D R Sheet Metal went from an old, outdated design to a brand new look in 24 hours. The site shows off their work, loads five times faster and cost under $1,000 with a year of support.
The client
D R Sheet Metal is Dominic Rolfe’s fabrication shop in Parkes, in the Central West of NSW. He’s a qualified sheetmetal tradesman best known for round ductwork and stainless steel, and he’s been principal ductwork contractor for flour mills across NSW and in Vietnam.
His customers are farms, builders, mines, grain handlers and commercial kitchens. Most of them want one thing: to show Dominic a photo of a part and ask “can you make this?”
The problem
The old website hadn’t changed in years. It worked as a business card, but it wasn’t winning work.
- No photos of the work. For a fabricator, the work is the sales pitch. The home page had a logo, a banner and text, and not one job Dominic had made.
- Services were hard to find. Ductwork, stainless, plasma cutting and general fabrication were buried in a block of text.
- Hard to get in touch. One “Contact Us” link, two different phone numbers and four spellings of the business name.
What we did
We kept everything that was true about the business and rebuilt the rest around how Dominic’s customers buy.
- Put the work up front. Each service has its own photos, and there’s a gallery of 43 jobs from the workshop.
- Made it easy to ask. One phone number on every page, a tap-to-call button, and an “Email a photo or drawing” button for the “can you make this?” question.
- Answered the common questions. How it works in three steps, plus answers on location, metals, repairs, duct sizes and pricing.
- Took away the upkeep. The new site has no WordPress to update, so there is nothing for Dominic to look after.
A brand new look in 24 hours, for under $1,000 including a year of support.
The result
The site looks great, shows off Dominic’s work and loads five times faster than the old one.
- Job photos
- 43
- Was 0
- Time to load
- 0.5 s
- Was 2.5 s
- Phone numbers
- 1
- Was 2
- Size
- 250 KB
- Was 4.05 MB
That speed matters out here. A farmer on one bar of 4G in a paddock outside Forbes now sees the phone number and a photo of real ductwork in half a second.
For Dom’s customers a website that has move from a GTmetrix grade, C (78%) → A (100%) is a great result and means more phone calls.
The takeaway
A tradie’s website has one job: get the phone to ring. D R Sheet Metal’s old site wasn’t broken. It was hiding the best evidence Dominic has, which is his work.
The rebuild didn’t need a new brand, a big budget or months of meetings. It needed the right facts, real photos and one clear phone number.
