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What your homepage actually needs

Five things, in order. Most sites have the last one first.

5 min read

A local business homepage has one job: convince a stranger in about eight seconds that you do what they need, near where they are, and can be trusted. Almost everything else is decoration.

1. What you do and where, in the first line

Not your company name in large type. Not "Welcome to our website." A sentence a person could say out loud: "Emergency plumbing across Laval and Montreal, seven days a week." If a visitor has to scroll to learn what you do, you've lost most of them.

2. One obvious next step

One primary action — call, book, request a quote — repeated down the page. Five competing buttons is the same as none. Make it a real target on a phone, because that's where they are.

3. Proof that you're real

A phone number in the header. A real address. Photos of actual work, not stock images of someone else's van. Reviews with names. This is the single biggest gap on most local sites and the cheapest to fix.

4. What it costs, or at least a range

Most sites hide pricing, hoping to force a call. It mostly makes people leave and price someone else. A range with what it depends on beats silence, and it filters out the people who were never going to hire you.

5. Then everything else

History, team, awards, mission. Worth having. Not worth the top of the page.

The test

Open your homepage on your phone. Without scrolling, can a stranger say what you do, where you work, and what to do next? If not, that's the work — not a redesign.

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