On 23 September 2026 Brave’s first page of results for “what should a remodeling contractor website have” was ten agency and website-builder pages: checklists, showcases, conversion claims and one study of 50 firms from a national trade magazine’s 2019 list. None counted what the remodelers in any one market actually have. So I did: I took the first ten local listings for remodelers in eight West Michigan towns and followed each one to the homepage it points at.
Start with a site that works from your listing. On 23 September 2026 I checked the remodelers in Brave Search’s local results for “remodelers <town> MI” in seven West Michigan towns — 52 businesses. For 17 of them, a third, the listing does not lead to a working homepage for the business: 10 listings name no website, 4 addresses do not load, and 3 lead to a lapsed domain that now sells the business’s search traffic to other contractors, or to a “coming soon” page. A remodeling website that loads from every listing, on a domain you own, already does something a third of the field does not.
Of the 34 sites read, all are on HTTPS with a phone layout, 25 have a tap-to-call link and 24 point to their work — a gallery, a portfolio, “our projects” or before-and-after — the one thing most remodelers show. What they rarely put beside it: 6 show reviews on the page, 5 have an FAQ, 3 print a Michigan licence number, 2 say design-build, and 1 says what a remodel costs. A remodeling website should have the gallery, then as many of those as are true for the business.
That is how we build them: our contractor websites start at $999 for up to three pages, and the Business Site ($2,499 starting, 5–8 pages with services and a gallery) carries local schema, reviews and analytics. The measurement below is free to use whether or not you ever talk to us.
Most advice about remodeling websites comes from the people who sell them, and it lists everything a site could have. A remodeler in Kentwood or Holland cannot tell from it which of those things the competitors a homeowner compares them with already have, and which would set them apart. That can be counted. This page counts it for West Michigan, then says what I would put on a remodeling site as a result.
The source is Brave Search’s local results for “remodelers <town> MI”, read 23 September 2026 — not Google’s map pack — in the eight towns I track: Grand Rapids, Wyoming, Kentwood, Grandville, Walker, Holland, Muskegon and Kalamazoo. I took the first ten listings in each, through the Brave Search API: the businesses one search engine lists for each town, not a ranking. Walker returned no local listings, as it did that day for every trade I swept, so it is not in the numbers. The other seven gave 70 listings. A remodeler listed in several towns counts once, matched by website address or by name, which leaves 52 businesses; 11 of them appear in two or more towns. For 10 of the 52 the listing names no website, which says what the listing holds, not that the business has no site.
Of the 42 websites listed, 34 were read. Four did not load: two domain names no longer resolve, one has a security certificate issued for a different name, and one redirects to itself in a loop. One more loads for a person but draws every word with script, so one HTML fetch sees its title and nothing else; it is counted as unreadable, not read. Three lead somewhere other than the business’s own site: two listed domains have lapsed and now sell the business’s search traffic to other contractors, and one is a hosting company’s “coming soon” page.
I fetched each homepage once with curl, the way a search crawler or an AI engine does, and read the HTML for the signals in the table. Each is a plain yes or no: a tel: link; LocalBusiness-family schema; an FAQ (FAQPage schema, or a heading with “FAQ” or “Frequently asked” in it); a phone viewport; a contact form with an email or phone field or a text box; a review widget, a printed star rating or a printed review count; a scheduling tool or a book-online link; and the words a homeowner looks for — a free estimate, quote or consultation, financing or monthly payments, emergency or 24/7, “licensed and insured” (with or without “bonded”), a number printed after “licence #”, “licence no.”, “licence number”, “licence info”, “licence ID” or “licence:” (either spelling), and a warranty or guarantee. For remodelers I added two: portfolio words (gallery, portfolio, “our work”, “our projects” or before-and-after) and the phrase “design-build”. I re-fetched every page that prints a dollar figure or a licence number and read each one by hand. The raw files are in the receipts.
