Homepage structure

The first screen does the work

Say what you do, for whom, and where, in plain words, at the top. A visitor who cannot answer those three questions immediately leaves, and no amount of scrolling content recovers them.

That sounds obvious and most homepages fail it. A large image, a slogan and a slider is atmosphere rather than an answer, and it is the commonest opening on small business sites.

Our page on answer-first writing covers the principle. A homepage is the sharpest case, because it is where the most visitors and the least patience meet.

Say it in the words a customer would use rather than the words of your trade. People search and read in their own language, and a homepage written in industry terms fails the visitor who most needed it.

Then the routes onward

Immediately after the opening, give the two or three things a visitor is most likely to want. For most service businesses that is the main services, the coverage area and how to get in touch.

Keep the number small. A homepage offering twelve equal choices is asking the visitor to do the sorting, and most of them will not, so decide what matters and lead with it.

Each route should say where it goes rather than being a bare label. Our page on link wording covers why descriptive wording is followed far more often.

Proof before detail

Photographs of real work, real reviews and any credential that matters. Somebody deciding whether to trust you wants evidence before they want an explanation of your process.

Keep it specific. Three real reviews with names beat a wall of generic praise, and one photograph of an actual job beats a gallery of stock imagery.

Our page on trust signals covers what counts as evidence. The same material persuades a person and gives an answer engine something to rely on.

The order that works

The arrangement below is what we would use for almost any small business homepage. It is not creative and it is what visitors are looking for in the order they look for it.

• What you do, for whom, and where
• The two or three main routes onward
• Proof: photographs, reviews, credentials
• How the work actually happens, briefly
• What it costs or what determines that
• The questions people ask before calling
• How to get in touch, repeated

What does not belong on a homepage

The history of the business, unless it is genuinely the reason people choose you. That belongs on an about page where the interested reader will find it.

A slider that cycles through messages. Visitors rarely see past the first slide, the rest is invisible, and the movement makes the page harder to read for some people.

And anything that interrupts on arrival. A pop-up before somebody has read a sentence costs more in departures than it gains in signups, on every site we have measured.

Also anything that only exists because a competitor has one. A page element copied without a reason takes space from something that would have answered a question instead.

Contact, more than once

At the top, in the navigation, and again at the foot. Somebody ready to call should never have to look for the number, and people become ready at different points on the page.

Put the phone number in text rather than in an image, so it can be tapped on a phone and read by anything. That single detail is wrong on a surprising number of sites.

Our page on contact forms covers the alternative route, which should exist alongside a number rather than replacing it.

Length, and when to stop

A homepage should be long enough to answer the obvious questions and short enough that somebody scrolls to the end. That is usually less than people think.

Every section should earn its place by answering something. A section that exists because homepages usually have one is a section that pushes the useful material further down.

Our page on homepage design covers the visual side. Structure decides what is said and in what order; design decides how it looks while saying it.