The five things a small-business homepage has to answer in ten seconds
I rewrote the same homepage eleven times for a Vancouver clinic before enquiries doubled. Nothing about the redesigns was clever. Every gain came from answering questions faster.
When someone lands on your homepage, they are not admiring the design. They are interrogating it. They arrive with questions, and every second those questions go unanswered, the back button gets more attractive.
After a decade of building sites for clinics, restaurants, nurseries and software teams, I keep coming back to the same five questions. If your homepage answers them in the first screen or two, it converts. If it makes people dig, it does not.
- What do you actually do? Plain words, no slogan-speak.
- Is this for someone like me, somewhere near me?
- Why should I trust you? Reviews, client names, real numbers.
- What happens if I get in touch? Cost, process, response time.
- What should I do right now? One obvious next step.
Every gain came from answering questions faster, not from adding sections.
The ten-second test
Show your homepage to someone who has never seen it. Give them ten seconds, then take it away and ask what the business does, who it serves and what they would click next. If they hesitate on any of the three, that is your redesign brief, and it usually costs nothing but copy changes.
The clinic that doubled its enquiries never got a new brand, new photos or new sections. It got shorter sentences, a price range, a named doctor and one button. That was the whole trick.