| What the homepage has (34 remodeler sites, read 23 Sep 2026) | Sites | Of 34 |
|---|---|---|
| HTTPS | 34 | 100% |
| A phone viewport (built for mobile) | 34 | 100% |
| A tap-to-call link | 25 | 74% |
| Portfolio words: gallery, portfolio, “our work”, “our projects” or before-and-after | 24 | 71% |
| A free estimate, quote or consultation offer | 16 | 47% |
| LocalBusiness-type schema markup | 15 | 44% |
| A contact form in the page’s HTML | 15 | 44% |
| A warranty or guarantee mentioned | 12 | 35% |
| A book-online or schedule link, or a scheduling widget | 7 | 21% |
| “Licensed and insured” | 7 | 21% |
| Reviews shown on the page (widget, star rating or count) | 6 | 18% |
| An FAQ | 5 | 15% |
| Financing or monthly payments mentioned | 5 | 15% |
| Emergency or 24/7 mentioned | 2 | 6% |
| A Michigan licence number | 3 | 9% |
| “Design-build” or “design build” | 2 | 6% |
| What a remodel costs (every dollar figure read by hand) | 1 | 3% |
| Town (23 Sep 2026) | Listings | No website listed | Sites read | Portfolio words | Tap-to-call | Free estimate | Reviews |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Grand Rapids | 10 | 1 | 7 | 4 | 4 | 4 | 2 |
| Wyoming | 10 | 1 | 8 | 7 | 7 | 6 | 2 |
| Kentwood | 10 | 1 | 6 | 5 | 6 | 5 | 2 |
| Grandville | 10 | 0 | 9 | 8 | 8 | 5 | 2 |
| Holland | 10 | 3 | 5 | 4 | 3 | 0 | 0 |
| Muskegon | 10 | 2 | 6 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 0 |
| Kalamazoo | 10 | 4 | 6 | 4 | 5 | 3 | 0 |
| Walker | no local listings returned — not measured | ||||||
Every town but Walker gave ten listings. Kentwood’s ten were nine businesses, one listed twice. Holland’s ten list one business twice under one name, once with a website address and once without; the regional count merges them. Where a town’s sites read and listings with no website do not add up to ten, the rest are a duplicate listing, an address that did not load or could not be read, or one that does not lead to the business’s own site; one Kentwood listing points at a contact page that returns “not found”, although the same business’s homepage loads from its other listings and is counted in the regional numbers. The town rows count a remodeler once per town, so a business listed in Grand Rapids, Wyoming, Kentwood and Grandville appears in all four rows; the first table counts it once.
Read across the towns and the split is geographic. The four Grand Rapids-area towns gave 40 listings, and 3 name no website; Holland, Muskegon and Kalamazoo gave 30, and 9 name none. None of the 17 sites read in those three cities shows reviews on the page, and none of Holland’s offers a free estimate or consultation in so many words. The Grand Rapids suburbs share many of the same firms — one is listed in all four — which is part of why their rows look alike.
The finding I did not expect is how many of the remodelers a search shows cannot be reached from their listing at all. For 17 of the 52 businesses the listing does not lead to a working homepage for the business: 10 listings name no website, 4 addresses do not load, two listed domains have lapsed and now sell the business’s search traffic to other contractors, and one is a hosting company’s “coming soon” page.
A listing that names no website does not mean the business has none; it means a homeowner who finds the business there cannot reach its site in one tap. The fix costs nothing but attention: look the business up wherever it is listed and check that every listing points at a homepage that loads, on a domain you own and keep renewed. Where to list a Grand Rapids business covers the free listings, and who owns your website and domain covers keeping the name; as two listings here show, a lapsed domain can end up selling your search traffic to someone else. Two of the 34 sites read live on a website builder’s subdomain rather than a domain of their own. And one homepage that works for a person draws every word with script, so a single fetch — a crawler’s, or an AI engine’s — sees its title and its schema and nothing else; it is counted as unreadable, not read.
For a third of the remodelers a search lists, the listing leads to no working website.
The first of the two remodeler checks is for portfolio words — gallery, portfolio, “our work”, “our projects” or before-and-after — anywhere in the homepage’s text. 24 of 34 have them, which makes a pointer to past work the most common thing on a West Michigan remodeling homepage after HTTPS, the phone layout and tap-to-call. The check reads words, not photographs: the gallery itself may live on its own page, which one homepage fetch does not open, so this counts the sites that send a visitor to their work, not how good the work is.
What the gallery rarely has beside it is anybody else’s opinion. Only 6 of the 34 show reviews on the homepage — a review widget, a printed star rating or a printed review count — and 19 of the 24 with portfolio words show none of the three. A photograph proves you can build the kitchen. It does not say whether the job ran to schedule, whether the crew cleaned up each day or whether the price held — the questions I would want answered before letting a crew into my house for weeks — and a review can. I would put the homeowner’s words beside the project they describe, with the room, the town and how long it took; the honest ways to show reviews are on the reviews page.
