Vertical · Solar Installers
Solar web design for a buyer who trusts no one
Solar is the rare trade where the customer arrives already suspicious. They've been door-knocked, robocalled, and pitched a guaranteed savings number by a rep who disappeared, and they've read about installers folding while 25-year warranties were still in effect. That homeowner is not looking for a hero photo of panels at sunset and a form that says Get Your Free Quote. They want to know who you are, how long you've been operating, who honors the warranty, what the incentives in their utility territory currently look like, and how the estimate gets produced. A custom site puts that on the page, splits installation, battery storage, and service work into pages that rank separately, and takes a utility bill upload so the first conversation is already a real one.
What a solar company site needs
Solar sites fail in a different place than other trade sites. The traffic problem is real, but the bigger leak is trust: a homeowner researching a $20,000 to $40,000 purchase over several weeks, comparing four companies, and looking for a reason to rule each one out. The six features below are what separate a site that produces booked consultations from one that produces tire-kickers.
Credentials, warranty terms, and proof you'll still be here
State electrical or contractor license number, NABCEP certification for the people doing the work, manufacturer certifications for the equipment lines you install, general liability and workers' comp coverage, and your workmanship warranty in years, all visible without a scroll hunt. Then the part almost no solar site handles: how long you've operated under this name, roughly how many systems you've commissioned, whether service is your own crew or subcontracted, and what happens to the warranty if something changes. Homeowners have watched installers fold with production guarantees outstanding. The company that addresses that head-on wins comparisons it would otherwise lose on price.
One page per offering, including the service work
Residential installation, battery and backup storage, service and repair, panel removal and reinstall for a roof replacement, ground-mount systems, commercial arrays, and system monitoring or maintenance plans each need a page. These aren't the same buyer. The battery searcher already has panels and just sat through an outage. The repair searcher has an app showing zero production and possibly an installer who no longer answers. The removal-and-reinstall searcher has a roofer waiting on an answer this week. A single Services page competes weakly for all of it. Service and take-over work is the least contested search in most markets because most installers only want new systems.
An incentives page built to be updated, not carved in stone
Federal, state, utility, and municipal programs move, and net metering terms differ from one utility territory to the next. A percentage typed into a page two years ago and never revisited is a liability: it pulls in customers on a number you can't deliver and gives a competitor's rep an easy way to discredit you. The build gives each program its own repeatable block (program name, administrator, who qualifies, how it's claimed, the official source, and a visible last-reviewed date) so an update is a five-minute edit. Financing options get the same treatment: loan, lease, and power purchase agreement explained in plain language, without a promise you'd have to defend later.
Proposal form that takes a utility bill
A solar intake form asks more than name and email, because a real proposal needs real inputs. Address, whether they own the home, roughly how old the roof is, panel or battery interest, shading and tree concerns, and an upload slot for a recent utility bill. Twelve months of usage turns a guess into a design. Roof age deserves its own field: it routes a homeowner with a twenty-year-old roof into a reroof-first conversation before you spend design hours on a system that shouldn't go up yet. Submissions route into Aurora Solar, OpenSolar, Enerflo, Solargraf, or your CRM automatically, so nothing waits in an inbox over a weekend.
Install gallery sorted by roof and system type
A homeowner with a tile roof, a metal roof, or a detached shop building wants to see that exact thing done well before they believe you. The gallery needs categories: shingle, tile, metal, flat, ground mount, battery installations, and commercial. Clean conduit runs, tidy rapid-shutdown and disconnect placement, and a finished array that looks deliberate on the roof do more to close a deal than any headline about clean energy. Photos are compressed into a modern format, sized for the screen requesting them, and loaded as visitors scroll toward them, so the page opens in about a second while the gallery fills in behind it rather than stalling the whole site.
Service area and utility-territory pages
Solar is local in an unusual way: your relevant boundaries are utility territories, not just city lines, because interconnection rules, approval timelines, and net metering structures change when the meter changes hands. A page per utility you work under (how their interconnection process runs, what their current net metering structure means for payback, roughly how long approvals take) is useful to homeowners and almost nobody writes it. Add city pages for your busiest markets, behind-the-scenes labeling that identifies your business and service area, a name-address-phone consistency check against your Google Business Profile, and sitemap submission. All of that is included with every multi-page build.
