What should a heat pump installer's website show? The grant first, and four in five homepages leave it out
A couple in rural Shropshire have an oil boiler on its last legs. They have read that the UK government will put thousands towards a heat pump, so they open the MCS register, filter by their postcode and click the first three websites. One opens on a picture of an outdoor unit and the words "renewable heating solutions". One has a contact form and nothing else. The third says, in the first screen, what the grant is worth, that the installer claims it for you, and how to book a survey. That is the one they ring, and the other two never find out why.
On 17 September 2026 I opened the homepages of 300 heat pump installers registered for the grant in England and Wales. Of the 269 that loaded, only 54 stated the £7,500 figure anywhere on the page.
Lead with the grant, the certificate and the survey. A UK heat pump installer's homepage should state the £7,500 Boiler Upgrade Scheme grant and that you apply for it, show your MCS certificate number linked to the register, and let a homeowner book a heat loss survey from a phone. Units fitted, finished installs and the towns you cover come next.
Four in five grant installer homepages never state the £7,500
Of 269 homepages belonging to MCS heat pump installers flagged for the Boiler Upgrade Scheme, 88% mentioned heat pumps, 28% named the scheme, 20% stated the £7,500 grant and 5% showed their MCS certificate number.
Random sample of MCS air source heat pump installers flagged for the Boiler Upgrade Scheme with a website on the register, read 17 September 2026. Homepage text only.
The gap between the top of that chart and the bottom is the whole opportunity. Nearly every site says what the business does. Very few answer the two questions the customer arrived with: how much of this will the government pay, and can I check you are who you say you are.
How the homepages were read
I pulled every installer on the MCS Find an Installer tool, kept the 1,022 certified for air source heat pumps, flagged for the Boiler Upgrade Scheme and listing a usable website, and chose 300 at random. Each homepage was fetched once. 31 did not load or returned almost nothing. The remaining 269 were searched for the scheme's name, the £7,500 figure, the installer's own certificate number and a "from £" price. No installer is named.
What the count does not prove
It reads the homepage only. Plenty of these firms explain the grant on an inner page, and a logo can carry the MCS mark without the letters appearing in the text. But the homepage is where a customer from the register lands, and on four in five of them the reason they are searching is not on the screen.
Write the grant the way GOV.UK writes it
The Boiler Upgrade Scheme is open in England and Wales, pays £7,500 towards an air or ground source heat pump, and the MCS certified installer applies on the homeowner's behalf, with the grant taken off the quote.
Copy the figures from the source, not from a competitor, and link to it. A homeowner who checks your number against GOV.UK's own list and finds it matches trusts the rest of the page more.
The four figures, and the one exclusion
£7,500 towards an air source or ground source heat pump. £5,000 towards a biomass boiler. £2,500 towards an air-to-air heat pump. One grant per property. Until March 2027 there is an extra £1,500 towards an air or ground source heat pump where the home is heated by oil or LPG and has no mains gas. Hybrid systems, a heat pump working alongside a gas boiler, get nothing, and that is the line that stops an awkward survey visit.
Say who does the paperwork
GOV.UK's application steps are plain: the installer applies on the Ofgem website, and the grant is shown on the quote and the invoice. Ofgem then contacts the homeowner to confirm the installer is acting for them. Put those three sentences on your site. "We claim it, you never see a form" is the most reassuring line a grant customer can read.
Mind the border
The scheme is not open in Scotland or Northern Ireland. 236 of the air source installers on the register have a Scottish postcode, and a firm working both sides of the border should split its grant copy by nation rather than put £7,500 on every page.
The first screen, in seven lines
Everything a grant customer needs before they will book a survey fits in the first screen and one short scroll on a phone.
Line 7 only works if the reviews keep coming. The wording and timing that gets a customer to leave one after a commissioning visit is in how to ask for Google reviews.
574 grant installers give the register a blank website box
On the MCS register on 17 September 2026, 1,340 of 2,141 air source heat pump installers listed a usable website: 62.6%. Among the 1,596 flagged for the Boiler Upgrade Scheme it was 64.0%, leaving 574 grant installers with no site to click.
That is a better showing than solar, where the same register read a day earlier found 53.5% of installers listing a website, as set out in what a solar installer website costs in the UK. It is still more than a third of the trade handing the customer a phone number and nothing to check. Of the 801 heat pump installers with no website, 231 list a free webmail address as their only contact.
Wales trails England
Installers with a Welsh postcode listed a website 53.8% of the time. Scottish installers listed one 63.1% of the time, level with England, despite having no Boiler Upgrade Scheme to sell. In Wales, where the grant does apply, a proper site is the easier edge to take.
Sell the survey, not the unit
Customers compare heat pump brands online before they call anyone. What they cannot find online is what happens when you come round, and that is the page that books the visit.
A heat loss survey is the step most homeowners have never been through and are slightly nervous of. Write it down: how long you are in the house, which rooms you measure, whether radiators or the cylinder might need changing, how long the quote takes and whether the visit costs anything. A page that answers those questions in plain order does more than any product brochure, because it removes the reason people put off calling.
Then name what you fit. The unit and cylinder brands you install, with a photo of each on a real job. If you also fit solar panels or chargers, say so on its own page: 890 of the 2,141 air source installers on the register are also certified for solar PV, and customers adding a heat pump often ask about both. The grant rules for chargers are different again, covered in what an EV charger installer should pay for a website.
Two dates in March 2027 your site has to survive
The zero VAT rate on heat pump installations in UK homes and the £1,500 off-gas uplift both run until March 2027, so any page that states either without a date will be wrong next spring.
HMRC's VAT Notice 708/6 zero-rates air and ground source heat pumps installed in residential accommodation until 31 March 2027, after which the reduced rate applies. Write both figures once, on a grants page with the end dates, and link to it from everywhere else. When the rules change, it is one edit.
Which plan fits a heat pump installer
The Website plan is £50 every four weeks with no build fee, £650 a year across thirteen payments, for up to six pages: home, heat pumps, the grant, the survey, finished installs and contact. Hosting, the domain and unlimited small edits are included, so the March 2027 changes cost nothing extra. Groundwork at £100 every four weeks adds town and service pages and a monthly Google Business Profile post, worth it once you cover several towns. What the build looks like for this trade is on the heat pump installer website design page.
Bottom line. A heat pump installer's website wins surveys by answering the grant question before the customer asks it. Put the £7,500, who applies, your MCS number and a three-question survey form in the first screen, and you are ahead of four in five grant installers before any design work starts.