What to put on your home page, in order

Most small business home pages fail in the same way. Not ugly, not broken. Just vague for the first two screens, so a visitor who arrived with a specific question has to hunt for the answer and often does not bother.

Here is an order that works, and why each part is where it is.

1. What you do and where, in one line

The first thing on the page should answer the only question a new visitor has: am I in the right place. "Bathroom and kitchen fitting in North Leeds" does that. "Excellence, delivered" does not.

Put the trade and the area in the same sentence. It reads as plain to you because you already know what you do. To a stranger it is the whole point of the page, and it is also what a search engine reads first.

2. One clear action

Directly under that line, one button. Call, book, or request a quote. Pick the one you actually want, not all three. Three equal buttons is a decision handed back to the visitor, and a visitor who has to decide often decides to leave.

On a phone this needs to be visible without scrolling. That is the constraint that should drive the whole top of the page.

3. Proof, immediately

Before you explain anything, show that other people have trusted you. Reviews, years in business, a recognisable logo, a photo of real work. Two or three items, not a wall.

This goes high because trust is what a stranger is short of. It is worth more here than a paragraph about your values.

4. What you offer, as a list of specifics

Name the services the way a customer would say them. "Boiler repair," not "heating solutions." Each one should link to its own page if you have one, because those pages are what people find in search.

Six to eight items is plenty. A list of twenty reads as a business that does everything, which reads as a business that specialises in nothing.

5. Prices, or a range, or an honest explanation

This is the part most sites skip and most visitors want. If you can publish prices, publish them. If the work varies, publish a range and say what moves it. If you genuinely cannot, say why in one sentence, and say what a quote involves.

Silence about price does not remove the question. It just moves it to a phone call that many people will not make.

6. Photos of your actual work

Not stock. Real jobs, real premises, real team. Six good photos beat thirty mediocre ones. If you take nothing else away from this list, take this: a customer deciding between two similar businesses will pick the one where they can see what the work looks like.

7. The practical block

Hours, area covered, phone number, address, parking if it matters. This is boring and it is one of the most-read parts of any local site. Make it easy to find and keep it accurate, especially the holiday exceptions.

8. The action again, at the bottom

Someone who read the whole page is your best visitor. Do not make them scroll back up. Repeat the same button, worded the same way.

What does not belong near the top

The company history. The mission statement. A slideshow of five images the visitor did not ask to sit through. A welcome message that thanks people for visiting. None of these are wrong, they are simply not what a stranger needs in the first ten seconds, and they push the useful parts below the fold.

The same goes for a large atmospheric photo with the headline on top of it. It looks good on a wide monitor. On a phone it is often three screens of picture before anything is said.

The test

Show your home page to someone who does not know your business. Give them ten seconds, then take it away and ask two questions: what does this business do, and where. If they can answer both, the top of your page is doing its job. If they cannot, nothing further down the page will save it.

The Instinctor team