Five mistakes solar companies make with their website
Solar companies rarely lose web leads because the install quality is poor or the pricing is off. They lose them at a handful of moments unique to this industry, where a suspicious buyer is looking for a reason to cross a name off the list. Here's where it happens.
Nothing on the site answers "will you still exist in ten years"
The single most common objection in residential solar today has nothing to do with panels. Enough installers have collapsed with production guarantees and workmanship warranties outstanding that the average homeowner has read at least one news story about it, and now every quote gets weighed against the possibility the company behind it disappears. Sites that respond with a line about being committed to the community answer nothing.
What answers it is specific: years operating under the same name and license, roughly how many systems commissioned, whether service work is done by your own crew or subcontracted, who honors the workmanship warranty and for how long, what the panel and inverter manufacturers cover directly (which survives any installer), and your process for taking over a system somebody else installed. That last one does double duty. It proves companies like yours pick up orphaned systems, and it pulls in the homeowner whose installer already vanished. Most competitors in your market say none of this.
Incentive copy that's stale, vague, or quietly wrong
Incentive rules at the federal, state, and utility level have moved repeatedly, and net metering terms now vary between utility territories inside the same state. Most solar sites were written during one policy moment and never revisited. The result is a page confidently quoting a program that changed, a deadline that passed, or a structure that no longer applies where the visitor lives. That's worse than saying nothing: it attracts a customer on a number you can't deliver, and it hands a competitor's rep a free line about how you don't keep up.
The fix is structural rather than editorial. One incentives page, one repeatable block per program with an administrator, an eligibility summary, a claim process, a link to the official source, and a visible last-reviewed date. Updating it becomes a five-minute edit somebody can do the week a program changes. Same discipline for savings language: describe how an estimate is produced and what would change it, never a guaranteed monthly figure that invites a complaint you'd have to answer.
No service, repair, or system take-over page
Every market with a decade of installs behind it now has homeowners whose systems are underperforming, whose inverters have faulted, whose monitoring shows zero, or whose original installer is gone. Those homeowners search "solar panel repair near me" and "my solar company went out of business," and in most markets the results are thin, because installers chase new systems and treat service as a distraction.
That thinness is the opportunity. Service searches carry urgency that installation searches don't: the customer wants a call back this week, they're comparing far fewer options, and the job is small enough to schedule quickly. It's also the cheapest customer acquisition available to a solar company, because a homeowner you rescue becomes a referral source in a neighborhood already full of systems, plus a future battery, expansion, or panel-reinstall sale. A single dedicated page (what you service, which equipment you'll work on, what a diagnostic visit costs, and how you handle a system somebody else installed) captures it.
Nothing about roof replacement, so a roofer decides the timeline
Two searches sit at the intersection of solar and roofing, and most solar sites ignore both. The first is the homeowner who wants panels but has a roof with a few years left, who needs somebody to tell them plainly that a reroof should come first and why. The second is the existing solar owner who now needs a roof replaced and has to get the array removed and reinstalled, usually on a deadline set by the roofing crew's schedule.
Both are high-intent, near-zero-competition searches. Both are jobs that already exist in your market this month. A removal-and-reinstall page (what the process involves, how it coordinates with the roofer, what happens to the warranty, rough turnaround) captures a customer with a fixed deadline and no time to shop hard. A page on roof age and solar timing captures a buyer earlier and earns their trust by telling them to spend money on something else first. Companies that publish that advice get called back when the new roof is on.
Every path on the site leads to "book a consultation" and nothing else
The standard solar site offers one action on every page: hand over your phone number so a rep can call you. That works for the small share of visitors ready to talk today and pushes everyone else away, because a homeowner four weeks into a months-long decision knows exactly what that form produces. This is the industry's self-inflicted wound: aggressive sales tactics trained buyers to avoid the funnel, so the funnel converts worse every year.
A site built for how people buy solar offers a ladder instead of a door. Read what drives payback in this utility territory. See what a system on a tile roof looks like when it's done properly. Look at real projects with system size and equipment noted. Understand the warranty structure. Send a utility bill and get a written proposal without a driveway visit. Each rung captures somebody the consultation form would have lost, and the homeowner who does reach out has already answered half the questions your sales call would have opened with.
