What your website has to do in the first three seconds

Someone finds your site from a search on their phone, standing in the driveway looking at a stained roof. They are not reading so much as scanning, and they are answering three questions.

What do you do?

Say the service in plain words at the top of the page, before any slogan about quality and integrity gets a turn. The service, and the fact that you do it. Every week we look at sites where you have to scroll twice to find out what the company sells.

Do you work where I live?

Put the towns on the page. A homeowner two counties away and a homeowner next door are looking at the same website, and only one of them is worth a call to you. Naming your service area filters the wrong ones out and reassures the right ones.

How do I get a price?

One obvious next step, repeated. A phone number that dials when tapped, or a short form, or a booking link, and not four buttons competing with each other. If a visitor has to decide how to contact you, some of them decide not to.

The parts that quietly cost you

• Speed. A page that takes six seconds on a phone loses people before it renders. Big unoptimized images are almost always the culprit.
• Tiny tap targets. If the phone number is not easy to hit with a thumb, it is not easy to call you.
• Stock photos. A homeowner can tell, and photos of your own crews and your own finished work do more than any design flourish.
• No proof. Reviews, a rating, a recognizable local name. Something that says other people in this town already trusted you.

A test you can run right now

Open your site on your phone, hold it at arm's length, and give yourself three seconds. Then look away and say what the business does, where it works, and how you would get a price.

If you cannot, the homeowner deciding between you and the company below you in the results cannot either.