A Website for a Solar and Heat Pump Installer: Winning Against Call Centres
A homeowner rings up and opens with: “just please don’t tell me it pays back in four years”. Over the past two years he has taken dozens of cold calls, once signed a contract he never finished reading, and knows a neighbour whose installer vanished along with the warranty. You have been fitting systems for eight years, you run your own crew, and you service everything you install. He has no way of knowing that, because in Google results you look exactly like the company that phoned him on Thursday.
Solar panels and a heat pump are a purchase worth tens of thousands, with a decision stretched over months and an internet full of contradictory advice. A website in this trade is not there to close anything in one click. It is there to remove specific worries one by one, until the customer decides you are the safer bet than a voice on the phone. Below is what does that, starting with what changes the most.
Distrust is your starting point, not your obstacle
Most installer websites open with “free quote” and a photo of a panel against a blue sky. That is the same language the telemarketer uses, so the reaction is predictable: the visitor closes the tab and goes back to comparing. You gain ground the moment you say something those companies never would.
Write down plainly what you do not do. We do not call people who never left us a number. We do not bring a contract to sign on the first visit. We do not calculate payback on the assumption that electricity gets ten percent dearer every year for a decade. Three sentences like that beat a paragraph about company values, because the customer recognises every practice you just ruled out from his own call log.
If you show a savings projection, show its assumptions: the energy price and the self-consumption rate you used. Without them the number reads like a leaflet promise.
Jobs listed with size and date, not “over 500 installations”
A counter of completed installations on the home page means nothing, because every competitor has one and nobody checks it. What works is a list of specifics from the area where the customer lives.
| What to list per job | Example |
|---|---|
| Town and month | Piaseczno, May 2026 |
| System size and module count | 8.2 kWp, 18 modules |
| Roof type and mounting method | metal tile roof, dual pitch, screw-mounted rails |
| What else was in the package | 10 kWh battery, 12 kW heat pump |
A dozen entries like that are enough to start. Take the photos on your phone while you work: the mounting rails on the rafters before the modules go on, the inverter in the garage with labelled circuits, the outdoor unit on its plinth, sealed cable penetrations on the roof. Someone choosing between three companies zooms into exactly those pictures, because detail quality shows up there better than in any description.
Add one sentence per job about the problem you had to solve: an old boiler room with no space for a buffer tank, a chimney casting shade on half the roof, a grid connection that needed new protection devices. We unpack the rest of the trust signals a contractor needs in the post on a website for a service business.
Who will actually be up on the roof
Every customer asks this, usually on the second call. Answer it on your website and some of them will choose you before they even pick up the phone.
Say whether your own crew does the work or a subcontractor does, and how many people are in the team. List the qualifications without hedging: electrical competence certificates up to 1 kV for operation and supervision, F-gas certification for heat pumps with refrigerant, working-at-height training. Give the sum insured on your liability policy, the first thing a careful homeowner asks when somebody is going to work on his roof. Explain who notifies the grid operator and who arranges the bidirectional meter, because this is where people end up alone with the paperwork.
The same signals decide who gets hired in neighbouring trades, which we covered in the post on a website for an electrician. The difference is that your customer buys something meant to run for twenty years, so he also asks what happens in year three.
The real contract starts after handover
The companies that disappeared from this market did not disappear mid-installation. They disappeared from servicing. That is why a section about what you do after handover convinces people more than a catalogue of the brands you sell.
- How the manufacturer warranty on modules and inverter differs from your own workmanship warranty, and how many years each one runs.
- How fast you respond: a call the same day, a visit within 48 hours when production stops, a different window for a minor fault.
- Whether you monitor customers’ inverters and ring them when output drops, instead of waiting for a complaint.
- What a yearly heat pump service includes and what it costs once the warranty period ends.
If you offer a service contract, publish its scope and price. Somebody who has just spent forty thousand wants to know whether anyone picks up the phone in the fifth winter, and will pay for that.
Grants: describe what you do, not what the customer will get
Support schemes change their names, thresholds and deadlines, so a website promising a specific amount is lying within six months. Skipping the subject costs you too, because for many households the grant is the condition of the whole decision.
The way out is simple: describe your role, not the outcome. We prepare the full document set for the application, issue the invoice in the required format, supply the commissioning reports and equipment data sheets, help fill the form in and check it before it goes off. Name the schemes you work with (in Poland: Mój Prąd, Czyste Powietrze, the thermal modernisation tax relief) and add that you confirm current terms at quoting stage, because they shift during the year. Say honestly that the awarding body decides, not the contractor.
A form that does half the quote for you
A “name, phone, message” box gets you an enquiry you then have to chase with eight questions. In this trade the form can arrive almost ready to price, if you ask for the right things.
Let people attach an electricity bill (annual consumption in kWh is the basis for sizing) and a photo of the roof taken from the garden. Add a question about the year the house was built and the current heat source, because with a heat pump that shapes the entire conversation. Ask for a postcode so you know straight away whether you cover the area. Four extra fields put off some of the casual clickers, and that is fine: the ones left have done the sums. How to build forms people finish is covered in the piece on a contact form that gets enquiries.
The decision takes months, so you need content
An emergency customer calls within a minute. A heat pump customer reads for six months, asks around in forums and only then sends an enquiry to three companies. If you answer his questions on your own site during those six months, you enter that three-way comparison from a different position.
The topics are already in your phone, because customers ask them every week: does a heat pump make sense in a house with radiators, how much electricity it draws in January, what happens to panels under snow, whether a battery pays off under the current billing rules, why a north-facing roof is a different conversation. One post a month picks up searches you cannot buy with ads. How to choose and structure those topics is in the article on what to write about on a business blog.
Who this website is NOT for
If you fit systems as a subcontractor for large companies and your calendar is full of their work a quarter ahead, a lead-generating website will not change much. Your customers are a handful of firms, not hundreds of homeowners, and a simple page with your certifications and references does more than a full site.
Do not start with a website either if your after-sales service is not sorted yet. A site speeds up incoming enquiries, which means it also speeds up the fault calls that follow. Without someone who will drive out and fix things, the first winter call-outs turn into reviews that cost you for years.
Where to start
You do not need thirty pages. A home page with your service area and phone number, separate pages for solar and for heat pumps, a gallery of jobs with sizes and dates, a section on service and warranty and a form that accepts an attached bill are enough.
With Sitario you describe your business in a form and about an hour later you look at a finished site built for the trade: a directions map, space for Google reviews and a form that sends enquiries with attachments straight to your inbox. PLN 249 once, with the first year of hosting, renewal from PLN 149 a year starting in year two, and you pay only after seeing the finished result. After launch the site keeps working: you get a summary of what people were searching for, and you make edits with a single instruction instead of hunting for a developer.
Start with a five minute test: search for “heat pump” plus your town and read the websites of the three companies ranking above you. They usually do not install better than you. They simply answered the questions you have not written down yet.