What happens in the first ten seconds on a solar site
A homeowner opens the July utility bill and it's $340 for the second month running. That evening she searches "solar companies near me," gets the map with three businesses at the top and a run of organic results below it, and starts opening tabs. She isn't buying tonight. She's building a shortlist, and she's doing it with the specific wariness of someone who has already been door-knocked twice this year and had a rep quote her a guaranteed monthly saving he had no way to promise.
The first site loads a full-bleed photo of panels at sunset, a headline about going green, and a form asking for her phone number to claim a free quote. There's no pricing context anywhere, no explanation of how anything is estimated, and no way to tell whether this company is four people or a call center reselling her details to three installers. She closes the tab in under ten seconds. The second site is the same layout with different colors. She closes that one faster.
The third one is different. Within the first screen it says how long the company has been installing in her county and how many systems it has commissioned. There's a page explaining what drives payback under her specific utility, written in language that doesn't dodge. The incentives page lists programs with a last-reviewed date on it, which is a small detail that tells her somebody maintains this. The gallery has a tile-roof category, and her roof is tile. The warranty page says who honors the workmanship coverage and what the manufacturers cover directly. And instead of a phone-number gate, there's a form that takes a photo of her utility bill and returns a written proposal.
She spends eleven minutes on that site. She fills out the form at 10:40pm. The two companies that lost her never learn they were in the running, and neither of them was beaten on price, panel brand, or install quality. They were beaten on the site.
Now run the other scenario. It's a Tuesday morning and a different homeowner notices his monitoring app has shown zero production for six days. He calls the company on the sticker in the garage and the number is disconnected. He searches "solar panel repair near me" and finds four installer sites, three of which say nothing about servicing systems they didn't install. The fourth has a page for exactly that, with the equipment lines it will work on and what a diagnostic visit costs. He calls that company inside two minutes. That job is small, but the customer is now permanently attached to whoever answered, in a neighborhood where thirty other systems went up the same year.
What template builders get wrong for solar companies
Wix, Squarespace, and GoDaddy Website Builder solve one problem well: getting something online quickly without technical skill. What they don't solve is a long consultative sale to a skeptical buyer, with content that has to stay accurate as policy changes underneath it. Here's where the gaps open up.
Third-party widgets are the first and worst. The typical template-built solar site bolts on a savings calculator, a chat popup, a review carousel, and a lead-capture form from four different vendors. Each one loads its own script from somebody else's server, and a page that should open in a second takes six on a phone. Worse, that calculator produces a savings number you never chose and can't edit, and you're the one who has to defend it at a kitchen table. A hand-coded estimator that takes a bill amount and returns a range with its assumptions written out underneath weighs a fraction of what the widget does, tells the truth, and belongs to you.
Maintaining the incentives page is the second gap, and it's the one that quietly does the most damage. Program terms change, and someone at your company needs to update a page without breaking the layout or waiting on an agency. In a template builder, a page assembled out of drag-and-drop blocks tends to come apart when a non-designer edits it, so the update gets postponed, and the page keeps quoting a program that has already changed. A hand-coded incentives page uses one repeating block per program with a last-reviewed date, which means editing is filling in fields and nothing shifts.
Page structure is the third. Separate pages for installation, battery storage, service and repair, removal and reinstall, ground mount, and commercial, each aimed at its own search with its own gallery excerpt and its own form, is exactly the shape template builders resist. They want one Services page with a list, because that's what they were designed for. Adding a new offering page to a hand-coded site takes twenty minutes and breaks nothing.
Then the form itself. Utility bill upload is the highest-value feature on a solar site, and template form builders routinely cap file uploads behind a higher plan, choke on the multi-megabyte photos phones produce, or dump the file into a storage account nobody on the sales team can reach. A hand-coded form accepts the upload, compresses it, attaches it to the lead, and routes the whole package into Aurora Solar, OpenSolar, Enerflo, or your CRM. Speed follows the same pattern throughout: a real install gallery loads in under two seconds on a mid-range phone when the images are handled properly, and never does when a page builder is stacking scripts between your server and a homeowner's screen.
Pricing
Single-page solar sites (your offerings, service area, license and NABCEP credentials, warranty summary, and a consultation request form) start at $1,200. That's a reasonable starting point for a small installer running on referrals and past-customer volume who needs a credible page for the homeowner checking them out after a neighbor's recommendation.
