In short and in plain language
This article is for carpentry firms. In timber building, an enquiry often starts long before the build.
Show your projects by type of build, with span, floor area and build time. Then customers see if their plan fits your firm.
A storey extension adds a new floor on top of a house. This deserves a page of its own. Building law decides if such a project is allowed.
The form asks for the project, the type of building, the place and the time frame. Without a time frame, an enquiry is hard to plan.
We build such a website for a fixed price.
An enquiry in timber construction rarely starts with an appointment. It starts with a plot of land, with a loft that is supposed to carry two more rooms, or with a hall that has to stand by the summer after next. Between the first click on a carpentry firm's website and the assembly week sit design, structural calculations, the building application and the cutting of the timber, so months as a rule. The share of approved buildings constructed mainly in timber has risen to 24.4 percent in new residential construction (Zimmerer/Holzbau situation report 2026), and in the first half of 2026 126,300 dwellings were approved, 15.1 percent more than a year earlier (Federal Statistical Office). Enquiries therefore arrive earlier and in greater numbers than most capacity plans anticipate. A website that answers them with a photo gallery pushes all of the sorting work into the phone call. This article describes which project data belong on the page, how an enquiry form for timber work is built, and how a firm can tell whether an enquiry is ready to work with.
Key takeaways
- In timber construction it is not the picture that decides but the project: construction method, span, floor area and build time answer the question of whether a job fits the firm before anyone picks up the phone.
- The market carries it: the share of approved new residential buildings built mainly in timber stands at 24.4 percent, supported by 12,033 firms with 74,957 people at work (Zimmerer/Holzbau situation report 2026, published by Holzbau Deutschland within the German Construction Confederation).
- Storey additions and conversions are a route of their own, not a subordinate clause on the new-build page: 20,800 of the dwellings approved in the first half of 2026 were created by converting existing buildings, 9.2 percent more than a year earlier (Federal Statistical Office).
- Whether a storey addition is permissible is decided by planning law, not by the website: within built-up parts of a locality a project is permissible if it fits into the character of its immediate surroundings and access is assured (section 34 paragraph 1 of the German Building Code).
- The form asks for the building project, the object type, the location and the time window. In timber construction an enquiry without a time window is not an enquiry but a statement of intent with an open date.
Why an enquiry in timber work starts differently
Anyone looking for a carpentry firm usually has a picture of the result and none of the route to it. Enquiries arrive from three directions: from a new build that is to be erected in timber, from an existing building that is to gain a storey or an extension, and from the roof, meaning roof structure, dormer and repair after damage. These three routes have little in common. They differ in lead time, in the documents the client brings along, and in the question of who is needed first: the carpenter, the structural engineer or the person responsible for the design. A website that tips all three onto the same home page forces the firm to make that distinction on the phone every time.
The industry figures speak for timber. In the 2025 financial year the carpentry and timber construction trade counted 12,033 firms with 74,957 people at work and revenue of 10.242 billion euros, an increase of 2.9 percent; the share of approved buildings constructed mainly in timber reached a high of 24.4 percent in new residential construction (Zimmerer/Holzbau situation report 2026, published by Holzbau Deutschland within the German Construction Confederation). A firm of that size employs six people on average. Which makes the time available for follow-up questions on the phone the scarcest item in the house.
Then there is the permit situation. According to the Federal Statistical Office, building permits for 126,300 dwellings were issued in Germany in the first half of 2026, 15.1 percent more than a year earlier; 20,800 of them came about as conversions within existing buildings, a rise of 9.2 percent. Every one of those permits is a project that begins months before the first crane arrives, and some of those clients spend that time searching online for a firm that masters the construction method and has capacity in the right quarter. Neither of those things is often stated on a website.
| Route into the firm | What the client brings | What the website has to show for it |
|---|---|---|
| New build in timber | A plot, often a design, rarely a structural calculation | Projects by construction method with floor area, build time and year |
| Storey addition to an existing house | A house, an idea, no measurements | Examples with the starting situation, the area added and the length of assembly |
| Extension, carport, balcony | One measurement from a folding rule and a photo of the building | Small projects with area, execution and build time in days |
| Roof structure and repair | A date from the shell builder or a damage report | The sequence, the time window and when the firm is next free |
| Hall and commercial building | Use, span and a date for moving in | Projects with span, load-bearing structure and assembly time |
Five rows, five different conversations. That is exactly why a single collected page headed timber construction services is not enough: it names those rows without answering any of them. Why each route deserves its own page and what has to be on it is set out in the article on service pages instead of one combined page. For a carpentry firm that usually means four to six pages, not twenty.
