When someone lands on a local business homepage, they are usually in the middle of something. They are on a phone, maybe standing in a driveway or sitting in a parking lot, and they want to know one thing: can this business help me? The top of your homepage, the part visible before anyone scrolls, has a few seconds to answer that question.
Most small business sites waste that space on a slideshow, a generic slogan or a large photo with nothing written on it. Here is what I would put there instead.
1. A headline that says what you do and where. “Residential roofing in Sumner County, Tennessee” beats “Building trust since day one” every time. A stranger should be able to read your headline and know your trade and your service area without clicking anything. If you have to choose between clever and clear, choose clear.
2. One sentence of support. Under the headline, add a single line that fills in the picture: who you serve, what makes the work easy, or what happens next. Keep it short enough to read in one breath on a phone screen.
3. One main action, made obvious. Decide what you most want a visitor to do. For many service businesses it is calling you, so the phone number should be a large tap-to-call button, not small gray text in the corner. For others it is booking or requesting a quote. Pick one primary button and make it the most noticeable thing on the screen. A second, quieter option is fine, but three competing buttons mean nobody clicks any of them.
4. Your phone number in text. Put it in the header too, written as real text rather than baked into an image, so it can be tapped on a phone and read by search engines. If your hours matter, such as same-day service or Saturday availability, say so right next to it.
5. One real photo. A picture of your actual work, your actual shop or your actual team does more than a polished stock image of strangers shaking hands. Visitors can tell the difference, and they trust the real one. If you only have time to improve one visual, make it this one.
6. A quick proof point. A line like “Rated 4.8 on Google from 120 reviews” works, as long as it is true and you update it. If you hold a license, certification or manufacturer authorization that customers care about, a small badge near the top helps. Only claim what you can document.
7. A navigation menu that is short. Five or six clear labels, such as Services, About, Reviews and Contact, are plenty. Long menus with dropdowns inside dropdowns hide the things people came for.
What to leave out of the first screen
Skip the auto-playing music, the pop-up that appears before anyone has read a word, and the rotating banner that changes before a visitor finishes reading it. Skip the paragraph about your company history. That belongs on your About page, where the people who want it will find it.
How to test it yourself
Open your homepage on your phone. Hold the phone at arm’s length for five seconds, then lock the screen. Now answer three questions from memory: what does this business do, where does it work, and what am I supposed to do next? If you cannot answer all three, your visitors cannot either.
Then ask someone who has never seen your business, a neighbor or a friend in a different line of work, to do the same test and tell you what they remember. Their answers will show you what is actually coming across, which is often different from what you meant.
The first screen does not need to do everything. It needs to earn the next scroll. Once a visitor trusts that you are the right kind of business in the right place, the rest of the page can explain your services, show your reviews and answer common questions. If you want a deeper checklist of what to examine when a site is not producing phone calls, I walked through three things I check first in an earlier piece.
If you would like a second set of eyes on your own homepage, the web team at DirecTech Connect reviews sites for local businesses, and the fixes in this article are often the quickest wins.
Danielle Lemons is Vice President of Operations at DirecTech Connect, a Nashville provider of business phone systems, managed IT services, websites and digital marketing. More about Danielle.
Read more of Danielle’s writing, or see her profile at DirecTech Connect.