Multi-page builds are where the revenue shows up. Those include separate pages for residential installation, battery storage, service and repair, panel removal and reinstall, ground mount, and commercial work; an incentives page structured so it can be updated in minutes when a program changes; a warranty and company-longevity page; an install gallery sorted by roof and system type; a proposal request form with utility bill upload; and the full technical foundation. Multi-page builds run $2,800–$5,000 depending on how many pages you need and how large the gallery is.
Technical SEO (behind-the-scenes business and service-area labeling, a check that your name, address, and phone match everywhere, Google Search Console setup, sitemap submission, and speed work) is included with every multi-page build at no additional charge. Scoped separately based on how many you need: utility-territory and city landing pages, a custom savings estimator built into the site rather than embedded from a third party, and CRM or proposal-platform connections for Aurora Solar, OpenSolar, Enerflo, Solargraf, HubSpot, or Salesforce.
Optional managed hosting starts at $60/month (Core: uptime monitoring, nightly backups, SSL renewal, DNS, and server-level security patches). Content edits begin on the Care plan at $100/month, one hour a month, which is the tier most solar companies want because the incentives page needs attention whenever a program moves. Priority ($180/month) adds three hours of edits plus same-day critical response. Full pricing breakdown →
Solar website questions
How much does a solar company website cost?
Single-page solar sites with your offerings, service area, license and NABCEP credentials, warranty summary, and a consultation request form start at $1,200. That's a reasonable starting point for a small installer whose volume comes from referrals and past customers and who needs a credible page for the homeowner checking them out after a neighbor's recommendation.
Multi-page builds are where a solar company competes in search: separate pages for residential installation, battery storage, service and repair, panel removal and reinstall for a roof replacement, ground mount, and commercial; an incentives page structured so it can be updated in minutes when a program changes; a warranty and company-longevity page; an install gallery sorted by roof and system type; a proposal request form that takes a utility bill upload; and technical SEO setup. Those run $2,800–$5,000 depending on how many pages you need and how large the gallery is. Behind-the-scenes business labeling, a name-address-phone consistency check, Google Search Console setup, and sitemap submission are included with every multi-page build rather than sold as add-ons. City or utility-territory landing pages and CRM connections are scoped separately based on how many you need. Full pricing breakdown →
What should the site say about incentives and savings without going stale or overpromising?
Treat every number on the page as something with an expiration date, because in this industry it is. Federal, state, utility, and municipal programs have all moved repeatedly, and net metering terms in particular now differ from one utility territory to the next inside a single state. A percentage typed into a page two years ago and never revisited is worse than saying nothing: it draws the customer in on a number you can no longer deliver and it hands your competitor's sales rep an easy way to discredit you.
The build handles this structurally. Incentives live on one page in a repeatable block per program (program name, who administers it, who qualifies, how it's claimed, where the official source lives, and a visible last-reviewed date), so updating it is a five-minute edit rather than a redesign. The same discipline applies to savings language. Anything phrased as a guaranteed monthly saving invites both a bad review and a regulatory complaint, and it's unnecessary, because a homeowner comparing installers is not looking for a promise. They're looking for someone who explains how the estimate is produced, what assumptions sit under it, and what would change it. That reads as competence, and it survives an audit.
Do I need separate pages for installation, battery storage, and service or repair?
Yes, and the service page is the one most installers skip and most regret skipping. Someone searching "solar installation cost" is at the start of a months-long decision. Someone searching "battery backup installation" already has panels or has decided on them and is now solving for outages, which is a different sale with different economics. Someone searching "solar panel repair near me" or "my solar installer went out of business" has an inverter fault or a production app showing zero, and they want somebody on the phone this week. Someone searching "remove and reinstall solar panels for roof replacement" has a roofer standing in their driveway giving them a deadline.
Four searches, four buyers, four urgency levels, and Google needs a dedicated page for each to rank them independently. A single Services page competes weakly for all of them. Service, repair, and take-over work is the strongest opportunity on that list right now: demand is real in every market where installers have folded, competition for the search is thin because most companies only want new installs, and a homeowner you rescue from an orphaned system is a referral source and a future battery or expansion sale. What's included in SEO setup →
Homeowners are worried installers go out of business. How does the website answer that?
Directly, on a page of its own, because it is the first objection in solar now and pretending otherwise doesn't make it go away. Enough installers have folded in the last few years that the average homeowner has read the coverage, and the thing they're weighing is a 25-year production warranty from a company that might not exist in five. Vague reassurance makes it worse.
