Four contractors, four completely different "websites"
A sole-proprietor fit-out contractor needs a credible five-page site with a phone number that actually gets answered. A multi-discipline building firm needs a filterable project library, a service page per trade, and a lead form estimators can trust enough to act on. A civils or industrial contractor chasing tenders needs document handling, HSEQ proof and a site that reads as serious to a procurement team, not a homeowner. A materials supplier may need a real catalogue and an ecommerce checkout behind it. Four businesses in the same industry, four genuinely different quotes.
The number that should actually worry you is not the total on the page, it is a quote with no scope attached to it at all. "Website for your construction company: R18,000" tells you nothing about what happens once you have forty completed projects and three trades to display, or what happens to a tender enquiry the moment someone actually submits it.
Nexus prices platform websites as Launch from R3,000, Business from R5,500 and Pro from R8,000. Custom development starts from R5,000, which is where most tender-facing or document-heavy contractor sites land once RFQ intake, file uploads or CRM routing get involved. These are starting positions for a defined scope, the final figure depends on how much of what follows is already true of your business today.
Construction site shapes and what drives the number
| Business shape | What the site needs to do | Typical cost driver |
|---|---|---|
| Solo contractor or small crew | Look established, list services, make contact easy on mobile | Low, a lean template does the job |
| Multi-trade building firm | Separate service pages, a browsable project library, one enquiry path per trade | Moderate, templates plus taxonomy and gallery structure |
| Civils, industrial or tender-driven contractor | HSEQ and compliance proof, document uploads, procurement-credible tone | Higher, custom fields, file handling, sometimes CRM routing |
| Materials supplier or merchant | Catalogue, pricing logic, delivery areas, possibly online orders | Ecommerce scope, from R7,500 depending on catalogue size |
What actually pushes a contractor quote up or down
Project count and filtering matter more than most contractors expect walking in. Ten unlabelled photos dumped into a gallery are cheap to place and worth nothing to a buyer trying to make a decision. A properly filterable library (by sector, service, project value or location) needs real structured content work: captions, scope notes, before/after context and a data model your own team can actually update once launch day has passed.
Service and sector taxonomy is the second real driver. "We do everything" is not a page, it is an admission that nobody has decided how a buyer should move through the site. A firm handling residential, commercial and industrial work almost always needs three distinct journeys, even when the underlying template stays shared across all three.
Tender and RFQ handling changes the engineering, not just the layout. A form that emails a generic inbox is perfectly fine for a homeowner enquiry. It is not fine for a contractor who needs project type, estimated value, location, timeline and a site-plan upload captured and routed to the right estimator before the tender closing date slips past unnoticed.
- Number of projects to feature and whether they need filtering
- How many trades or sectors get their own page and journey
- File upload, tender document handling or CRM routing requirements
- Photo licensing, retouching and captioning workload
- HSEQ, accreditation and compliance content that procurement teams expect to see
Scope drivers that deserve a line item
| Driver | Why it changes the price | Question for your quote |
|---|---|---|
| Project gallery | Filtering, captions and image handling take real content time, not just template placement | Who writes the project captions and scope notes? |
| Service taxonomy | Each distinct buyer journey (residential vs industrial vs civils) needs its own page and CTA logic | How many separate service pages are actually included? |
| Lead qualification | Project type, value band, location and timeline fields need form logic and routing, not a generic contact box | What happens to a submitted enquiry in the first hour? |
| Tender documents | Uploads, file size limits and secure handling are engineering work, not decoration | Can the form accept a site plan or drawing attachment? |
| Compliance content | HSEQ, accreditations and safety records need a place and a maintenance owner | Who keeps compliance pages current after launch? |
The real cost centre is almost never the design
Across nearly every construction website project Nexus has scoped, the surprise line item is not the template, it is the photography. Most contractors are sitting on hundreds of unsorted site photos spread across a foreman’s phone, an old WhatsApp group and a couple of forgotten hard drives. Turning that pile into a dozen well-captioned, rights-cleared, web-ready project stories is real work, and it usually decides your launch date more than anything a designer touches.
