Insights
What should a general contractor's website show owners and developers?
What good looks likeBy Whitelam Media7 min read
All insightsOwners and developers shortlist general contractors online before they ever call. Here is what a general contractor website should show them, from delivery methods and preconstruction to licenses by state and an inquiry form that asks the right questions.
An owner or developer looking for a general contractor has usually built a shortlist before calling anyone. Research from 6sense found that B2B buyers complete 70% of their buying journey on their own before talking to vendors, and that buyers made the first contact 83% of the time. For a general contractor website, that means the site does the first round of qualifying for you. If an owner can't tell what you build, how you contract and where you're licensed, you don't make the list.
Here is what a general contractor website should show, in the order an owner checks it.
Lead with your work by sector and by delivery method.
Owners search by what they're building, and each wants proof you've done their kind of job. Give each core sector its own page with projects, scope and the people who ran them.
Then say how you contract, because the method changes who the owner hires and when. Gordian describes design-bid-build as split into design, bid and build phases, with owner control but longer timelines. With construction manager at risk, the owner holds two contracts, one with the architect and one with the CM, and often selects on qualifications. Design-build puts design and construction under one contract, and it keeps growing: FMI's 2024 study, reported by DBIA, projects design-build at over 47% of US construction spending by 2028.
If you do all three, say which you prefer for which job. If you only hard bid, say so. An owner planning a CM at risk selection wants to know fast whether you'll respond.
Give preconstruction its own page.
In CM at risk, the construction manager provides preconstruction services such as estimating, scheduling and constructability reviews, then commits to a guaranteed maximum price before the design is complete. That early work is often where an owner decides who they trust.
Write a page about it. Say when you come in, what you deliver (budgets at each design stage, schedules, site logistics plans, value engineering options) and how that work carries into construction. Describe your own process in your own words.
Make every project page answer five questions.
A gallery of finished buildings doesn't help an owner shortlist. Each project page should state:
- Sector and building type
- Size range: square footage, stories or a contract value band if you're allowed to share it
- Schedule: start, substantial completion and whether you hit the date
- Delivery method
- Your scope: what you self-performed and what you managed
Name the owner and architect where you have permission. We cover how to turn a long project list into pages like this in our guide to project pages that win work.
Show what you self-perform and who runs the jobs.
Self-performed work tells an owner how much of the schedule you control, which matters when labor is tight. The AGC and NCCER 2025 workforce survey found 92% of construction firms had a hard time finding workers to hire, and 45% said labor shortages were delaying projects. If you self-perform concrete, carpentry, steel or site work, list it, with crew sizes and equipment if you're willing to share them.
Then show the people. Owners hire a project team as much as a company. Put your project executives, project managers and superintendents on the site with a photo, years in the trade and two or three jobs each.
List your licenses by state.
Licensing rules differ a lot from state to state, so an owner bringing you into a new market wants proof you can legally take the job. According to Insureon, California requires a license for projects worth more than $1,000, plus a $25,000 surety bond or cash deposit. Next Insurance lists Georgia's threshold as projects valued over $2,500. It puts Arkansas at commercial work of $50,000 or more, while Delaware relies on a business license instead of a separate contractor license.
List each state, license type, number and class or limit, link to the state lookup where one exists and keep it current.
Prequalification detail such as your safety record, bonding capacity and insurance belongs in one short place, a page or a request form. We cover what to include in how to build a construction website that wins bids.
Give owners, subcontractors and job seekers their own routes.
Three groups land on a general contractor's site: owners and developers, subcontractors who want on your bid list and people looking for work. Put three clear links near the top of the home page. Subcontractors need a prequalification form and a note on where you post bids. Job seekers need open roles and a short application. Owners need the inquiry form.
Ask the right questions on the inquiry form.
A form that asks only for a name and email gives your estimators nothing to act on. Ask for:
- Project type and sector
- Location (city and state)
- Expected start date
- Delivery method, if they know it
- Stage: site secured, in design or out to bid
- Rough size or budget, as an optional field
These answers let you route the inquiry the same day and politely turn down jobs outside your states or range.
The checklist: what each page shows and who writes it.
Most of this content already sits in your firm, in estimators' heads, closeout files and the license folder. The table below sets out each part of the site, who in a typical general contractor's office supplies it and the owner question it answers.
| Site section | What it shows | Who supplies it | Owner question it answers |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sector pages | Projects, scope and team for each market you serve | Business development lead | Have they built what we're building? |
| Delivery methods | Which of design-build, CM at risk and hard bid you take, and when you prefer each | Owner or president | Will they respond to our procurement? |
| Preconstruction | When you join, what you deliver, how budgets track the design | Head of preconstruction or chief estimator | Can they keep our budget honest before drawings are done? |
| Project pages | Sector, size range, schedule, delivery method, self-performed scope | Project managers, edited by marketing | Did they finish on time on a job our size? |
| Self-performed trades | Trades, crew capacity, equipment | Operations manager | How much of the schedule do they control? |
| People | Executives, project managers and superintendents with past jobs | Each person, checked by HR | Who will actually run our job? |
| Licenses | State, license type, number and class | Office manager or controller | Can they legally work in our state? |
| Prequalification | Safety record, bonding and insurance on request | Safety director and controller | Will they pass our prequal? |
| Three routes | Separate paths for owners, subcontractors and job seekers | Marketing | Where do I click? |
| Inquiry form | Project type, location, start date, method, stage | Estimating, who reads every lead | Will someone who can price this reply? |
Fix the site underneath, then get it found.
Many contractor sites run on old WordPress with plugins on shared hosting, and new pages on a fragile site mean more to patch. Our free Website Health Check shows how outdated and exposed your current site is. If it needs replacing, we handle website rebuilds on Next.js, Payload CMS, Neon and Vercel, so your team can add projects, people and licenses without calling a developer. See our Next.js and Payload CMS page. We rebuilt iknow.us for Iknow LLC this way, and it launched in September 2026.
Our SEO Growth Program is a 6 to 12 month program that brings B2B firms inquiries from Google and AI search. Nobody can promise rankings, and we won't. If owners ask AI tools to name contractors, our free Search Check shows whether Claude names your firm, who it names instead and whether AI tools can read your site. For everything we build for contractors, see construction website design.