Specifics help: how long you've operated under the same name and license, roughly how many systems you've commissioned, whether service work is done by your own W-2 crew or subcontracted out, who honors the workmanship warranty and for how many years, what's covered by the panel and inverter manufacturers directly (which survives you), whether you're a certified installer for the equipment you sell, and what your process is for taking over a system another company installed. That last item does double duty: it reassures the buyer that companies like yours pick up orphaned systems, and it captures the search traffic from homeowners whose installer already disappeared. Most solar sites in a given market say nothing about any of this. The one that addresses it plainly wins comparisons it would otherwise lose on price.
How does a solar company rank in local search?
Two systems, and the site affects them differently. The map with three businesses at the top of a local search is driven mostly by your Google Business Profile: how complete it is, how many reviews you have and how recent they are, the services listed on it, and how close the searcher is to your address. Your website supports that profile without directly controlling those positions.
The organic results below the map are driven by the site: an individual page per offering, behind-the-scenes labeling that tells Google what your business does and where it works, a business name, address, and phone number that match your profile exactly everywhere they appear, and page speed. Solar has one structural advantage other trades don't get, and almost nobody uses it. Net metering terms, interconnection rules, and utility rebates vary by utility territory, not by city line, so a page written for each utility you work under (what their current interconnection process looks like, what their net metering structure means for a customer's payback, how long approvals generally take in that territory) is genuinely useful to a homeowner and ranks for searches your competitors aren't writing for. Every multi-page build includes the on-site technical foundation, plus a check that everything matches your Google Business Profile and formal submission to Google so all your pages get indexed.
Can the site connect to Aurora Solar, OpenSolar, Enerflo, or my CRM?
Yes. Form submissions can route into your proposal or CRM platform automatically so a lead lands in the queue instead of sitting in an inbox over a weekend. Aurora Solar, OpenSolar, Enerflo, Solargraf, HubSpot, Salesforce, and the field platforms most installers run for service work all accept leads through a webhook (an automatic behind-the-scenes message that hands over the form data the instant somebody submits) or an email-to-lead address, so this is a configuration step rather than a development project. If your platform publishes a customer-facing intake or scheduling page, the site can hand off to it directly instead.
What moves the numbers more than the routing is what the form asks for before it sends anything. A solar intake form should collect address, whether they own the home, roughly how old the roof is, panel or battery interest, shading or tree concerns, and a utility bill upload, because a recent bill with twelve months of usage on it is the difference between a real proposal and a guess. Roof age deserves its own field: it routes the homeowner with a twenty-year-old roof toward a reroof-first conversation before you've spent a design hour on a system that shouldn't be installed yet.
How long does it take to build a solar company website?
Single-page sites are generally done in one to two weeks from the point your content is ready. Multi-page builds with a full offering page set, an incentives page, a warranty and longevity page, an install gallery, utility-territory pages, and local SEO setup run three to six weeks. The limiting factor is almost never code time; it's content readiness. If you can hand over your service area, install photos with a note on what each system is, license and NABCEP credentials, your warranty terms, the equipment lines you're certified on, and the incentive programs you actually work with at kickoff, the build moves quickly. If those arrive in pieces across a month, the timeline stretches to match.
The process is a scoping call to lock the page list, design review, build and content load, your revision round, then launch, with one developer on it start to finish and nobody in the middle relaying messages. If you're timing the launch against a season, a utility program deadline, or a hiring push for the sales team, say so at the start and I'll scope the build against that date.
Other trades I build for
The same approach (custom PHP, one page per offering, credentials and warranty proof where buyers look for it, and local SEO built in from day one) applies to every trade selling a high-ticket job to a homeowner who is comparing four companies at a kitchen table.
Roofers — storm damage and insurance claim pages, manufacturer certification pages, and 24/7 inspection call bars. Electricians — panel upgrade and EV charger pages, plus residential versus commercial service splits. HVAC contractors — seasonal campaign pages, maintenance agreement upsells, and emergency no-heat call CTAs. General contractors — categorized project galleries, one page per project type, and scope-aware inquiry forms. All small businesses →
Give a skeptical buyer a reason to pick you before a rep ever calls.
Tell me your service area, which utilities you work under, what you install and service, and what your current site leaves unanswered. I'll scope the build and send a quote. No sales call required.
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