What to put on your homepage, and in what order

On a phone, the first screen of your homepage needs four things: a headline that says what you do and where, a tap-to-call button, one more action that fits your business (a quote request, a menu, a booking button), and one real photo of your work or your place. Below that, in this order: your services, proof that you're real, where you work, how a job goes, a short word about who you are, common questions, and a contact section with the form.

That order follows the questions a stranger asks, roughly in the order they ask them. Here's what goes in each part, and what to keep out.

The first screen on a phone

The first screen is everything a visitor sees before they scroll. On a phone that's a small space, and it gets the most attention. In a 2018 eye-tracking study, the Nielsen Norman Group found that people spent about 57% of their page-viewing time above the fold, the part of the page visible before scrolling. That study used a large desktop monitor. A phone shows far less before the fold, so every line on that first screen has to earn its place.

What goes in it, top to bottom

1. The header. Your business name or logo on the left, a call button on the right, the menu icon next to it.
2. The headline. Your trade and your towns, in the words customers search: "Drain cleaning and sewer repair in Joliet and Plainfield."
3. One supporting line. The facts that matter most to this customer, if they're true: "Licensed in Illinois. Same-day service, Monday to Saturday."
4. Two buttons. Call, with the number on it, and your second action.
5. One real photo. Your truck, your crew, a finished job, your dining room or your storefront.

NN/g's homepage guidelines say to start the page with a tagline that summarizes what the company does, "especially if you're new or less than famous." To most people who find you on Google, a local business is less than famous. A slogan like "Quality you can trust" doesn't tell them anything.

How it changes by business

• Plumber or HVAC: speak to the urgent caller first. "Leak or no heat? Call (630) 555-0142" above a smaller "Request a visit" button.
• Contractor: the type of work and the towns, with "Get an estimate" as the second button, since big jobs start with photos and details.
• Restaurant: the kind of food, the neighborhood, today's hours ("Open today until 10 p.m."), and buttons for the menu and for ordering or reservations.
• Salon or barber: what you do and where, with Book first and Call second.
• Shop: what you sell, the street and town, today's hours, and a Directions button.

What to keep off the first screen

• Sliders that rotate through five photos. People see one, and the page loads all five.
• "Welcome to our website." It takes the most valuable line on the page and says nothing.
• Popups. Google's guidance on intrusive interstitials says "Don't obscure the entire page with interstitials," and suggests banners that take up only a small fraction of the screen.
• Autoplay video that loads before the phone number does.
• A mission statement. Nobody with a leaking pipe reads it.

The sections below, in order

1. Services

List the jobs you do, each with one plain line and a link to its own page if you have one. Use the words customers use: "water heater replacement," not "water solutions." Whether each job deserves its own page is a separate question, covered in service pages vs. a one-page website.

For a restaurant, this section is the menu, or a short version of it with a link to the full menu. For a salon, it's the service list with starting prices, if you publish them.

2. Proof that you're real

This is where a stranger starts to trust you:

• Six to twelve photos of real jobs, not stock pictures
• A link to your Google reviews, so people can read them in the original place
• Your license number, if your state or city licenses your trade
• A plain line about insurance

NN/g's homepage guidelines put it in three words: "Specifics beat abstractions." A photo of the deck you built in Wheaton last month does more than any sentence about craftsmanship.

3. Where you work

For a service business, write the towns out as text. For a restaurant or shop, give the address, a map link, parking and hours. Keep this the same as your Google Business Profile, word for word where you can.

4. How a job goes

Three or four short steps: call or send photos, we come out or give a rough price, you get a written quote, we do the work. Add how your pricing works, whatever is true for you: free estimates, a service call fee or flat-rate pricing by job. People hesitate to call when they have no idea what happens next.

5. A short word about who you are

Your name, a photo of you or your crew, two or three sentences, and a link to the full About page. What belongs on that page is in our guide to the about page for a local business.

6. Questions people ask

Three to five real questions, answered in two or three sentences each. Do you charge for estimates? Do you work weekends? Is there parking? Take them from your own phone calls. If you answer the same question every week, it belongs here.

7. Contact

The form, the phone number again as a tap-to-call button, your hours and your email. Under it, the footer: business name, address or service area, phone, hours, license number, and the current year.

The parts Google reads

A few things on the homepage are written mostly for Google, and they're easy to get wrong:

• The page title: the headline Google shows in search results. "Drain Cleaning and Sewer Repair in Joliet, IL | Your Company Name" works. "Home" doesn't.
• The search description: the short line under that headline. Write it yourself in plain words: what you do, where, how to reach you.
• One main heading: the headline on your first screen, set up as the page's main heading, once.
• Your name, address or area, and phone as text, matching your Google profile, not inside an image.

The five-second test

Open your homepage on your phone and hand it to someone who doesn't know your business. Count five seconds and take it back. Then ask three things: what do we do, where do we work, and how would you reach us? If they can't answer all three, the first screen needs work. It takes a minute, and it's more honest than any opinion about design.

For a second opinion before you change anything, our free website checker checks your homepage's title, search description and main heading, looks for a tap-to-call link and a contact form, tests whether the page fits a phone, and runs Google's mobile speed test, with the fixes that matter most at the top.