Four homepages print a dollar figure, and I re-fetched each and read every figure by hand (read 23 September 2026). One says what a remodel costs, and it is the model answer: in reply to its own question about average project cost, it puts a full kitchen at $25,000 basic to $75,000 luxury and a full bathroom at $20,000 to $65,000, and says changing walls or the footprint could add $2,500 to $15,000. One is a price, but not for a remodel: a booking widget selling one-hour appointments at $19.99. One is offers — $500 off a roof replacement, and loans up to $100,000 — and one is not a price at all but a $25 charity donation for every home visited. That leaves 33 of 34 remodeling homepages that give a homeowner no idea what the work costs.
A range is enough, and that site shows the form: a range per room, from basic to luxury, and the decision that moves it most. It commits nobody to a quote, and it lets a homeowner see whether their budget is in the right place before they call. On work priced like that, financing matters too, and 5 of 34 mention financing or monthly payments; if you offer it, say so next to the range. The case for publishing prices at all is on the prices page.
19 of the 24 remodeling homepages that point to their work show no review beside it.
Design-build. The second remodeler check is the phrase “design-build” or “design build”, and 2 of 34 homepages use it. The check matches those two spellings only, so a site that writes it another way is missed and 2 is a floor. Design-build means one firm handles both the design and the construction under one contract. If that is how you work, it is a real difference from a remodeler who builds to someone else’s drawings, and the homepage should say so and show the steps, from the first meeting to the last day on site. If it is not how you work, leave the word off; a homeowner who reads it will expect one contract.
A licence number. 7 of 34 say “licensed and insured” and 3 print a Michigan licence number; I re-fetched those three pages and each match is a number, not a phrase. Michigan’s Occupational Code defines both a “residential builder” and a “residential maintenance and alteration contractor” by paid work that includes the “repair, alteration, or addition to” a detached one- or two-family house or a townhouse of up to three stories (MCL 339.2401); a maintenance and alteration licence names the particular trades it covers, among them carpentry, tile and marble work, basement waterproofing, roofing, and siding and gutters (MCL 339.2404); and the code’s small-job exemption applies only when the whole project is under $600, not when a bigger one is split into smaller contracts (MCL 339.2403). All three sections are on legislature.mi.gov, read 23 September 2026. I am not a lawyer, and this is not advice on which licence a particular job needs.
The state’s licensing agency, LARA, runs a public “Find / Verify a Licensed Professional or Business” service that lists residential builders (michigan.gov/lara/online-services, read 23 September 2026), so a printed number is a claim any homeowner can check in a minute, and a number anyone can check says more than the phrase. Print it, and say which licence it is — a residential builder’s, or a maintenance and alteration contractor’s and for which trades — in the footer of every page. 31 of the 34 do not print one.
An FAQ. 5 of 34 have one the check can see: FAQPage schema, or a heading with “FAQ” or “Frequently asked” in it. That is a floor — the one site with a price answers it in a question-and-answer section under a different heading. Either way, an FAQ is the cheapest place to answer cost, timeline, permits and what living through the work is like before the phone call (why and how).
A next step. 25 have a tap-to-call link, 15 a contact form in the HTML and 7 a book-online link or a scheduling tool; 6 of the 34 have none of the three that a crawler can see. 16 offer a free estimate, quote or consultation in so many words — fewer than half. If the first step is a visit to the house, say what that visit is, whether it costs anything and how to book it. A tap-to-call link and a short form are the two cheapest routes to add.
Where you work. The homepages name a median of 1 of the eight towns in this sweep; 4 name none and 11 name four or more. A homeowner in Grandville wants to see Grandville. Name the towns you work in on the homepage and in your schema — 15 of 34 carry LocalBusiness-type schema at all — and build a page per town only when you have something true to say about it, such as projects you finished there; the same page with the town name swapped adds nothing a homeowner can use.
Warranty and emergencies. 12 mention a warranty or guarantee; say what yours covers and for how long. Emergency or 24/7 service is rare, as you would expect in this trade: 2 of 34.
