There are two very different businesses in this group and they need opposite things from a website.
The event side sells one big day, booked months out, and gets chosen on feel. The regular services side sells the same visit over and over, and gets chosen on reliability and price. Trying to build one site that does both jobs at once is how you end up with a site that does neither.
Built for: Wedding celebrants, Catering services, House cleaners, Gardeners, Lawn mowing services.
For anything booked around a date, the first question is always availability. A site that lets someone tell you their date immediately, or better, shows which months are already gone, filters out the enquiries you were never going to be able to take and gets you straight to the real ones.
Celebrants and caterers do not get picked off a features list. People are choosing whether they want you standing in front of everyone they know. That means real photos, a bit of writing that sounds like you talking, and a couple of honest words from people whose day you already did.
Cleaning and mowing live or die on recurring customers. The site should make weekly or fortnightly the obvious default, show what a visit includes so nobody has to ask, and let someone start without a site visit if the job is simple. The less friction between interested and booked, the fuller your round.
A standard lawn, a standard three-bedroom clean, a per-head catering figure. Give people a number they can hold onto. Most will not haggle it, and the ones who were never going to pay it filter themselves out before they take up an hour of your day.
For celebrants and caterers, the site is usually the second step rather than the first. Someone gets your name, then looks you up to see if you feel right. That look-up decides it, and it is worth having something good waiting. If you are genuinely full and happy, you do not need me, and I will say so.
For mowing and cleaning rounds, a form is usually plenty, because you want to see the address and the job before you commit a slot. For anything where the date is the whole product, showing real availability saves you a lot of back and forth. It depends on the business, so we work it out before we build rather than after.
$199 to set up, then $59 a month. The monthly covers hosting, the domain, security, backups, content updates when you need them, and me picking up the phone. There is no separate bill for small changes. The monthly runs on a 12-month minimum term, then month to month: $199 does not come close to covering a bespoke build, so the rest of it is spread across the first year rather than charged up front.
12 Bar Digital, Largs North, Adelaide, South Australia. (08) 7077 0985. hello@12bardigital.com.au