How to find businesses without a website in Adelaide

Adelaide is a good city for a freelance web designer who sells to small businesses, for a reason that is not flattering to Adelaide: a lot of its small businesses have not got around to a website yet. Long-standing local trades in the north and south, the family businesses in the inner suburbs that have run on word of mouth for twenty years, the cafes and salons that opened with an Instagram and stopped there. They are on Google Maps with a phone number and reviews, and when someone searches "plumber Elizabeth", the one with a website gets the click.

This is how to find them, in bulk, and what to do next.

Where to look

• The north. Elizabeth, Salisbury, Gawler, Munno Para, Angle Vale, Golden Grove. A lot of trades, a lot of sole traders, a lot of new housing at the northern edge. Start here.
• The south. Noarlunga, Morphett Vale, Seaford, Aldinga, Hallett Cove. Same again, with more of the older established businesses that have never needed a site because everyone knows them.
• The north east and the hills. Modbury, Tea Tree Gully, Mount Barker, Stirling. Mount Barker in particular is growing fast and the businesses serving it are often new.
• The west. Port Adelaide, Semaphore, West Lakes, Henley Beach. Mixed: some very established trades, some newer hospitality.

The inner suburbs and the city (Norwood, Unley, Prospect, the CBD) are where the cafes and boutiques are, and where other designers have already been. Scan them for hospitality and beauty, but the money is in the outer trades.

By hand first

Search Google Maps for "plumber Elizabeth", open each listing, look for the website button. Write down the ones without one, with their phone and review count. About a minute each. Do a dozen by hand once, so you know what you are looking at. Then stop, because you will never keep it up.

Then with the Places API

Google's Places API hands the same listings to a script. Send it "plumber in Elizabeth SA", get back up to 60 businesses with the fields you ask for: name, phone, rating, review count, open or closed, and the website if there is one.

The script keeps the ones with no website or only a social page, drops the closed and the phoneless, and scores the rest: a mobile number (the owner answers), reviews (established and busy), rating (a good business is a good client), and a small bonus for no web presence at all. Sorted high to low, the top ten rows are the morning's calls.

Adelaide lists will often be shorter than Sydney or Melbourne lists, because the suburbs are smaller. That is fine. It means less noise and a higher share of the list worth ringing. Scan two or three neighbouring suburbs together and remove the duplicates.

Cost: Google gives 1,000 free requests a month at the tier that includes website and phone, and a scan is two or three requests. Around 330 free scans a month, then about 16 cents each. You will not get there.

The free tool on this site does the same search without any setup. Suburb and trade in, top ten with no website out, full list and CSV for an email address.

The calls

Ring them. Adelaide trades start around 7, so 6:45 to 7:20 in the morning or 3:30 to 5 in the afternoon. Cafes after 2. Salons midweek mid-morning.

Have the listing open. Who you are in one sentence. The specific thing you noticed: "you have 31 reviews and no website, and the plumbers above you in the Elizabeth search both have one". Price and turnaround. Ask if you can text a link to a site you built for a similar business. Then be quiet.

If they say yes, send one message that day: the link, your name, your business, your number, and a plain way to opt out. Australia's Spam Act covers commercial email and SMS and needs consent, sender identification, and a working unsubscribe. A yes on the phone is consent. An address on a Google listing is not a safe substitute, and one message is the limit.

Expect "I get enough work from word of mouth" more in Adelaide than anywhere else. The answer is that a site is for the people who got your name from a mate and Googled you to check before ringing. Right now they find reviews and nothing else.

Adelaide notes

• Add SA. "Elizabeth", "Salisbury", "Richmond", "Brighton" and "Glenelg" are not unique to South Australia, and Google will guess.
• Neighbour suburbs overlap a lot. Elizabeth, Elizabeth South, Elizabeth Vale, Elizabeth Downs. Scan the lot, remove duplicates by Google's place ID.
• Wine and produce businesses in the hills and the Barossa are worth a look if you like that work. Many have a site; the trades and services around them (irrigation, fencing, machinery repair, mowing) often do not.
• Family businesses. The number on the listing is often the founder's mobile and the person you want to talk to is their kid who now runs it. Ask.

Try it now

Start with a suburb you know.

Find plumbers in Elizabeth with no website

Or any suburb and trade on the free tool. The first ten are free, the full list and CSV are yours for an email, and the A$49 guide shows you how to run the same search on your own free Google key, with the scoring rules and the call script written out.