Your homepage has about 3 seconds to explain what you do.
88% of visitors who have a bad first experience on a homepage won't come back. The average small business homepage in the BD17–BD18 area takes 4.2 seconds to communicate what the business actually does — by which point over half the visitors have already left. A homepage needs exactly six things, in a specific order, and nothing else.
The hero section: what, where, proof
The top of your homepage needs three things before anyone scrolls. What you do. Where you do it. Proof you're good at it.
“Residential electrician in Shipley and Saltaire. NICEIC approved. 4.9 stars from 47 reviews.” That's a hero section that works. It takes less than two seconds to read and answers every question a visitor has.
What doesn't work: “Welcome to our website! We are a family-run business established in 2003 with a passion for excellence.” Nobody cares. Not yet, anyway. They need to know what you do first.
Services preview, not the full story
Show your top 3–4 services with a one-line description each. Link to full service pages for the detail. The homepage is a signpost, not an encyclopedia.
A gardener in Baildon doesn't need to explain every type of pruning technique on the homepage. “Lawn care. Hedge trimming. Garden clearance. Seasonal maintenance.” Four cards, four links, done.
Reviews and social proof
Put your best 2–3 Google reviews on the homepage. Real names, real outcomes. “Fixed our boiler in two hours on a Saturday morning. £95. Brilliant.” That does more than any marketing copy.
If you've got a Google rating above 4.5, display the star count prominently. “4.8 stars from 34 reviews on Google” is concrete proof. Don't hide it on a separate testimonials page nobody visits. For more on building your review count, I wrote about how to get more Google reviews.
Contact info: always visible
Your phone number should be tappable in the header on mobile. Not buried in a contact page. Not hidden behind a hamburger menu.
Phone number, email, and area covered — visible on every page. A plumber in Bradford whose phone number requires three taps to find is losing emergency callouts to the competitor whose number is right there in the header. 78% of local searches happen on mobile. One tap to call.
| Include | Why | Remove | Why it hurts |
|---|---|---|---|
| What you do + where (hero) | Answers the visitor's first question in 2 seconds | “Welcome to our website” | Wastes the most valuable screen space on nothing |
| 2–3 real Google reviews | Trust — strangers believe other strangers | Unnamed testimonial quotes | Everyone assumes they're made up |
| Top 3–4 services | Shows what you do without overwhelming | Full service descriptions on homepage | Creates a wall of text nobody reads |
| Tap-to-call in header | 78% of local searches are on mobile | Contact page as only way to reach you | Too many steps — people give up |
| About snippet (2–3 sentences) | Enough to seem human and local | Full life story on homepage | Nobody reads it before deciding to call |
| One clear call to action | Tells the visitor what to do next | Image sliders/carousels | Slow, distracting, nobody watches past the first slide |
| Real photos of your work | Proves you actually do what you say | Stock photos | Looks generic and untrustworthy |
About snippet: not the full story
Two to three sentences about who you are and why you started. That's what belongs on the homepage. The full about page is for the people who are already interested enough to click through.
“I'm Sarah, an NICEIC-approved electrician based in Saltaire. I've been rewiring homes across Shipley and Bradford since 2018.” Done. Enough to sound real and local without turning the homepage into a biography.
One clear CTA
Every homepage needs one primary action. “Call now for a free quote.” “Book your appointment.” “Get in touch today.” Pick one. Make it obvious.
I see homepages in Bingley with three different buttons above the fold: “Learn more,” “See our work,” “Contact us.” That's not three options — it's three chances to hesitate. One button. One action. The rest can live further down the page.
Mobile-first order
On a phone, content stacks vertically. The order matters. Hero (what + where + proof) first. Services second. Reviews third. Contact and about fourth. CTA sticky at the bottom or repeated after reviews.
Most website builders let you rearrange sections on desktop and forget about mobile. But 78% of your visitors are on phones. Test your homepage on your own phone. If you have to scroll more than twice to find the phone number, something's wrong.
Common homepage mistakes
Image sliders. They're slow, nobody watches past the first frame, and they push your actual content below the fold. Kill them.
“Welcome to our website.” If your first line doesn't tell me what you do and where, I'm gone. A café on Bingley Main Street whose homepage says “Welcome to our family-run business” instead of “Coffee and brunch in Bingley. Open 7 days” is wasting its best opportunity.
Walls of text. Nobody reads 500 words on a homepage. If you can't say it in three sentences, it belongs on an inner page.
Stock photos. A locksmith using a photo of a padlock from a stock library looks like every other locksmith template. One real photo of you at a job site in BD18 is worth more than a hundred stock images. I wrote more about all of this in the full guide to local business websites.
What to do this week
- Open your homepage on your phone — can you tell what the business does and where within 3 seconds?
- Check whether your phone number is tappable without opening a menu
- Count how many calls to action are above the fold — if it's more than one, pick the most important
- Replace any stock photos with real photos of your work or your premises
- Add your top 2–3 Google reviews to the homepage if they're not there already
- Remove any “Welcome to our website” text and replace it with what you do and where