Budget for this honestly from the start. If your photo library is not launch-ready, either fund the time to prepare it properly, or scope a phased launch: go live with your five strongest projects, then add the rest on a monthly content cadence afterward. Eight excellent projects will always beat a site that stalls for three months waiting on forty mediocre ones.
The same logic applies to the written scope notes sitting alongside each project. "Warehouse project, Gauteng" tells a buyer nothing useful. "12,000m² distribution warehouse fit-out, Midrand, structural steel, electrical and racking coordination across an 8-week programme" tells them you have done exactly this kind of job before, successfully. That one sentence is worth more than another photo.
Nexus starting prices for contractor and civils sites
| Path | From | Best when |
|---|---|---|
| Launch platform site | R3,000 once-off | Solo contractor or small crew needing a credible five-to-eight-page presence |
| Business platform site | R5,500 once-off | Multiple trades or sectors need distinct pages and a filterable project library |
| Pro platform site | R8,000 once-off | Larger project libraries, richer content operations or heavier service depth |
| Custom development | From R5,000 | Tender uploads, CRM-routed RFQ intake or procurement-specific workflows |
| Ecommerce | From R7,500 | Materials suppliers and merchants selling a catalogue online |
The plain contact form quietly costing you tenders
Most contractor websites still funnel every enquiry (a homeowner renovation question, a subcontractor introduction, and a genuine R40-million tender opportunity) into the same inbox behind the same three fields. That is a triage problem wearing a design decision as a disguise. Estimators waste time opening low-value messages while a real tender enquiry sits unread, waiting for someone to happen to scroll past it.
Qualify at the point of enquiry instead of after the fact. Ask for project type, estimated value band, location and timeline before the message ever reaches an inbox. Route high-value or tender-flagged submissions straight to the person who actually owns that pipeline, with a WhatsApp or SMS alert if your market moves on speed. This is a form-logic and routing cost, not a design cost, and it is usually the single most valuable line item on a contractor’s website brief.
If your business genuinely handles more enquiries over WhatsApp than email (common on residential and smaller commercial jobs) make that the primary call to action instead of burying it behind a form nobody wants to fill in. Match the contact method to how your customers actually behave, not to how a template assumes they behave.
A brief that gets accurate contractor website quotes
- List services and sectors separatelyResidential, commercial, industrial, civils, specialised trades, name each one you want a dedicated page for.
- Shortlist your strongest projectsPick 8 to 20 projects with usable photos and confirm you have the rights to publish them.
- Decide how enquiries should be qualifiedList the fields an estimator needs before they can act: project type, value band, location, timeline, attachments.
- Name your compliance contentHSEQ policies, accreditations and safety records that procurement teams will look for.
- Ask for a plain-English scopeConfirm pages, gallery structure, form logic, hosting and support in writing before you sign.
Quote red flags for construction and contractor sites
- A single total with no mention of gallery structure, taxonomy or lead qualification
- A "stock photo homepage plus contact form" build for a firm with real project history to show
- No plan for who prepares, captions and licenses your project photography
- A generic contact form recommended for a business chasing tender-value work
- No mention of file upload capability when tender documents are part of your sales process
- "Unlimited pages" with no content model for how projects get added after launch
- A monthly price with no disclosed 12-month total or clear ownership terms
A construction site online should read like a site walk: evidence first, brochure second. If the quote does not mention your projects, it has not priced your actual business.
Nexus construction web principle
Where to take this next
If you are still early in the process, read the construction website design guide alongside this one, the design decisions and the cost drivers are really the same conversation in this industry. Then run the website cost calculator using your real project count and service list, not a generic guess.
If quotes are already sitting in front of you, put them side by side against the scope drivers above: gallery structure, taxonomy, lead qualification, tender handling and compliance content. Any supplier who cannot answer those questions has priced a template, not your actual business.
Nexus can recommend Launch, Business, Pro or a custom tender-ready build once your service list and project volume are clear. Bring your strongest projects and your real enquiry process, not a wishlist of every page a competitor happens to have.
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