attached.

Delivery is a real question

And is frequently unanswered.

Say whether you deliver, how far, what it costs, and how much notice is needed.

For roofing specifically, say whether you load to a roof and what the equipment can reach, since that decides whether a crew needs to hand-carry a job.

Publish the cutoff for next-day delivery, which is the figure that changes somebody's planning.

Where delivery is quoted per job, say the range rather than declining to say anything.

Write for the trade, not for search

Which is where these sites go wrong.

Pages written to attract homeowners searching about roof replacement bring the wrong visitors and irritate the right ones.

Your customers use trade terms, know the product names, and do not need bundles explained to them.

Write at that level, and put one plain page for homeowners saying what you do and do not sell them.

A yard that reads like a homeowner brochure loses credibility with the people who actually spend money there.

The yard address needs more than a pin

Since arriving is genuinely difficult at some sites and nobody writes it down.

Say which entrance to use for the counter and which for loading, whether trucks over a certain length can turn, and what the gate situation is.

A driver who takes the wrong entrance in a loaded truck loses twenty minutes and is not pleased about it.

Add a line about where to park for the counter, since a yard laid out for forklifts frequently has nowhere obvious for a pickup.

Two sentences beside the map removes a call and a wasted manoeuvre, and no competitor of yours will have bothered to write them.

The counter-case

Some yards genuinely sell to the public.

Where a meaningful share of revenue is homeowners doing their own work, the site has two audiences and needs to serve both plainly.

A yard with a single supplier relationship also has less to say about brands than one carrying six.

And a business whose customers all hold accounts and telephone the counter anyway may find the site produces very little either way.

Even there, the hours page pays for itself in calls not answered.

Publish hours including the counter cutoff, list the brands by category, put the account application online, and say what you deliver.

What to build first

1. Hours, including the counter cutoff.
2. Address and yard access.
3. Brands carried, by category.
4. Stocked against ordered in.
5. The account application.
6. Delivery terms and cutoff.
7. One page for homeowners.

Step three is the page that saves the counter the most time, since a roofer checking a brand list at seven in the morning is a call nobody has to answer at eight.

Writing at the right level is covered in writing for a trade audience.

Frequently asked questions

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