Projects by construction method instead of a photo gallery
Almost every carpentry firm has good pictures. A roof structure against the light, a crane above the gable, the finished room with its rafters on show. Those pictures sell trust, but they answer none of the questions a client has before calling. They want to know whether the firm has already built a two-storey house in timber frame construction, how large it was, how long assembly took and which district it stands in. A gallery without those details is an album. A project overview with them is an argument.
Der Anteil der genehmigten Gebäude, bei denen überwiegend Holz verbaut wurde, ist beim Wohnungsneubau auf einen neuen Höchststand von 24,4 Prozent gestiegen und bleibt auch beim Nichtwohnbau auf einem hohen Niveau.
That sentence describes demand, not the individual firm. And that is precisely the job of the website: to show which part of that demand the firm serves. A project entry needs no case study for this, just four details and a picture. Construction method, because it determines the workflow. Size, because it determines the effort. Build time, because it sets the expectation. Location at district level, because the client wants to know whether the firm works in their area without someone else's address appearing on the page.
These project entries can be filtered, and that is where their value lies. Someone planning a storey addition clicks on storey addition and sees six projects instead of sixty pictures. Someone who needs a hall sees spans. The filter replaces the firm's first follow-up question, and it does so around the clock. For the page itself that means something uncomfortable: every project needs maintained data, not just a photo from a phone. The effort arises once per project and saves time every time somebody calls to ask whether anything like it has been built before.
Four details turn a picture into a project
What is already decided before the call
In timber construction the client has already taken a series of decisions before reaching the page, and there is another series they cannot take at all. The plot is bought or the house is standing. The design comes from an architecture practice or is a sketch on squared paper. Whether the project will be approved is something nobody knows at that moment. A website that pretends this can be settled in a form creates false expectations. A website that asks about the stage of planning, by contrast, separates the enquiry from the statement of intent with a single field.
The legal hurdle here sits in the Building Code, not in the contract. Within built-up parts of a locality a project is permissible if, in terms of the type and scale of use, the method of construction and the plot area to be built on, it fits into the character of its immediate surroundings and access is assured (section 34 paragraph 1 of the German Building Code). For a storey addition that means the neighbourhood has a say. No firm can answer that question in a first conversation, and no website should try. It can, however, explain who settles the question and in what order.
This is the point where a carpentry firm differs from the trades that can turn up the same day. What is being sold here is not availability but reliability over months. Describing on the page how a project runs from enquiry to assembly, who supplies which document and when the date is decided, takes away the uncertainty that would otherwise push the client to enquire at four firms in parallel.
- Stage of planning: idea, design from an architecture practice, application submitted or permit granted.
- Object type: new build, storey addition, extension, roof structure, repair, commercial building.
- Construction method, if already settled: timber frame, timber panel, post and beam, solid timber.
- Dimensions, as roughly as they exist: footprint, number of storeys, desired span.
- Location at municipality and district level, so the journey to the site can be judged.
- Time window as a quarter or a season, not as a wished-for date.
Six fields a firm reads in under a minute. They replace no site survey, but they answer the question of whether the drive is worth it. Pictures help more than text here, provided they show the condition and not the mood: the article on before-and-after photos describes how to build a gallery in which the starting situation is as visible as the result. In timber work the starting situation is often the most valuable thing in the picture.
The enquiry form in timber construction
A form with name, email and message is barely usable in timber construction. It produces enquiries consisting of one sentence, and each of them costs a call back before it is even clear whether the project fits the calendar. Conversely, a form with twenty mandatory fields drives away the client sitting on the sofa at half past ten at night wanting to set something in motion. The usable middle lies at six to eight fields, half of them selection fields and only two mandatory.
The order matters. The building project comes first as a selection, because it determines everything else, then object type and location, then the time window, and only at the end the contact details. Putting contact details first produces more drop-offs, because the client feels committed before having explained anything. And a field for existing documents belongs there too: an attached floor plan saves two phone calls in case of doubt.
- Building project as a selection: new build, storey addition, extension, roof structure, repair, commercial building, other.
- Object type and rough size: detached house, apartment building, hall, outbuilding, with an area.
- Location: municipality and district as free text, no street, no house number.
- Time window: quarter and year as a selection, plus whether the date is fixed.
- Stage of planning: from idea to permit granted, as a single selection.
- Documents: floor plan, site plan or photos as an attachment, expressly optional.
