Scaffolding company websites — what wins commercial work

Trade22 August 20267 min read

Scaffolding sits in an unusual position. A householder wanting a roof done and a main contractor putting together a tender list are both looking for a scaffolder, but they are asking completely different questions, and a site built for one of them tends to fail the other.

This is about the commercial side, because that is where the tier mix is and where a website changes the outcome most.

Who is actually looking

Rarely the person who will use the scaffold. More often a contracts manager, a quantity surveyor, a site manager or someone in procurement, doing a first pass on several firms before anyone rings anybody.

They are not being inspired. They are reducing risk and eliminating options. Every unanswered question is a reason to move to the next name on the list, because chasing you for basic information is work they were not planning to do.

What gets checked, in the order it gets checked

Are they real and are they solvent? Company name, company number, trading address, how long they have been going. If a company number is nowhere on the site, that is noticed.

Are they insured, and for enough? Public liability and employers’ liability, with the cover levels stated. Commercial work frequently requires a specific minimum, and a firm that does not state its cover creates an email that need not have existed.

Are they accredited? This is the big one for commercial scaffolding. SSIP-recognised health and safety assessments, trade body membership, and card schemes covering the operatives. Put the names and the scheme numbers on the site. Whatever you genuinely hold, state it plainly — and never state one you do not, because it will be checked and it ends the conversation permanently.

Can they design, or only erect? Anything outside a standard configuration needs a design and calculations. Whether you produce those in-house or work with a designer is a material distinction and a genuine differentiator. Most scaffolding sites never mention it.

Do they produce the paperwork? Risk assessments and method statements, handover certificates, inspection records. Saying openly that this comes as standard removes a question that would otherwise be asked on a call.

Have they done this size of job before? Not client names — sector, scale, duration, complexity. “Four-storey residential block, twelve weeks, temporary roof” tells a contracts manager more than a logo wall does.

What a domestic-facing site gets wrong here

Most scaffolding websites are built for the householder: a hero photograph, three sentences, a phone number. That is fine for a chimney job and it fails completely on a first-pass commercial check, because none of the six questions above are answered anywhere on it.

You do not need two websites. You need the commercial answers present and findable, even if the front page still speaks to domestic work. A single clear page covering accreditations, insurance, capability and paperwork does most of it.

Photographs, for this audience

Different rules apply than for domestic work. A commercial viewer reads your photographs as evidence about how you work.

• Show scale — the full elevation, not a detail crop that could be anything.
• Show the things that indicate competence: proper edge protection, ties, boarding out, brick guards, netting, a tidy site.
• Show the range you want more of. Photographs of domestic jobs bring domestic enquiries.
• Never use stock scaffolding images. Anyone in the trade spots them instantly, and half of them show non-compliant work.

Areas and structure

Scaffolding is bought locally, and a firm that covers eight towns and lists none of them is invisible to anyone searching for their own town. Say where you work, in words, on the site.

The same applies to what you do. Commercial, domestic, industrial, temporary roofs, loading bays, edge protection, access towers, shrink wrap — if these live as one comma-separated list on the homepage, none of them is properly covered. Firms at this scale usually need separate pages for the main services and the main areas, which is genuinely more work than a template and is where the price bands start to matter.

A short checklist

• Company number and trading address, visible.
• Insurance types and cover levels, stated.
• Accreditations and card schemes, named with numbers — and only the real ones.
• Design capability, stated one way or the other.
• Paperwork you provide as standard, listed.
• Project examples by type and scale, no client names needed.
• Every town you cover, written out.
• Your own photographs, showing the work you want more of.
• A business email on your own domain.

None of that requires an expensive website. It requires somebody to have thought about who is reading it. Most of the sites in this trade have not, which is why the bar is lower than you would expect.

The general principles behind all of this are in our main guide to trade websites.