Solar Installer Websites Have a Trust Problem

Open ten solar installer websites in your service area and count how many describe the team as CEC Accredited Installers. It will be most of them. That credential stopped being issued two years ago.

Installer and designer accreditation moved to Solar Accreditation Australia, which took over as the Clean Energy Regulator's approved scheme operator in February 2024, and accredited people had until 29 May 2024 to transfer or lose both their accreditation and their customers' STC eligibility. The Clean Energy Council still runs the approved products lists and the Approved Seller program, so the logo isn't a fabrication. The sentence next to it is two years out of date.

In most trades that would be a pedantic complaint. In solar it isn't, because the entire sale is a de-risking exercise. Nobody is shopping for panels. They're shopping for the probability that the company installing them still exists in year seven when the inverter throws an error code — and the cheapest available evidence that a solar company doesn't check its own claims is a website advertising a credential that lapsed in 2024.

Hence the position: a solar installer's website is not there to sell solar. Demand already exists and the rebate does the persuading. Its job is to survive an adversarial reading by a suspicious person on a phone at 9pm. Everything else on the page is decoration.

The credential on most solar websites expired in 2024

Three separate things get flattened into one claim on almost every solar site, and buyers can't untangle them because installers don't.

Accreditation belongs to a person, not a company. It's held by the installer or designer through Solar Accreditation Australia, it carries a number, and it's what makes a system eligible for small-scale technology certificates. A site claiming the business is accredited is claiming something that isn't structurally possible.

Approved products is a Clean Energy Council list of panels, inverters and batteries that meet the standards required for rebate eligibility. That's the hardware, not the humans.

Approved Seller is the retailer-side program, administered by the Clean Energy Council under the New Energy Tech Consumer Code, which is authorised by the ACCC. It covers sales conduct, advertising claims, contract terms and a minimum whole-of-system warranty — the one a nervous buyer should care about most, and the one least likely to appear on the site.

Write all three separately, in plain language: name the accredited installer with their number, say which products you install, state whether you're an Approved Seller and what the code obliges you to do. It costs an afternoon and puts you ahead of most of the market — a strange thing to be able to say about a compliance paragraph.

Who's reading your site at 9pm

The pattern is consistent enough to design around. A householder gets three quotes, sits through at least one in-home consultation, then does the actual deciding later that night on a phone, alone, with a browser full of tabs.

They aren't browsing. They're running checks — your company name plus reviews, then plus administration or liquidation. They look for an ABN, and for an address that isn't a PO box or a suburb name with no street. Roughly the same behaviour as any tradie website visitor, but sharper, because the purchase is five figures and the horror stories are widely known.

The design implications fall straight out of that. Load fast on a mid-range phone, because slow reads as amateur to someone already hunting for reasons to say no. Put real humans on the page, with names and faces. Make the company details findable without effort: ABN, ACN, the electrical licence for each state you work in, a real street address — a business that hides its own identifying numbers looks like one planning for the possibility of not being findable later. And make sure the years-in-operation claim survives an ABN lookup; if the site says fifteen years and the ABN dates to 2023, explain the restructure before someone else explains it for you.

Warranty is the question the page has to answer out loud

Phoenixing is common enough in Australian solar that a term exists for the customers left behind, and every buyer with a search engine knows it. Almost no installer website addresses it directly — a wasted opportunity, because the honest answer is reassuring once someone explains it. There are three warranties in a solar purchase, backed by three different parties.

A short section built on that structure does more for conversion than a page of lifestyle photography, because it answers a fear the buyer already has. Pair it with service detail — who attends a fault call, how fast, what it costs after the workmanship period. Installers who employ their own crews should say so in those words, because the buyer's real question is whether the salesman and the roof crew work for the same company.

What from $2,999 does to everyone not doing it

Headline pricing in solar is a mess, and it isn't only the cowboys. A price that quietly assumes the STC discount, a single-storey tin roof, a standard switchboard, no meter upgrade and a metro postcode is achievable and almost never what the customer pays. Under Australian Consumer Law a headline price has to be one a real customer can get, and the gap between an aggressive from price and a misleading one is thinner than the industry behaves as though it is.

The instinct when a competitor runs bait pricing is to match it. Wrong move — installers who try it compete for the customers hardest to serve and quickest to complain. Publish real starting prices with the exclusions named instead: a typical system size, a real installed price after STCs, and a short list of what moves it — two-storey, tile, split array, switchboard upgrade, three-phase, long cable runs. Buyers don't resent the extras. They resent finding out after signing.