- Contact: name, phone or email, one line for anything that fits nowhere else.
The time window is the most important field
Permit, structural design, cutting: the lead time
Lead time is what sets timber construction apart from almost every other trade, and it is the reason the website has to be built differently. Between the first enquiry and the assembly week sit several steps that run one after another, none of which can be sped up by calling earlier. The design has to stand before the structural engineer can calculate. The building application needs the signature of the person responsible for the design. The permit needs the authority. The cutting needs the checked structural calculation, and assembly needs a crane and dry weather.
That chain belongs on the website, not as advertising copy but as a sequence with responsibilities. It does two things: the client understands why they should enquire in January if they want to move in by September, and the firm has a page it can point to in every second phone call. Writing the sequence down properly once leads to shorter conversations with fewer misunderstandings.
| Step | Who supplies it | What the website says about it |
|---|---|---|
| Enquiry and first conversation | The client, with project data from the form | Which details are needed and what happens next |
| Design and cost framework | Architecture practice or the firm itself | Whether the firm takes on the design or works with the client's practice |
| Structural design and application | Structural engineer, person responsible for the design | Who submits the application and which documents the client contributes |
| Permit | Building authority of the municipality or district | That its duration is not down to the firm and how long it usually takes locally |
| Cutting and prefabrication | Cutting plant or the firm's own workshop | From when the date becomes binding and what could still move it |
| Assembly | The carpentry firm with crane and crew | How many days assembly takes and what has to be ready on site |
Six steps, six sentences. The sequence page needs no more than that. Anyone who also offers to book the first conversation straight from the page shortens the first loop once more; how appointment requests are organised without an outside service is described in the article on organising appointments via the website. For a carpentry firm one time window per week for first conversations is usually enough.
The call back decides, not the page
A project data sheet on one page
So that the project overview does not fall asleep after the third entry, it needs a fixed form. That form is best created once and afterwards only filled in, by the foreman on the drive home if need be. What matters is that the fields stay the same, because only then can anything later be filtered and compared. A project that contains a sentence about the lovely light instead of the floor area drops out of every filter.
The following structure has proved itself because it fits into a note on a phone and still holds everything the page later displays. It is deliberately short: anyone who has to fill in twelve fields ends up filling in none.
{
"project": "Storey addition, detached house",
"method": "Timber frame, prefabricated wall elements",
"location": "Hildesheim district",
"floor_area": "96 square metres",
"span": "5.40 metres",
"assembly": "4 days with a crane",
"total_time": "9 weeks from cutting",
"lead_time": "Enquiry in March, permit in July, assembly in September",
"note": "House occupied, roof opened in two sections",
"year": 2025,
"images": ["before-street.jpg", "assembly-day2.jpg", "finished-gable.jpg"]
}Eleven lines per project, and the overview carries itself. Anyone building or rebuilding a site should settle this structure before the start and not afterwards, because adding data to fifty existing projects is the most unpleasant work in the whole job. We settle it before the first draft when someone wants to have a trade website built, because it determines the structure of half the site.
Construction method first
Timber frame, timber panel, post and beam or solid timber: the method is the first filter, because it determines how the firm works and which projects fit at all.
Measurements instead of adjectives
Floor area, span, number of storeys. Figures on the project replace the words large, demanding and ambitious, which distinguish nothing.
Make time visible
Assembly time in days and total time from cutting. Showing the lead time openly brings enquiries that suit your own calendar instead of cancellations after the third conversation.
Area instead of address
District and municipality are enough. That shows the client the journey and still puts no stranger's address on your own page.
Those four cards are at the same time the outline of the service page for timber work. They stand in that order because that is the order in which clients ask: what do you build, how large, how long, and will you come to me? Which building blocks belong on such a page is set out in the overview of our services for trade businesses.
Three enquiries that run on differently
The first case is the client with a plot and a design. They have an architecture practice, a timetable and usually an idea of the budget. That enquiry is ready to work with: the firm can price it as soon as it sees the design. The second case is the storey addition. Here the structural calculation of the existing building is almost always missing, and the client does not know whether the house will carry the extra load. That enquiry needs a visit before anyone names a figure.
The third case is repair after damage, or the roof structure for a shell that is already standing. Here the date is the whole subject, and the only question is whether the firm is free in that window. All three are proper enquiries, but they need different first answers. A website that asks for the building project can already vary the answer on the confirmation page and save the first follow-up question.
