Order books are thinning out. In the second quarter of 2026 the business climate index in the German trades fell by 13 points to 102 points (ZDH), the sharpest second-quarter drop since the start of the coronavirus pandemic. For many firms that means one thing above all: time is opening up that was not there before. This article looks at what that time can do for your own website, so that it carries more weight than it does today once demand picks up again.
What the figures say about the 2026 slowdown
The German Confederation of Skilled Crafts publishes a quarterly economic report. The one for the second quarter of 2026 is blunt: the business climate index, which combines the current situation and expectations, drops by 13 points to 102 points (ZDH). The turnover indicator for the trades as a whole is down 13 points year on year and stands at minus 12 points (ZDH). Investment moves the same way: 16 percent (ZDH) of firms increased it, while 33 percent (ZDH) cut it back.
On the order side the decline is immediately noticeable. The order backlog indicator fell from minus 3 points in spring 2025 to minus 15 points (ZDH). Capacity utilisation stands at 76 percent (ZDH), one percentage point below the same period a year earlier, and the average order reach at 8.7 weeks (ZDH). On paper that leaves a quarter of the available capacity with no work attached to it. Anyone facing the opposite problem will find the answers in the article on a full order book.
The chambers of industry and commerce arrive at a similar picture. In the DIHK economic survey for early summer 2026, 26 percent (DIHK) of firms report a poor business situation and 23 percent a good one. The balance of business expectations falls by eleven points to minus 20 points (DIHK). The sentiment index, which covers the assessments of more than 23,000 firms, stands at 88.1 points (DIHK) after 95.9 points previously. 56 percent (DIHK) name weak domestic demand as a business risk.
This is not a fringe group. The German trades comprise 1,038,126 businesses (ZDH), and 99.3 percent (Federal Statistical Office) of all companies in Germany were small and medium-sized enterprises in 2024. Turnover in the trades came to around 783.2 billion euros (ZDH) in 2025. A slowdown of that size is not a company problem, it is a market condition. Which is exactly why it pays to look at the part of your presence that still remains in your own hands.
First separate market conditions from a broken page
Before any time goes into new content, one hour belongs to diagnosis. Not every drop in enquiries comes from the market. An expired certificate, a form that has been silently swallowing submissions since the last update, a phone number in the footer pointing at the old line: from the inside, faults like these look like the economy. The way to tell them apart is to compare two curves over the same period, visits and enquiries. If visits hold steady and only enquiries collapse, the cause is on the page. If both fall together, it is demand.
- Walk through the enquiry form yourself, with a real address, and check that the confirmation arrives.
- Check the inbox and the spam folder of the receiving address, along with the provider's forwarding rules.
- Compare the phone number, opening hours and emergency hours with what actually applies in the business.
- Look at the search results for your own company name and for your three most important services.
- Measure the load time on a mobile phone using mobile data, not the workshop's wireless network.
- Put the last twelve weeks against the same calendar weeks of the previous year, not against last month.
Two separate causes
The backlog: what gets left behind in busy times
Every business keeps an unspoken list: things that have been pending for months and rarely felt urgent enough. Photos of three finished projects sit on a phone. A service has been offered for two years but appears on no page. The price figures come from a calculation made long ago. That list is the real value of a slow period. It costs nothing but time, and time is precisely what is available.
Work up your references
Sort project photos, note the place and the year, obtain written consent from the customer. No people in shot and no third-party brands.
Add the missing services
Every service the business genuinely performs gets its own section with scope, process, preparatory work and service area.
Review the price range
Bring the calculation up to date and decide which ranges can be published and which belong in the quote. Add the date they apply from.
Fill the careers page
Open positions, apprenticeships and the points that set the business apart from the workshop down the road. No platitudes, with the application process spelled out.
Collect the questions
Whatever comes up most often on the phone belongs on the page as an answer. Write it down verbatim, do not translate it into sales language.
Set up measurement
Define the figures while things are quiet: enquiries per week, source, service, close rate. The first reading is the baseline for later.
Show the services people are asking for now
Anyone chasing enquiries in a slow period has to be convincing where the choice is actually made. A representative survey by Bitkom Research among 1,004 people aged 16 and over found in 2025 that 26 percent (Bitkom Research) of Germans click through the websites of possible firms before deciding on a trade business. For 40 percent (Bitkom Research) the absence of a website rules a firm out altogether. That is not an argument for more website, but for one that answers the questions the caller would otherwise ask. For weather-dependent trades that includes a separate route for emergencies, as described in storm damage and emergency call-outs.
The other figures from the same survey put this in context. 83 percent (Bitkom Research) seek advice in personal conversation with friends, family or colleagues, and 41 percent (Bitkom Research) gather information on site. So the website does not replace the recommendation, it confirms it. 55 percent (Bitkom Research) consider firms with digital offerings more attractive. Someone looking up a recommended business either finds a page that matches the recommendation or one that contradicts it.
- One page per service, named the way customers name it rather than the way the trade register does.
- On every service page: scope, the usual process, necessary preparation, service area and typical duration.
- Two or three project photos per service, with the place and the year.
- A route to an enquiry within the section itself, not only in the header of the page.
