Nine things to put on a local business homepage, and three to leave off

Almost every underperforming local homepage has the same two problems: it opens with a sentence about itself, and it buries the four facts the visitor came for.

The nine that earn their place

• What you are, in four words. "Cake shop in Mahanagar." Not "crafting moments of joy".
• The one action. Call, book, enquire, order. One button, visible without scrolling, repeated at the bottom.
• Prices, or a range. Publishing them loses you the enquiries that were never going to convert and wins the ones that were.
• Photographs of the real thing. Taken this month, on a phone, of what you actually sold. Stock photography reads as a business that has nothing to show.
• Where, with a map link. One tap to navigation. Your customer is already in the car.
• When, including the exception. "Open 9 to 9, closed Tuesdays." The exception is the useful half.
• The thing people always ask. Eggless? Home delivery? Do you come to the venue? Answer it on the page.
• Proof. Two named reviews beat twenty anonymous stars.
• A human. A name and a photograph of whoever is responsible. For a local business this converts better than anything else on the list.

The three to leave off

• A mission statement. Nobody chose a bakery on the strength of its values paragraph.
• A carousel. Visitors see the first slide and nothing else, and the second slide is where people hide the thing they were most unsure about.
• "Welcome to our website." It is an apology for the page existing. Delete it and start with what you sell.

The test

Show it to somebody who has never heard of your business, for five seconds, on a phone. Take it away and ask what you sell, where you are, and what to do next.

If they cannot answer all three, the problem is not the design.