The short answer
Say what you do, who it's for and how to get started, all in the first screen. Then add proof, a short list of services and one clear next step.
Most small-business homepages are written from the inside out. They open with the company's name, a welcome, and a paragraph about passion and quality. Visitors don't read that. They arrive with one question, "can this business help me?", and they give the page a few seconds to answer it before they go back to Google.
Here's what we put on a homepage, in the order we put it, and the things we take off.
The first screen does most of the work
Everything someone sees before they scroll has one job: tell them they're in the right place. That takes three things.
- What you do, in the words a customer would use. "Kitchen fitting in Leeds" beats "Bespoke interior solutions".
- Who it's for, if that isn't obvious. "For busy families", "for small cafés", "for first-time buyers".
- What to do next. One clear button: book, call, get a quote, shop the range.
A photo helps if it shows the real thing: your work, your shop, your product. A stock photo of people smiling at a laptop tells the visitor nothing, and they've seen it on a hundred other sites.
Then answer the questions people actually have
Once someone scrolls, they're interested. Now they're looking for reasons to trust you, and reasons to hesitate. Good homepages deal with both, section by section.
- What you offer: a short list of your main services or product ranges, each linking to its own page. Four to six items, not twenty.
- Proof: photos of your work, a few real reviews with names, logos of clients you're allowed to name, or a number you can stand behind.
- How it works: three or four steps from first contact to finished job. This is the section that calms nervous buyers most.
- The common worries: price, timing, area covered, what happens if something goes wrong. A short FAQ does this well.
- One more call to action at the bottom, the same one as at the top.
Keep each section to one idea. If a section needs a heading and three paragraphs, it probably belongs on its own page, with a link to it from the homepage.
What to take off
These are the things we remove most often when we rework a homepage. None of them are wrong on their own. They just crowd out what matters.
- "Welcome to our website." Everyone knows where they are.
- Sliders that change every few seconds. Nobody waits for slide three, and they slow the page down.
- A long history of the company. Put it on the about page. One line on the homepage is plenty.
- Several competing buttons. "Book now", "Learn more", "Our story", "Newsletter" and "Shop" side by side means none of them gets clicked.
- Vague claims like "quality service" and "customer focused". Replace each with a fact: "same-day call-outs", "five-year guarantee".
- Social media feeds embedded in the page. They're slow, and they send visitors away to scroll someone else's app.
- Pop-ups that appear before the visitor has read anything.
Write it the way you'd say it
The best test for homepage words is to read them out loud as if you were standing behind your counter. Would you say "We leverage decades of experience to deliver tailored solutions"? No. You'd say "We've fitted kitchens around here for twenty years, and we'll give you a fixed quote after one visit."
Short sentences help, but don't make every sentence short, or it starts to sound like a telegram. Use the words your customers use when they ring you. If they say "boiler service", don't write "heating system maintenance".
Make sure it works on a phone first
For most small businesses, well over half of visitors are on a phone. Check your homepage there before you check it on a laptop. The button should be easy to tap with a thumb, the phone number should start a call when tapped, and the text should be readable without zooming. It should also load quickly on a weak signal, which mostly means smaller images and fewer add-ons.
Speed isn't only about patience. Google uses page speed and mobile usability when deciding how to rank pages, so a slow homepage costs you twice.
How to tell if it's working
A homepage isn't finished when it goes live. It's finished when it does its job, and you can check that with a few simple numbers from any basic website analytics tool.
- How many visitors click your main button. If very few do, the first screen isn't convincing or the button isn't clear.
- How far people scroll. If almost nobody reaches the middle of the page, the top isn't giving them a reason to continue.
- Which links people click. If most go straight to one service page, that service might deserve more space on the homepage.
- Where visitors come from. People from Google, from Instagram and from a flyer arrive with different questions.
You don't need to watch these daily. Look once a month, change one thing at a time, and see what moves. The single most useful change is usually rewriting the first headline in plainer words.
You can also just ask. When a new customer gets in touch, ask what nearly stopped them. Their answer is often a section your homepage is missing.
A homepage checklist
- The first screen says what you do, for whom, and what to do next.
- There's one main button, and it appears at the top and the bottom.
- Each service or range has its own page, linked from the homepage.
- There's real proof: your work, real reviews or names you're allowed to use.
- There's a short "how it works" section.
- Common worries are answered, including how pricing works.
- It's easy to use and quick to load on a phone.
- Your contact details are in the footer on every page.
If your homepage is trying to sell several different things to several different people, it may be that you need a landing page as well as a website. And if you'd rather hand the whole thing over, our website service includes writing the words, which is where most homepages go wrong.
