If you want to know what website platform to use for your paving or outdoor living business, one of the most practical things you can do is look at what's actually working for other companies in your industry. Not what marketing blogs recommend — what real paving contractors and outdoor living companies are running their sites on, and more importantly, which ones are actually winning in local search and generating consistent enquiries.
Here's what the landscape genuinely looks like.
The Majority Are on WordPress — But That Doesn't Mean It's the Best Choice
If you look across the UK paving and outdoor living industry, the most common platform is WordPress. That's partly a reflection of its overall dominance — it powers more than 40% of all websites on the internet — and partly because it's been the go-to recommendation from web designers for many years.
But "most common" and "best performing" are not the same thing. Many of those WordPress sites were built by general web designers who weren't specialists in paving or outdoor living. They use heavy page builders like Elementor or Divi that produce slow, code-heavy pages. They were set up with basic templates and minimal SEO strategy. They exist — but they're not winning in local search.
The WordPress sites that do perform well for paving and outdoor living companies are the ones built with performance in mind: lightweight themes, optimised hosting, proper local SEO structure, and regular content updates. Those are the minority.
A Growing Number Are on Template Builders — and Falling Behind
Wix and Squarespace have picked up a noticeable share of paving and trades businesses, particularly companies that built or updated their sites in the last three to four years. The appeal is understandable — they're easy, they look decent, and they don't require a developer.
The problem is that in competitive local markets, those sites are consistently outranked by better-built alternatives. Template sites for paving and outdoor living companies tend to look similar to each other, perform similarly, and compete on an increasingly crowded playing field where technical performance is becoming more important, not less.
The Businesses Actually Winning Are Doing Something Different
When you look at the paving and outdoor living companies that consistently appear at the top of local search results in competitive UK markets — the ones with strong Google Business Profile reviews, full first-page presence, and high-quality enquiry volume — their websites share some characteristics.
Fast loading times, particularly on mobile. Clean, structured URLs. Properly organised service and location pages. High-quality project galleries that load efficiently. Real testimonials integrated into the conversion flow. These are the technical and design characteristics of sites that were built with purpose, not assembled from a template.
The platforms behind those sites are increasingly either custom-built solutions — Next.js is becoming a stronger choice for forward-thinking digital agencies working with trade businesses — or higher-performance design platforms like Framer, which produces significantly better results than mainstream template builders.
What This Means for Your Business
The question isn't really "what platform do other paving companies use?" The question is: what platform gives your paving or outdoor living company the best foundation for winning local customers online?
Most UK paving companies are still using mediocre websites. That is your opportunity. If your competitors are on slow WordPress sites with template designs, or Wix pages that load sluggishly on mobile, a fast, well-structured, purpose-built site will give you a meaningful competitive advantage.
The businesses that will dominate paving and outdoor living in their local markets over the next five years are the ones investing now in web presence that's actually built to perform — not the ones making do with whatever everyone else is using.
The Platform Question Is Secondary to the Strategy Question
Ultimately, the platform your competitors are using tells you about the status quo. What matters more is understanding your local market — who you're competing with, what search terms your potential customers are using, and what a site needs to do to convert those searchers into enquiries.
A custom Next.js site built with that strategy in mind will outperform any WordPress template or Wix site in the long run. Framer gives you an accessible entry point to that level of performance without the full cost of custom development.
The UK paving and outdoor living industry is still early in the shift toward high-performance, purpose-built websites. Position your business on the right side of that shift now.