How to write a homepage that actually gets enquiries
August 2026
Most small business homepages open with a sentence about the business and its commitment to quality. The reader does not care about your commitment to quality. They arrived with a problem, they have four other tabs open, and they are deciding in seconds whether you are worth another thirty.
Nobody reads your homepage, they scan it
Nielsen Norman Group's research into reading behaviour online found that users read only a fraction of the words on a typical page, somewhere around a fifth, and that figure drops as pages get longer. Their analysis has held up across two decades of testing.
So the way you write a homepage has to account for someone skimming headings, sub-headings and the first line of each block. If your key message is in the middle of paragraph three, it does not exist.
That means every heading on the page has to carry meaning on its own. "Our Services" tells a scanner nothing. "Boiler repairs, installations and annual servicing across Leeds" tells them everything, and it does so without them reading a word of body copy.
It also means length is not the enemy. Long homepages convert perfectly well when they are structured so a skimmer can get the whole story from the headings alone.
The first screen has one job
Above the fold you need to answer three questions: what you do, who you do it for, and where. Everything else on the page is secondary to getting those right.
A headline that works is usually plain to the point of feeling boring when you write it. "Family law solicitors in Sheffield. Fixed fee divorce from £1,200." Nobody will call that creative. It answers the service, the location and the cost question in eleven words.
Compare it to what usually sits there. "Guiding you through life's difficult moments with care and expertise." That could be a hospice, a counsellor or a funeral director.
Worth knowing: under the headline, one sub-line adding the detail the headline could not carry, then a button. That is the whole first screen. Resist the urge to fill it with a rotating slider, because sliders bury your best message behind an animation nobody waits for.
Write about their problem before you write about you
The section after the hero is where most homepages lose people. It usually opens with the founding story of the company, or a paragraph beginning "Established in 2011".
Put the reader's situation there instead. Describe the problem in the words they would use. An accountant might write: "You are doing the books at 10pm on a Sunday, you are not certain the VAT return is right, and your last accountant took four days to answer an email."
When a reader recognises their exact situation on the page, the credibility question mostly resolves itself.
They assume that someone who can describe the problem that precisely has solved it before. Your history belongs on the page, just further down and reframed. "Fourteen years doing this" is useful evidence. It is not a reason to visit the site.
Structure the rest of the page in the order people decide
There is a sequence that works for service businesses, and it follows how someone actually makes the decision.
- The problem, stated in their language
- What you do about it, in clear service blocks
- Proof: named reviews, case studies with numbers, accreditations
- How it works, in three or four steps, so there are no surprises
- Pricing or at least a price range
- Objection handling: the two or three things that stop people enquiring
- A final, direct call to action
The pricing section is the one people fight me on. You do not need a fixed price list. A range, a starting figure, or an explanation of what drives the cost is enough. Saying nothing at all reads as expensive, and it pushes people to the competitor who did give them a number.
Objection handling is worth real thought. Write down what people actually say on the phone before committing, then answer those exact concerns on the page. "Will I be locked into a contract?" belongs on your homepage if that is what people ask.
Would you rather I wrote it?
Homepage copy is most of what I do. If you want the rewrite handled properly, or just an outside opinion on what is there now, get in touch and I will take a look before you commit to anything.
See the copywriting serviceCutting is usually faster than writing
Most homepages improve more from deletion than from addition, and the usual candidates are easy to spot once you go looking.
Rotating sliders, which nobody waits for and which push your real message below the fold. Stock photography of models in a boardroom, which reads as generic and makes people trust you slightly less than no photo at all. A "Welcome to our website" paragraph. A wall of client logos from work you did in 2019. Social media icons in the header, which send visitors away from the page they just arrived on.
Look at your navigation as well. Nine menu items with dropdowns is a menu built for the person who runs the business, not for the person trying to buy from it. Most service businesses need five or six.
Everything on the page competes for the same attention. If an element is not helping the reader decide, it is taking attention from something that would.
Make the call to action specific and repeat it
"Contact us" is a weak instruction. It asks for effort without saying what happens next.
Tell people exactly what they get. "Book a free 20 minute call" or "Send me your website and I will review it, no charge" both describe a small, defined commitment. The reader can picture it, so the barrier is lower.
Repeat the call to action at least three times down the page: after the hero, after the proof section, and at the end. People reach the decision point at different moments, and expecting them to scroll back up is optimistic.
Keep the button text consistent and specific. "Get a quote" everywhere is better than "Get in touch" in one place and "Enquire now" in another. And check that your phone number appears in the header on every page as tappable text, because a proportion of visitors will skip the whole page and just call.