Most people make up their mind about a contractor's website in the time it takes to scroll once. They already know what they need. They want to know if you do this kind of job and if you come out to their part of town, and then they look for the phone number. If your first screen can't tell them, they hit Back and call the next company on the list.
This is how we lay out the top of every contractor site we design, in the order a customer sees it.
Put the trade and the town in the headline
Your headline isn't the place for a slogan. "Fence installation in Fort Mill and Rock Hill" tells a homeowner and Google the same thing in six words. "Quality you can trust" tells neither of them anything. Trade first, towns second. Your personality can come through further down the page.
If you work a ring of towns, name the ring. To someone near the lake, Huntersville, Cornelius, Davidson and Mooresville are all one market. Put all four on the first screen and a homeowner in any of them sees the page as theirs.
Where the call button goes
Google looks at the phone version of your site first when it decides where you rank (Google Search Central calls this mobile-first indexing), so design for the phone. Thumbs rest near the bottom of the screen. That's where the call button belongs, and it should stay there as the page scrolls.
A number buried in a paragraph is something to copy and paste. A button gets tapped. Every site on our website design page has a call bar that follows the customer down the page.
And make it a number that gets answered. A tracking number is fine if it rings the same phone. A number that goes to a voicemail nobody checks is worse than no number at all.
How long should the quote form be?
Short. Twelve fields is a form nobody finishes. Name, phone, the job and the town are enough to call someone back. Keep it one tap from the first screen and send it to an inbox somebody checks the same day.
If you give free estimates, say so right next to the form. Three screens down, nobody sees it.
Proof a homeowner can check
Before they let a stranger onto their property, most homeowners look for a few things: your Google rating, the year you started, proof you're insured and your license number. Put them on the first screen and make every one checkable. Link the rating to your reviews. Use your real founding year. A number nobody can verify works against you, and a made-up review can get you sued.
Licenses are easy to look up. North Carolina general contractors are licensed by the NC Licensing Board for General Contractors, and South Carolina contractors by the SC Contractor's Licensing Board. Both let a homeowner check a license number, so put yours where they'll see it.
Use a photo of your own work
A stock photo of a smiling crew in hardhats tells people you didn't have a photo of your own. One real job, shot on a phone in daylight, does more. If it's a finished job in a town you serve, it's doing the work of a whole paragraph.
- Trade and towns in the headline
- A call button where the thumb rests
- A short quote form, one tap away
- Rating, founding year, insurance and license, all checkable
- One real photo of your work
Everything else can wait for the second screen.
What goes below the first screen
Your services as short cards. The towns you work in. A few reviews, word for word. Then how a job runs from the first call to the last day, the questions people ask before they book, and one more way to reach you at the bottom. That's the whole page. Homeowners don't read a contractor's site, they scan it for the things above and then they call.
Want to see your own first screen? We'll design your homepage free, before you pay anything.