A Website for a Carpenter and Made-to-Measure Businesses: A Gallery That Sells
Someone who wants a fitted kitchen or built-in storage under the stairs is not buying furniture off a shelf. They are buying something they have never seen, from someone they have never met, for a sum that can climb into the thousands. Before they send you a first message, they want to be sure you do this well and that you will not vanish with their deposit. Most of the time they check this in the evening, on a phone, scrolling through photos.
That is where most carpenters lose the job. The craft is excellent, the finished work looks great in person, but online the business exists as a phone number and a few photos dumped on Facebook years ago. There is nothing for the customer to hold onto, so they message three other makers who did show their gallery. This post is about building a site where your finished projects work for you.
Customers buy with their eyes, so the gallery is the heart of the site
In most service businesses the heart of the site is the offer and the price list. For a carpenter and a made-to-measure business it is different: the first thing a customer looks for is proof that you can build exactly what is in their head. That proof is photos of completed projects.
So the gallery cannot sit hidden under a “Portfolio” tab at the end of the menu. It should start high, ideally right after the headline, and show the real thing: kitchens, fitted wardrobes, bathroom units, office furniture, staircases. Someone planning a sloped-ceiling loft build wants to see in three seconds that you have done something similar. If they have to click around to find it, they leave.
A good gallery is grouped by project type, not thrown together in one stream. A person planning a kitchen wants to see ten kitchens side by side, not scroll past a random mix of wardrobes, worktops and garden benches. Grouping by category is a simple thing that makes the decision easier, and it also helps in Google, because each category can carry its own description with the phrase people actually search for.
How to photograph your work on a phone so it looks good
You do not need a photo shoot that costs a fortune. You need a few simple habits that separate a “you can tell a craftsman made this” photo from a “someone random did this” photo.
- Shoot in daylight, by a window, with the flash off. Natural light shows the grain of the wood and the true colour of the front, the way it really looks.
- Clear the frame. A drill on the worktop, plastic sheeting on the floor and a cardboard box in the corner ruin the whole impression. The project has to look finished.
- Take one shot of the whole piece and two details: a hinge, a runner, the joint where the worktop meets the wall. Detail shows you care about the finish, and that is exactly what separates a good carpenter from a cheap one.
- Hold the phone straight, at roughly the mid-height of the piece, so the lines do not lean. One shot taken from floor level can ruin the best build.
A dozen or so photos like this from the last six months are enough to make the gallery look serious. Take them right after installation, before the customer moves their things in, because after that nobody will let you back inside.
The process, or what happens after “how much does it cost”
A made-to-measure customer is afraid of two things: that it will cost more than they thought, and that something will go wrong along the way. You win the site when you show that you have it under control. The simplest way is to describe your process in four steps, in plain language:
| Stage | What happens | What the customer gets |
|---|---|---|
| Measure | You visit, measure, advise on layout | Certainty that the dimensions are right |
| Design | You draw the layout and pick materials | A visual or drawing to approve |
| Quote | You give a price and a date in writing | No surprises on delivery |
| Install | You build and fit it in their home | A finished piece, cleaned up after |
A table like this does more than it looks. A customer who knows what to expect messages more freely, because they are not afraid you will drag them into a vague arrangement. It also filters out on its own the person who was really after a flat-pack from a big-box store.
A quote form that lets them describe the project right away
The phone is good for a customer who has already decided. Most, though, prefer to write in the evening, send a photo of the wall and ask “can you build a fitted unit here, and roughly how much”. So for made-to-measure work the contact form is not decoration, it is the main tool for collecting enquiries.
A good form for a carpenter has a field for a description, an option to attach a photo or dimensions, and it asks for the town. It does not ask for a tax number, a budget or ten other things, because that scares people off at the start. The point is for the customer to give you enough in one message that you can reply with something concrete, rather than “please call”. For more on setting up a form that actually collects enquiries instead of catching spam, we wrote separately about copy for a business website.
Service area, travel and price ranges
Three things whose absence most often kills an enquiry before it is written.
The first is your service area. State plainly where you travel to measure and install: the town and the surrounding places, a radius in kilometres or a list of districts. A carpenter based in one part of a city who actually covers the whole southern side should write that, because otherwise a customer one district over assumes it is too far and never asks.
The second is a price range. I know every project is different and that a price is hard to give without measuring. But “fitted wardrobe from PLN 1,500 per running metre” or “made-to-measure kitchen from PLN 12,000” works better than silence. A “from” price is not a commitment, it is a filter: it screens out people with a flat-pack budget and draws in those who want quality. A customer with no price information at all usually assumes the worst and messages someone who gave at least a range.
The third is specifics in your reviews. “Great work, recommend” convinces nobody. “A kitchen fit-out in a 1970s block where not a single wall was straight, and the fronts still line up perfectly” builds trust, because it reads like a real customer with a real problem. Ask happy customers for two sentences about a specific project, not a general compliment.
Where Sitario fits in all this
If you are reading this and thinking “it all makes sense, I just cannot build a site like that”, this is where we come in. With Sitario you describe your business in a form, and about an hour later you look at a finished site with a gallery, a process section and a quote form. You pay only once you have seen the result and decided it is good. If it is not, we refund you, so the risk sits on our side.
The business website is a one-off PLN 249 with the first year of hosting included, and renewal only starts from year two, from PLN 149 a year. The domain and the code are yours, and enquiries from the form land in your email and in a panel so none of them get lost. For the full picture, we broke down what a site costs and what you get for it in a guide to business website pricing.
Sitario is not for everyone. If you need a shop with a furniture configurator, a quoting system that counts metres and fittings, or an integration with your production software, that is a job for an agency and a custom build, not for done-for-you. We do one thing well: a solid service site with a gallery and a form that shows your work and collects enquiries.
Summary
A made-to-measure customer decides with their eyes, then checks whether they can trust you. The site that wins shows your projects high up and grouped, explains the process in four steps, has a form with room for a description and a photo, states the service area and price ranges. The rest, the tech, hosting and speed, simply has to stay out of the way. If you want to see how a site like this comes together for a specific trade, read our guide to a website for a service business.