- New build with a design: request the documents, offer a date for the first conversation, check capacity in the stated quarter.
- Storey addition to an existing house: offer a site visit, point out that the existing load-bearing structure has to be checked, name no figure before the visit.
- Roof structure with a fixed date: check the calendar first, then answer, and if declining, name the period in which there is capacity again.
- In all three cases: an acknowledgement with a date and a note saying when the call back will come. It costs nothing and ends the parallel enquiry at four firms.
Sorting by occasion is not a peculiarity of timber work. A joinery sorts by piece of furniture and room, as the article on websites for joineries shows, a roofer sorts by urgency because after storm damage the hour counts, and a metalworking firm sorts by occasion too, as the article on security retrofits as a lead channel describes. In timber construction the page sorts by building project and time window, because those are the two quantities that decide the job.
What a firm can check on its own site
Most of these checks need nobody from outside. Open your own site on a phone and look for the answer to a single question: does this firm build a storey addition in timber frame construction? If the answer takes more than two clicks or cannot be found at all, what is missing is the project overview, not the demand. According to Bitkom, 94 percent of trade businesses use a website of their own, and a good share of them show pictures but no details.
The second check is your own form. Fill it in like a client who wants to build the year after next and see what arrives in your inbox. Is there a time window? Is there a location? If not, fields are missing and every enquiry still costs two phone calls. The third check is a look at the home page with the question of whether the words storey addition appear there at all. According to the Federal Statistical Office, around 20,800 approved dwellings were created in the first half of 2026 by converting existing buildings, 9.2 percent more than a year earlier. That is a route into the business, not a side issue.
- Project overview: is there a filter by construction method, and does every project carry area, build time and district?
- Form: does it ask for building project, object type, location and time window, and do those details actually reach the inbox?
- Storey additions and conversions: is there a page of their own, or does the subject appear as a keyword in a list?
- Sequence: does the page say who supplies design, structural calculation and application, and how long that takes?
- Time window: does the page say when the firm is next free, at least to the quarter?
- Call back: is a fixed time named for the call back, and does it match what actually happens?
Those six points are worked through in half an hour. Anyone who finds that the site is handsome but answers none of these questions does not have a design problem but a structural one. Part of it is the question of how far the firm travels at all: the matching article describes how to show your service area without inventing a separate page for every town.
Collect projects
Pick ten completed jobs from the last three years, spread as far as possible across new build, storey addition, extension and roof. Note the four details for each: construction method, size, build time, district.
Assign pictures
Three pictures per project: the starting situation, assembly, the finished state. Pictures without project data go in the second row, not into the overview.
Separate the routes
Create one page per route, filter the project overview beneath it and pre-fill the form with the matching building project so the field is already answered.
Read the enquiries
After three months, go through the enquiries received: which fields stayed empty, which question came up on the phone anyway? That question then belongs on the page.
Pick ten completed jobs from the last three years, spread as far as possible across new build, storey addition, extension and roof. Note the four details for each: construction method, size, build time, district.
Three pictures per project: the starting situation, assembly, the finished state. Pictures without project data go in the second row, not into the overview.
Create one page per route, filter the project overview beneath it and pre-fill the form with the matching building project so the field is already answered.
After three months, go through the enquiries received: which fields stayed empty, which question came up on the phone anyway? That question then belongs on the page.
What the firm settles in day-to-day work
Three decisions stay with the firm, because they have nothing to do with technology. The first: which jobs does the firm actually want? A firm that no longer builds carports should say so on the page instead of declining every week. The second: how far does the area reach? A carpentry firm with a crane and a crew calculates differently from a two-person loft conversion business. The third: how openly is time discussed? Saying that the next free assembly weeks are in the second quarter costs enquiries and saves cancellations.
Those three answers shape the site more than any design question. They decide which service pages exist, which options the form offers and which projects sit at the top of the overview. Leaving them unanswered produces a site that offers everything, and with it enquiries about everything anyone considers to be timber work.
- Routes: which jobs are accepted and which are expressly not.
- Area: the radius in kilometres or the districts in which the firm works.
- Capacity: from when the next assembly weeks are free, at least to the quarter.
- First conversation: whether it takes place on site, what it covers and who attends.
- Documents: which details the client should bring so the conversation is worth having.
Five lines, settled once, and the site almost writes itself. Whether prices belong on the page too is a question of its own: the article on showing prices on a trade website weighs up when a figure helps and when it hurts. What a website and its ongoing support cost with us is stated openly in our pricing overview.
Sources for this article
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