You’ve done a tidy job on a bathroom in Heavitree, the customer is made up, and a week later their neighbour in Topsham asks for a plumber. She doesn’t scroll through ten blue links any more. She types the question into Google, reads the little AI summary at the top, and rings whoever it names. If that isn’t you, you never knew the job existed. That is the shift hitting small firms right now, and it matters if you’re thinking about website design in Exeter this year.
Google’s AI Mode has passed one billion monthly users, according to Whito’s write-up of the figures announced in May. One study it quotes, covering 800 companies, found average organic traffic growth for UK businesses dropping from 26.3% to 3.7% once AI search arrived. And around 60% of searches now end without anyone clicking through. Sobering. But it isn’t the end of the road for a good tradesman’s site.
Here’s the useful bit. The same piece says pages actually cited in AI answers pick up roughly 35% more clicks than the ones left out. So the job isn’t shouting louder, it’s being the plain, clear source the AI quotes. That means a proper page for each service you do, the towns and roads you cover written out in full (Exminster, Pinhoe, Alphington, St Thomas), real prices or price ranges, and your phone number sitting where a thumb can reach it on a mobile.
Add the boring-but-vital stuff too. A fully filled-in Google Business Profile, recent photos of finished work, and reviews that mention the town and the job, not just five stars. Fast pages matter as well. If your site takes six seconds to load on a phone in a van park at Marsh Barton, people simply bounce.
At Simply Digital we build and look after websites for trades and small businesses from our Exeter office, and we do it without the jargon. If you’d like to know whether your current site would get quoted by AI search, have a look at https://websitedesign-exeter.co.uk/ and drop us a line. No pressure, just a straight answer.