You know what your business does. You’ve known for years. So when you look at your own homepage, you read it with all of that knowledge already in your head, and it makes sense.
A stranger doesn’t have that. They have a phone, a search result they just tapped, and a few seconds before they decide whether to stay or go back and try the next one.
The “five seconds” isn’t a measured number, and I’m not citing a study. It’s roughly how long it takes to glance at a screen and decide whether you’re in the right place. Whatever the real figure is for your visitors, it’s short, and it’s spent almost entirely on the first screen: the part of the page they see before scrolling. This article is about what goes there, and how to write it.
The first screen has four questions to answer
When someone lands on a small business homepage, they’re trying to answer four things, roughly in this order:
- What is this? What do you do, in plain words.
- Is it for me? Where you work, who you serve, whether you do the specific thing they need.
- Can I trust it? Some sign that you’re real, local and good at it.
- What do I do now? One obvious next step.
If the first screen answers all four, most of the job is done. If it answers none of them, it doesn’t matter much what’s further down, because a lot of people never get there.
Many small business homepages answer the fourth question well enough (there’s a button somewhere) and skip the first two. They lead with a mood instead of a fact.
Write the headline about what you do, not about you
The headline is the biggest text on the page. It’s the first thing anyone reads, and it’s where most homepages waste their best spot.
Three headlines show up constantly, and none of them answer a single question a visitor has:
Welcome to Riverside Plumbing
Quality You Can Trust
Your Vision, Our Passion
“Welcome” tells people where they are, which they knew, because they just clicked a link with your name on it. “Quality you can trust” is something every business says about itself, so it carries no information. “Your vision, our passion” could be a wedding photographer, a kitchen remodeler or a software company, and that’s the problem.
A good headline is usually duller than these and much more useful. It says what you do and where, in the words a customer would use. If someone read only the headline and left, they should still know whether you can help them.
Before and after: six rewrites
These are invented examples, not real businesses, but every “before” is a type I see all the time. The phone numbers use 555 on purpose.
A plumber
Before: Welcome to Riverside Plumbing. Serving the community since 2009.
After: Plumbing repairs in Mesa, Gilbert and Chandler. Same-day for leaks and no hot water. Call (480) 555-0142.
The after answers what, where, and the urgent question (can you come today?) and puts the next step in the headline itself. “Since 2009” isn’t lost; it moves to the line below as proof.
A bakery
Before: Baked with love. Taste the difference.
After: Sourdough, pastries and custom cakes on Main Street in Flagstaff. Open Wednesday to Sunday from 7am. Gluten-free loaves every Saturday.
“Baked with love” is what every bakery feels and none of them can prove on a screen. The after answers the three questions bakeries get asked most: what do you make, are you open, and do you have the thing I can eat.
A yoga studio
Before: Find your center. Breathe. Flow. Transform.
After: Small yoga classes in east Tucson, with a beginner class every weekday at 6pm. Your first class is free.
Four inspiring words told the visitor nothing. The after tells a nervous beginner the thing they most need to hear (there’s a class for people like me, tonight, and it costs nothing to try).
A bookkeeper
Before: Empowering businesses through financial excellence.
After: Bookkeeping and tax prep for small businesses and contractors in the Phoenix area. Flat monthly price, and you’ll always talk to the same person.
Who you serve is half the headline here. A contractor reading the after knows it’s for them. Reading the before, nobody knows anything.
A dog groomer
Before: Pampered Paws — Where Every Pet Is Family.
After: Dog grooming in Portland’s Sellwood neighborhood. Baths, cuts and nail trims, by appointment. Book online in under a minute.
The business name can stay as the logo. It doesn’t need to be the headline too.
A two-person design studio
Before: We craft meaningful brand experiences that inspire.
After: Logos, websites and packaging for food and drink brands. Two designers, no account managers, and you’ll see first ideas within a week.
Agencies are often the worst offenders, because they’re good with words and use them to sound impressive rather than clear. The after names a niche, says what you get, and answers the question a client is quietly worried about (will I be handed off to a junior?).
Notice what the afters have in common. They’re longer. They’re plainer. They use nouns a customer would type into Google. And none of them would work for a different business, which is the test: if you could swap your headline onto a competitor’s site and it would still make sense, it isn’t saying anything.
The line under the headline carries the proof
The headline says what you do. The line or two underneath answers “can I trust you,” as specifically as you can manage. Good material for it:
- How long you’ve been doing it, if it’s a while.
- A license, certification or membership a customer would recognize.
- A real review, short, with a first name and a town.
