Five things a service-business homepage needs

Start with the customer’s questions

Most homepages are written from the owner’s side: the founding story, the mission statement, a slideshow. Customers come with a short list of practical questions. If the homepage answers them in the first screen or two, people call. If it doesn’t, they go back to the search results and try the next company.

Google gives the same advice from a different angle. Its guidance on helpful content asks whether a page was made mainly for people or mainly to rank in search. A homepage built around real customer questions passes that test without any tricks.

Here are the five things I put on every service-business homepage, in the order a customer looks for them.

1. What you do and where, in plain words

The top of the page should say what you do and where you do it, using the words a customer would type. “Pool cleaning and repair in Venice and North Port” beats “Excellence in aquatic solutions” every time. Someone should know within three seconds whether they are in the right place.

You can see this on Evergreen House Plant Care. The first screen says what the service is, who provides it and that she’s local to Nokomis. Nobody has to guess.

2. A way to reach you that works on a phone

Most people will see your site on a phone first. Pew Research Center reports that 91 percent of U.S. adults own a smartphone. Put a phone number at the top that dials when tapped, and keep a contact form short: name, phone, a few words about the job.

HowieBins puts both the phone number and a “Fast Quote” button in the header of every page, so a customer is never more than one tap from contact no matter where they land.

3. Proof that you have done this before

Customers are about to let you onto their property or into their home. They want evidence. The strongest proof is specific:

• Photos of your actual work, ideally before and after from the same angle.
• A few reviews with first names and towns, plus a link to your Google profile so people can read the rest.
• Your license number if you hold one. Florida requires licensed contractors to include it in their advertising.
• Insurance and how long you have been doing the work, if those are true and you are comfortable saying them.

Stock photos of smiling models do the opposite. Customers recognize them, and they make a small local business look like it is hiding something.

4. How pricing or estimates work

You don’t have to publish a price list if every job is different. But say how pricing works: free estimates, a minimum charge, a flat rate for common jobs, or a price range for a typical visit. Silence on price makes people assume the worst, or it fills your phone with calls from people who were never going to hire you.

Evergreen publishes its service tiers with prices right on the page, from a $65 virtual consult up. That one decision answers the question most callers would otherwise open with.

5. The area you actually serve

List the towns or neighborhoods you cover, and say plainly if there are places you don’t go. A lawn company that runs routes in Bradenton and Palmetto saves itself a lot of wasted callbacks by saying so before a customer in Englewood fills out the form.

If you want more detail on this, I wrote a separate note on writing a service area customers can use.

A ten-second test

Here is a quick way to check your own homepage. Hand your phone, open to the homepage, to someone who doesn’t know your business well. Give them ten seconds, then take it back and ask three questions: What does this company do? Where do they work? How would you contact them?

If they can answer all three without hesitating, the top of your page is doing its job. If they guess, or start with “I think…”, the answer is on the page but not where a customer looks first. Move it up, make it bigger or say it in plainer words, and try again with someone else.

What can wait

Sliders, videos that play on their own, long company histories and pages of awards can all wait. They slow the page down and push the five useful things further from the top. Add them later if they help a customer decide. Most of the time, they don’t.

If you want to see how your current homepage stacks up, send me the link with a preview request. I build the preview around these five things.