Websites for emergency plumbing work

Urgent customers behave differently

Someone booking a bathroom refit reads several pages, compares quotes and takes a week to decide. Someone with a burst pipe at 10pm reads almost nothing. They scan for a phone number, check you cover their area and call. If the first number does not answer, they call the next result. An emergency page that works for them looks very different from a normal service page.

We design emergency pages around three facts the customer needs in seconds: you deal with this kind of problem, you cover their postcode, and you are answering right now. Everything else on the page supports those facts or gets out of the way.

Only promise what the business can keep

The most damaging thing an emergency page can do is overpromise. "24/7", "30 minute response" and "no call-out charge" are claims the Advertising Standards Authority treats as objective, which means the business must hold evidence that they are true. The ASA's remit has covered claims on companies' own websites since 1 March 2011.^[1]

The rulings are clear. In 2012 the ASA upheld a complaint against a London plumbing firm whose website said it was on call 24 hours a day, seven days a week, because it could not show it was available at all times.^[2] The same year it upheld complaints against a drainage firm's "30 MIN RESPONSE 24/7", "NO CALL OUT CHARGE" and "local engineers" claims, finding no evidence for any of them.^[3] Both cases cited CAP Code rule 3.1 on misleading advertising and rule 3.7 on holding evidence before publishing a claim.

So before we write your emergency page we ask how your out-of-hours cover really works. Who carries the phone, which nights, how far they will travel and what the call-out fee is. The page then says exactly that. If cover is evenings and weekends only, the page says evenings and weekends. If you charge a call-out fee that is deducted from the repair, the page explains it in a sentence. Customers trust a specific, modest promise more than a vague grand one.

What goes on an emergency page

Gas emergencies need different handling

If a customer smells gas, a plumber's website should not try to win the job first. The right instruction is to call the National Gas Emergency Service on 0800 111 999, ventilate the property, turn off the gas at the meter if it is safe, avoid flames and electrical switches, and stay out of cellars.^[4] Your registered engineers can follow up once the emergency service has made the supply safe. We put that advice prominently on any page that mentions gas, because getting it wrong could hurt someone.

Only firms with Gas Safe registered engineers should offer gas repairs at all, and the page should make that registration easy to check.^[5]

Built for a phone in a dark kitchen

Urgent visitors are almost always on a phone, sometimes with wet hands and poor signal. Emergency pages are kept light so they load quickly on a weak connection, with large buttons spaced far enough apart that a thumb hits the right one. Text contrast is high enough to read in a dim room or bright sunlight. The phone number appears as a button and as plain digits, because some people prefer to type it into a different phone.

Where there is genuine demand, we can build a separate emergency page for each main problem type, such as burst pipes, leaks through ceilings, no hot water or blocked toilets. Each one has its own short advice and the same honest cover details. The emergency page guide explains the structure in more detail.

Measuring whether it works

Emergency pages succeed or fail on calls, so we help you count them. Simple options include a separate tracked number for the website and counting taps on the call button through privacy-friendly analytics. The call tracking guide covers the choices and the privacy points to watch.

Questions about emergency pages