Weight. The median homepage is 196 KB of HTML before a single image or script loads; 5 are over 1 MB and the largest is 1.6 MB, and a remodeler’s site is heavy on photographs. Compress them and size them for the screen; speed on a phone is part of the same visit.
| Element | West Michigan remodelers (of 34 sites read) | Verdict |
|---|---|---|
| A working homepage behind every listing | none for 17 of 52 | First. Check every listing, and keep the domain renewed. |
| HTTPS and a phone-ready layout | 34 and 34 | Table stakes: every site read has both. |
| A tap-to-call link | 25 | Yes. 9 of 34 have none a crawler can see. |
| A gallery or portfolio | 24 | Table stakes in this trade. Say what each project was. |
| Reviews on the page | 6 | The biggest trust gap: 19 of the 24 with a gallery show no review. |
| What a remodel costs | 1 | The biggest information gap. A range per room, and what moves it. |
| A free estimate or consultation | 16 | Yes, with what the first visit involves. |
| LocalBusiness schema | 15 | Yes. It tells search engines what and where you are. |
| An FAQ | 5 | Yes. Cost, timeline, permits, living through the work. |
| Your licence number, and which licence | 3 | Yes. Free, checkable in LARA’s lookup, and 31 of 34 leave it off. |
| Financing | 5 | If you offer it, next to the price range. |
| “Design-build” | 2 | Only if it is how you work, and then explain it. |
| The towns you work in, named | median 1 of 8 | Name them; a page per town only with something true to say. |
A remodeling site we build starts from this list rather than a template: every listing pointed at a homepage that loads, on a domain you own; a gallery where each project says what it was; reviews beside it; a price range per room and what moves it; an FAQ that answers cost, timeline and permits; your licence number and which licence it is; design-build only if you do it; and the towns you actually work in. The Starter Site is from $999 for up to three pages, or $149 a month for twelve months; the Business Site is $2,499 starting for five to eight pages with services and a gallery, which is room for a page each for kitchens, bathrooms, basements and additions alongside the portfolio (how many pages a contractor site needs). Everything on this page applies whether or not we build yours.
The sweep. Brave Search API local results for “remodelers <town> MI” in eight towns, read 23 September 2026 between 12:53 and 12:55 UTC, first ten listings each; Walker returned none. A business listed in more than one town counted once, matched by website address or by name. Each homepage fetched with curl on 23 September 2026. Raw rows, one file per town plus the regional file: ops/search/measurements/local-sweep/remodelers-*-2026-09-23.json and remodelers-west-michigan-2026-09-23.json, which marks the addresses that are not the business’s own site. Business names are kept in those files for audit; this page publishes totals only.
By hand, the same day. Every dollar figure and every licence number re-fetched and read in context; the four addresses that failed, the page drawn by script, the lapsed and placeholder addresses and the smallest homepages re-checked with curl, 23 September 2026.
The statute. Michigan Occupational Code: MCL 339.2401, definitions (legislature.mi.gov); MCL 339.2403, exemptions, including the $600 one (legislature.mi.gov); MCL 339.2404, the maintenance and alteration licence and its trades (legislature.mi.gov); all read 23 September 2026.
The licence lookup. LARA online services, “Find / Verify a Licensed Professional or Business”, which lists residential builders (michigan.gov/lara/online-services), read 23 September 2026.
Page one. Brave Search web results for “what should a remodeling contractor website have”, read 23 September 2026: ten agency and website-builder pages, one of them a study of 50 firms from a national trade magazine’s 2019 list; none measures a local market. For “remodeling company website examples” the same day: ten showcases, templates and agency pages.
Our own terms. The service pages of this site as published: Starter Site from $999 or $149 a month for twelve months; Business Site $2,499 starting, 5–8 pages with services and a gallery.
First, a homepage that loads from every listing: for 17 of 52 West Michigan remodelers checked on 23 September 2026, the listing led to no working site for the business. Then what most already have — HTTPS, a phone layout, a tap-to-call link and a pointer to their work (34, 34, 25 and 24 of the 34 sites read) — and the gaps most leave open: reviews on the page (6), an FAQ (5), a Michigan licence number (3) and a price range (1).
A range, yes. Only 1 of the 34 West Michigan remodeling homepages I checked says what a remodel costs (read 23 September 2026), and it is the model: a full kitchen from $25,000 basic to $75,000 luxury, a full bathroom from $20,000 to $65,000, and $2,500 to $15,000 more for changing walls or the footprint. The other 33 leave a homeowner guessing. Give a range per room and say what moves it.
No. 24 of the 34 West Michigan remodeling homepages checked on 23 September 2026 point to their work with gallery or portfolio words, but 19 of those 24 show no review on the page, and only 3 of the 34 print a Michigan licence number. Photos show what you can build; reviews, a licence number anyone can check in LARA’s lookup, a price range and an FAQ show what hiring you is like.
Send me your website. I'll run the same read on it, check where each of your listings points, and tell you which of these your three nearest competitors have that you do not, and what to fix first.
Works whether or not you end up working with me.