To build a freight company website that brings in enquiries, start not with the design but with the customer's questions: do you run their route, do you have a suitable truck, roughly how much will it cost and how quickly will you reply. If the website answers these and offers a short enquiry form, the customer gets in touch. If not, they go back to the search results and on to the next carrier.
Below are the sections this takes, roughly in the order a customer checks them.
How to build a freight company website: start with your routes
A transport company's website is often a single page: "Freight transport across Uzbekistan and the CIS" and a phone number. But customers search for a specific route: "freight Tashkent to Moscow" or "cargo delivery from China to Tashkent". A search engine is more likely to show them a page that answers exactly that query than a general page about everything.
So each route gets its own page:
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Route. Where you carry from and to, which cities you go through, how often trucks leave.
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Cargo. What you do and don't carry: furniture, building materials, equipment, food that needs refrigeration.
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Trucks. Which ones run on this route: curtainsiders, refrigerated trucks, a light van for deliveries around the city.
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An enquiry button. With the route already filled in, so the customer doesn't have to type it again.
Start with your main routes and add new ones as you go. These pages are useful for advertising too: a link in an ad takes the customer straight to their route rather than to a general homepage.
We covered how these pages bring in customers from search in our article on how to attract clients to a transport company online.
Fleet, terms and company details
A customer is trusting you with their cargo, so they want to be sure the company is real and exists outside its ads. Simple things help:
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Photos of your own trucks. Real ones, with your logo on the side, not pictures from the internet. Next to them, the body type and payload.
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Warehouse or yard. If you have one, show it in photos. It answers the question of where the cargo will be while it waits for a truck.
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Terms of work. How you take orders, whether you work under a contract, how you accept payment.
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Company and bank details. Corporate customers often check them before they even call. Let them find the details on the website instead of asking for them by message.
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Contacts. Phone, Telegram, the office address on a map and the hours when dispatchers answer. If dispatchers are available at night too, say so: for a customer, that's a point in your favour.
Each of these sections answers a question the customer would otherwise ask by phone, or wouldn't bother asking and would simply leave.
Calculator and enquiry form
A calculator is useful if it gives an honest ballpark figure. The customer enters where the load is going from and to, the weight or volume and the type of truck, and sees an approximate price with a note that a manager will confirm the exact figure. If the calculator promises one thing and the dispatcher quotes another, the customer stops trusting both the calculator and you. If every quote you give is worked out individually, it's better to do without a calculator and offer a quick quote on Telegram.
The enquiry form should be short. At first, ask only for what you can't start a quote without:
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From and to. Cities or districts; exact addresses can come later.
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What the cargo is. A few words and the approximate weight or volume.
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When the truck is needed. A date or "as soon as possible".
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How to get in touch. Phone or Telegram; let the customer choose.
The dispatcher will clarify dimensions, packaging, loading addresses and company details in conversation. Every unnecessary field is a reason to close the page. And if the customer came from the calculator, their data should carry over into the enquiry automatically.
Once the form is sent, show that the enquiry has been received and when to expect a reply. Otherwise the customer won't know whether it got through and will write to a couple more carriers just in case.
Cargo tracking: a client portal or status updates in Telegram
Customers want to know where their cargo is without having to call the dispatcher every time. How to set this up depends on how often they order from you.
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For a one-off customer, status updates in Telegram are enough. Loaded, departed, delivered: a short message at each stage. If the stages are recorded in the CRM, a bot can send these messages by itself, without the dispatcher.
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A regular customer needs a client portal. If a company ships with you every week, it's convenient for them to see all their shipments, statuses, invoices and documents in one place on the website rather than hunting for them in message threads. Their staff log in on their own instead of calling the dispatcher to ask "Where's the truck?"
While you have only a few regular customers, it's usually too early to start with a portal. How to tell when you really need one is explained in our article on customer accounts on a website.
A map showing where the truck is doesn't have to come straight away either: start with statuses and add the map when regular customers start asking for it.
Your customers' languages and a website you can update yourself
The website should speak the language of whoever pays for the transport. For customers in Uzbekistan, that's usually Russian and Uzbek.
If you carry for companies from other countries, add their language, at least on the route pages and in the enquiry form. Have the translation checked by a native speaker: careless machine translation is obvious at once. For foreign customers, also list the messengers they use and the hours when you can be reached.
The second question worth settling in advance is who will update the website. Routes open and close, and new trucks and shipments worth showing keep appearing. If every change needs a programmer, the website quickly goes out of date.
That's how the Renoda Logistics website we built works: the logistics company is based in China, and the site is aimed at customers in Russia. The company adds news and case studies itself through the content management system, without developers. The layout is responsive, so the site is easy to use on a phone.
Checklist
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Routes. Does each main route have its own page rather than a line in a general list?
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Trucks. Are the photos on the website of your own trucks, not pictures from the internet?
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Form. Can someone send an enquiry from a phone in a minute, without unnecessary fields?
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Calculator. If you have one, does its result match what the dispatchers quote?
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Company details and contacts. Can a customer find them without having to ask by message?
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Languages. Is the website available in your customers' languages?
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Updates. Can you add a new route or a news item yourself, without a programmer?
If you want a website that customers send enquiries through, we'll build it around your routes and trucks, with sections you can update yourself. See what we do for logistics companies and the Renoda Logistics case study.