- Write down the limits too: what the business does not take on saves both sides a phone call.
Price and scope: bringing qualification forward
When fewer enquiries come in, each one becomes more expensive. An initial conversation that founders on budget after twenty minutes costs just as much time in a slow period as in a busy one, except that now there is nothing queued behind it. So it pays to move the questions forward that would otherwise be settled in conversation. Price range, minimum scope and service area belong on the page, not in the third phone call. How far that can go without running into legal trouble is covered in showing prices on your website; the arithmetic behind it in price estimators and qualifying enquiries.
Scroll table sideways
| Customer question | Settled on the phone | Answered on the page |
|---|---|---|
| Do you cover my town? | Two minutes per call, every day again | Service area with towns and radius, maintained once |
| Roughly what does something like this cost? | Awkward, because the range is not in your head | Price range with conditions and the date it applies from |
| When would you have time? | The answer goes stale within a week | Order reach in weeks, updated weekly |
| Do you take on small jobs? | Often only asked at the end of the consultation | Minimum scope stated in the first section |
| Have you done this before? | Recollection instead of evidence | Project photos with place and year, sorted by service |
Win back existing customers instead of chasing new ones
Acquiring new customers is the most expensive route in a slow period, because everyone turns to it at the same time. The cheaper route runs through your own records. Small and medium-sized enterprises generate around 71 percent (Federal Statistical Office) of turnover in construction and 78 percent (Federal Statistical Office) in hospitality, in other words in markets that rely heavily on recurring relationships. Maintenance, retrofits and inspection dates that were postponed during busy months are now the most obvious work available. The website can prepare that rather than leaving it to the telephone, for instance with service forms for existing customers that already ask for the system, year of installation and last service date.
- Sort maintenance contracts and inspection intervals from your records by due date.
- One service form per system type, with the fields the engineer needs anyway.
- A page for retrofits to systems the business installed itself.
- Offer a callback request with a time window instead of only listing a phone number.
- Rewrite the form's confirmation text in the voice of the business, with a realistic response time.
- Set up a separate route for business customers, as described in private and business customers.
The difference between a campaign and a reserve
A slow period is the right time for the careers page
Skills shortages do not vanish in a slow period, they simply get quieter. In July 2026 23.2 percent (ifo Institute) of companies said they were short of qualified staff, up from 21.1 percent in April. The long-run average is 31.7 percent (ifo Institute). The gap between those two figures is the business cycle, and it closes again as soon as demand picks up.
The picture differs by sector: in main construction 32.6 percent (ifo Institute) of companies report a shortage of skilled staff, in services 25.7 percent (ifo Institute) and in retail 16.2 percent (ifo Institute). Building a careers page now means recruiting in a market where there is currently less competition for the same people. What belongs on such a page is set out in a careers page that attracts skilled staff; for businesses with shift work and two audiences, home care websites is worth a look as well.
More unemployed people does not automatically mean more skilled workers available.
Eight weeks, one plan
Without a running order, spare time falls apart into isolated hours. The plan below assumes two to four hours a week and requires no additional tooling. It is sequenced so that each week leaves behind a finished state: if the order situation returns sooner than expected, nothing breaks off halfway.
- Week 1, diagnosis: form route, contact details, search results, load time. Note the findings, rebuild nothing yet.
- Week 2, figures: sort the last twelve months of enquiries by source and service. Which service carries the business and which only creates work.
- Week 3, services: the two services with the best contribution margin each get their own complete page.
- Week 4, evidence: review project photos, obtain consent, add two or three shots per service.
- Week 5, prices: check the calculation, set the price range and the minimum scope, date the version.
- Week 6, existing customers: set up service forms per system type, write to the due dates in your records.
- Week 7, staff: a careers page with open positions, apprenticeships and an application route without a cover letter.
- Week 8, measurement: define the figures and record the first reading.
One side effect is worth noting: 32 percent (Bitkom Research) of Germans first look at an online tutorial and consider whether they could tackle the project themselves. Those are not lost customers, they are customers who search early. A business that describes where do-it-yourself ends and where it gets expensive is visible at exactly the point where the decision tips. The material for that accumulates during everyday work anyway; how to collect it is covered in collecting content during daily work.
When demand picks up again
The slow period ends, and then the time is gone again. The investment indicator for the German trades stands at minus 17 points (ZDH) in the second quarter of 2026; what is skipped now gets made up later. So that the work of these weeks survives the switch, three fixed dates belong in the calendar: one for the order reach shown on the site, one for the price figures and one for the references. How the site adapts to full capacity again is covered in managing demand; seasonal preparation in the year-end season.
How XICflow bundles the work of a slow period
XICflow builds websites from a structured configuration rather than from individual layouts. For the work of a slow period that mainly means one thing: a new service page is a record, not a design project. Adding eight services means filling in the same set of fields eight times, scope, process, service area, images and enquiry route, and produces eight pages built the same way as one another. That is the precondition for a plan in weekly steps to hold together at all.
German and English come from the same structure, accessibility to WCAG 2.2 AA is part of the output, and delivery is static. Once the order situation improves, maintenance shrinks to what actually changes: reach in weeks, the price version, new references. The rest stays put without anyone having to touch it.
Sources and Studies