Your website is advertising. In Texas, that has a rule attached.

We build websites for Houston trades, and there is a rule that almost never comes up in a marketing conversation because it is not a marketing rule.

This one is specific to electrical contractors, and nothing here is legal advice. If it applies to you, verify it with TDLR or your attorney rather than with an agency blog.

The rule

Texas administrative code is direct about it. All advertising by electrical contracting companies designed to solicit electrical business shall include the electrical contractor's name and licence number.

A website that lists your services and asks people to call you is advertising designed to solicit business. That is what it is for.

What is exempted, and what conspicuously is not

The rule carries six exceptions, and they are worth reading because of what they leave out.

Nationally placed television advertising qualifies, where a statement that licence numbers are available on request is used instead. So do telephone book listings containing only a name, address and telephone number. So do manufacturers' and distributors' trade ads, telephone solicitations where the caller states compliance and gives the number on request, promotional items of nominal value like caps and tee shirts, and signs at your permanent business location.

Websites are not on that list.

Neither are the places most contractor marketing actually happens now: your Google Business Profile, your social pages, the ads you run. The exceptions were written for a media landscape that had phone books in it.

The paperwork rule people miss

Separately from advertising, your name, address, telephone number and licence number must appear on all proposals, invoices and written contracts, together with TDLR's contact information.

That one catches businesses that tidied up their quoting when they moved to new software, because the template got rebuilt around the logo and nobody checked what the old one had been carrying.

The format

Licence numbers carry a prefix that identifies the type: TECL for an electrical contractor, TSCL for an electrical sign contractor, TICL for residential appliance installation.

Vehicles have their own rule, and it is more specific than most owners expect. Business name and licence number on both sides, in a contrasting colour, at least two inches high, permanently affixed in conspicuous places. If you are having a van wrapped, that is worth handing to the designer in writing.

If you are not an electrician

Do not read this post as covering you. HVAC and plumbing sit with different regulators under different rules, and this piece verified the electrical ones only.

The useful takeaway is the shape rather than the specifics: your trade may have advertising requirements that nobody involved in building your website has ever read, and the person who does know is your licensing board rather than your marketer.

Ask them the question directly. It costs a phone call, and the answer applies to every page, profile and ad you own.

If you want the licence number placed sensibly across a site rather than buried in a footer nobody reads, book a strategy call. It is a small job, and it is a strange thing to be missing from the pages you are paying to send people to.