We take the same view of our own pricing: custom builds start at $8,000 AUD, and we don't advertise a stripped-back number nobody would end up paying. A published floor filters the market. A bait number fills your calendar with quotes you don't want.

Proof a sceptic will accept

Fabricated proof is worse than none, and solar buyers have a well-calibrated detector. Claims about being trusted across Australia read as filler; round numbers with no source read as invented. What holds up is specific and local.

Real installs, photographed on real jobs, captioned with suburb, system size, panel and inverter brand, and the month. Twelve of those beat any stock library — a buyer in Craigieburn scrolling past four Craigieburn rooftops has already answered their own question about whether you work in the area.

Reviews pulled live from your Google Business Profile rather than screenshotted, with the bad ones visible — a perfect five-star wall is less persuasive than a 4.7 with a considered reply to the complaint. The broader case for using social proof honestly applies here, with one addition: date them. A trust page whose most recent review is from 2023 says something the installer didn't intend.

Named accreditation — the installer's name, their SAA number, the state electrical licence. Nobody will verify it; the willingness to publish a checkable number is the signal.

The enquiry step: a quote request, not get in touch

A generic contact form is a poor fit for solar, because both sides need information before a conversation is worth having. You need enough to know whether the job is viable and roughly what it costs. The fields that earn their place: full address rather than suburb, since roof and orientation matter and you'll pull it up on satellite anyway; current retailer plus a bill upload or annual usage figure; roof type; single or three phase, with an honest not sure option; whether a battery is in scope; owned or rented.

That's more than the three fields we'd normally push a service business toward, and the trade-off is real — every field costs completions. It's still right here, because a solar enquiry with no address and no usage data isn't a lead, it's a phone call you have to make to collect the same information. The wider choice between a lead form, a quote form and a phone number is worth settling first.

The battery visitor is a different buyer

Since 1 July 2025 the federal Cheaper Home Batteries Program has delivered a battery discount through the same certificate mechanism as rooftop solar, administered by the Clean Energy Regulator, stepping down over time rather than sitting still. That has changed the shape of solar website traffic.

The battery visitor usually already owns solar, often installed by someone else, sometimes by a company that no longer exists. Their questions are different: usable versus nominal capacity, whether the existing inverter can be retrofitted, what blackout backup actually powers, whether a virtual power plant locks them in. That's a separate page for a separate buyer, and the installers treating it that way are collecting enquiries from other companies' customers.

FAQ

Should a solar installer website still say CEC accredited?

Not for installer accreditation. That transferred to Solar Accreditation Australia in 2024, and the accurate phrasing now refers to SAA accreditation held by a named individual with a number.

The Clean Energy Council reference is still correct in two other places: the approved products list your hardware appears on, and the Approved Seller program if you're signed up to it. Write those as separate claims, not one blurred badge.

How much does a solar installer website cost in Australia?

A custom-built site from a studio starts around $8,000 AUD and rises with scope — multi-state service areas, a battery configurator, monitoring integration or a quoting tool with satellite roof measurement all push it higher.

Template builds cost less and are a reasonable start for a new installer with no reviews and no install photography. The judgement call is whether the site is costing you jobs; if your close rate on quoted work is healthy, it isn't the constraint.

Should solar installers show prices on their website?

Yes, with the exclusions named: a real installed price for a real system size, after STCs, on a standard single-storey metro install, plus a plain list of what moves it.

Hiding price doesn't stop the comparison, it moves it to a competitor's page. The installers who suffer most from published pricing are the ones whose numbers only work when the customer doesn't see them until the contract.

What's the most important page on a solar installer website?

The recent installs page, provided the photos are genuinely theirs and captioned with suburb, system size and date. It answers three questions at once: do they work here, do they do this size of job, are they still trading. The warranty and service page comes second, because it addresses the buyer's actual fear.

Where to start on your own site

With your own site open in another tab, the fixes run in a predictable order of value. Correct the accreditation language first: twenty minutes, and it removes a signal that you don't audit your own claims. Then write the warranty and service section properly, naming who backs each of the three warranties and what happens if your company isn't there. Then replace stock imagery with your own installs, captioned with suburb and date. Then publish a real starting price with real exclusions. Then rebuild the enquiry form around an address and a usage figure.

If the site itself is slow, hard to update or built by someone you can no longer reach, the platform question comes first instead. Our free site audit covers mobile speed, indexing and the technical surface a first impression depends on — it won't rewrite your warranty page, but it will tell you whether anyone gets far enough to read it.

Our trades and services web design page covers how we approach this category. If you'd rather work through your own numbers, book twenty minutes and bring your close rate, average system size and enquiry volume. We'll do the arithmetic on the call.