- A concrete promise you actually keep: “We call back within the hour,” “Free estimates in writing.”
Pick one or two. A stack of six badges reads as trying too hard.
One button, and it says what happens
The first screen needs one main button, and the words on it should describe what happens when you tap it.
Vague: Learn more · Get started · Submit · Contact
Clear: Call (480) 555-0142 · Book a class · See this week’s menu · Get a written quote
“Learn more” is one of the most common buttons on the web and one of the least useful, because it doesn’t say what you’ll learn or what it’ll cost you in time. “Book a class” tells a visitor exactly what they’re agreeing to.
On a phone, make sure this button sits inside the first screen without scrolling. Check on a real phone; designers’ previews are often bigger than the phones your customers carry.
How to find the words your customers actually use
The hardest part of all this is that you’re the worst-placed person to write it. You call it “hydro-jetting”; your customer calls it “my drain is still slow after I used the stuff.” You say “vinyasa”; they search “yoga for beginners near me.”
The fix is to stop guessing and go collect the words. They’re already lying around:
Your inbox and your texts. Scroll back through the last twenty enquiries. Copy down the exact phrases people used to describe what they wanted, before you replied. This is the single best source, and it’s free.
The phone. For a week, keep a notepad by the phone and write down the first sentence of every call. The first sentence is what people think the problem is, in their words.
Your reviews, and your competitors’ reviews. Read Google reviews for your business and for the three nearest competitors. Look for the phrases that repeat. When several customers praise a groomer for being “patient with nervous dogs,” that’s a headline, and it’s in your customers’ words, not yours.
Google itself. Start typing your service and town into Google and look at what it suggests to finish the sentence, and at the “People also ask” questions. Those come from what people actually search.
Your Google Business Profile. Its performance section shows some of the searches people used to find your listing. It’s one of the few places you can see real search terms for your own business without paying for anything.
Ask. When a new customer books, ask what they searched for or how they’d describe what they needed. People are glad to tell you, and the answers are often surprising.
You’re looking for the plain nouns and verbs that repeat. Use them on the homepage, exactly as your customers wrote them, even if they’re not the terms you’d use.
What to cut
When you rewrite, some things should go entirely:
- “Welcome to.” Every time.
- Your mission statement. It might belong on an About page. It doesn’t belong on the first screen.
- Most sentences that start with “We.” Count them. “We are committed to,” “We pride ourselves on.” Rewrite the useful ones around the customer: not “we offer same-day service” but “same-day service in Mesa.”
- Jargon your customers don’t use. If it didn’t show up in your inbox or your reviews, it probably shouldn’t be in the headline.
- Adjectives that can’t be checked. Quality, premier, trusted, leading, best-in-class. Replace each with the fact that would make someone believe it, or delete it.
Below the first screen, answer the next questions in order
The first screen gets people to stay. The rest of the page answers what they ask next, roughly in this order for most small businesses:
- What you do, in a bit more detail. The main services, with a sentence each.
- Proof. Photos of real work, two or three reviews, the license number.
- How it works or what it costs. Even a rough price range or “estimates are free” removes a big reason people don’t call.
- Where and when. Address or service area, and hours.
- The same next step as the top, again, for the people who scrolled.
You don’t need clever sections or animation between them. A visitor who has scrolled this far is interested. Give them facts.
A ten-minute exercise: the stranger test
Do this today. It takes ten minutes and one person who doesn’t know your business well. A neighbor, a friend’s teenager, someone at the coffee shop who’s willing.
- Open your homepage on your phone. Don’t scroll.
- Hand them the phone for five seconds, then take it back.
- Ask three questions: What does this business do? Where? What would you tap if you wanted it?
- Write down their answers word for word. Don’t help, and don’t explain.
If they get all three right, your first screen is working. If they hesitate or get one wrong, the words they used while guessing are a gift: that’s how a stranger reads your page.
Then write three new sentences, using what you collected from your inbox and reviews:
What we do: ________ in ________.
Why trust us: ________.
Next step: ________.
Put those on the first screen, in that order, and run the test again with someone else. Keep going until a stranger gets all three. You don’t need a designer or a new site to do this; on most sites, it’s a text change.
The plain version wins
Clever homepages are fun to write and pleasant to look at, and they mostly lose to plain ones. A visitor isn’t there to admire your copy. They’re trying to find out, quickly, whether you’re the one to call.
Answer that in words they’d use themselves, give them one thing to tap, and move the poetry further down the page if you can’t bear to lose it. Then hand your phone to a stranger and see if it worked.