Homepage Design: What to Put on Your Homepage, and in What Order

Good homepage design does one job: it gets the right visitor to take the next step. For most small businesses that step is a call, a message or a quote request. This guide sets out what to put on your homepage, in what order, what to leave off, and how to tell if yours is working. It draws on real homepages we have designed and real ones we have been asked to fix.

What should a homepage include?

A small business homepage should include a clear headline saying what you do and where, one obvious way to get in touch, proof that you are good at it, your main services, a short section about who you are, examples of your work, answers to common questions, and your contact details. Put them in that order, most important first.

What is a homepage for?

A homepage is a front door and a signpost. It is not the place to say everything. A visitor arrives with three questions, usually in this order: am I in the right place, can I trust these people, and what do I do next? A homepage that answers all three quickly is doing its job.

It does not have to carry every detail. Each service should have its own page, and the homepage introduces them and sends people on. Our guide to a brochure website covers how a handful of pages fit together.

What goes above the fold?

“Above the fold” means what a visitor sees before they scroll. It matters more than any other part of the page. In an eye tracking study, Nielsen Norman Group found that people spent 57% of their page viewing time above the fold, and 74% in the first two screenfuls.

So the top of your homepage needs four things and very little else:

• A headline that says what you do and where. “Double glazing fitted across Thanet” beats “Welcome to our website” every time.
• One supporting line. Who it is for, or the main reason to choose you.
• One main button. Call, get a quote, book. Pick the one that matters most and make it the most obvious thing on the screen.
• A real image. Your work, your team, your premises. Not a stock photo of a handshake.

The headline is the part we see go wrong most. When we audited a Kent timber retailer’s online shop, the main heading on the homepage was just the brand name. That tells a new visitor nothing about what the business sells, and it tells Google nothing either. Google lists the main visual title and heading elements among the sources it uses to work out how your page is titled in search results, so a clear headline earns its place twice.

The sections a small business homepage needs, in order

This is the order we start from. It follows the visitor’s three questions: right place, trust, next step.

Not every business needs all eleven. A shop will swap “how it works” for its best selling products. The order of the first three rarely changes.

Put your proof higher than feels comfortable

We put reviews directly under the headline, not at the bottom as a finishing touch. The same timber retailer had genuinely happy customers and a rating on an independent review site, and not one review or testimonial anywhere on its own website. We named that as the single biggest thing holding its enquiries and sales back.

Make contact work, then test it

On that same audit, the phone link had two numbers crammed into one link, so it dialled neither. The email address in the footer was set up as a phone link, so tapping it tried to dial. Nobody had noticed. On the site we built for a double glazing company in Thanet, tap to call and WhatsApp sit on every page.

What should you leave off a homepage?

These are the things we remove most often:

• Sliding banners that move by themselves. Nielsen Norman Group’s research found that auto-forwarding carousels annoy users and reduce visibility, because each message only gets a turn on screen and people tend to read moving panels as adverts.
• Pop-ups that cover the page on arrival. Google’s guidance says intrusive pop-ups make it harder for search engines to understand your content, and recommends a small banner instead.
• Sound or video that plays without being asked. Browsers block most of it, and forced music puts buyers off. On a shop we built, the audio sits behind a tap to play button that is off by default.
• Your full company history. Two or three sentences, then a link to the About page.
• Details that contradict each other. We have seen opening hours shown as “by appointment only” in one place and nine to five in another on the same page.
• Five different buttons competing for attention. Choose one main action and repeat it. Pages that people land on from adverts need the same discipline, which we cover in landing page optimisation.

For the wording itself, see how to write website content.

How should a homepage work on a phone?

Design the phone version first, because that is where most people will see it. Mobile accounted for around 56% of UK web traffic in September 2026, according to StatCounter, and Google uses the mobile version of a site for indexing and ranking.

We see this in how our own clients look at their designs. When we sent a homepage design to the director of a construction firm, his first reply said he had “only looked at it from my phone” and would look properly on a computer at the weekend. His customers will only do the first half.

On a phone, check these:

• The headline and main button fit on the first screen without scrolling.
• The phone number is a tap to call link, and it dials the right number.
• Buttons are big enough for a thumb. Google’s web.dev guidance suggests touch targets of around 48 pixels, roughly 9mm, with space between them.
• Everything on the desktop version is there. Google’s guidance is that only content shown on the mobile site is used for indexing, so hiding sections on phones can cost you in search.
• It loads quickly on mobile data, not just on office wifi. See how to improve WordPress website speed.

For the wider picture, see how to make a website mobile friendly.

How do you tell if your homepage is working?

Four checks will tell you most of it:

1. The five second check. Show the top of your homepage to someone who does not know your business, for five seconds, then take it away. Ask what you do, where, and how they would get in touch. If they cannot say, the headline needs work.
2. Count enquiries, not visits. Calls, forms and messages each month are the number that matters. Ask every new enquirer how they found you. Our own enquiry form asks exactly that.
3. Tap every link on your own phone. Phone, email, WhatsApp, the form. Send yourself a test enquiry and make sure it arrives.
4. Look at what people click. If your analytics show nobody reaching your service pages from the homepage, the route to them is not clear enough.

Our website audit checklist goes through the whole site.

How we design a homepage

We design the homepage first, before any other page, and you see it before you pay anything. The reason is practical. The homepage settles the decisions every other page depends on: colours, type, photography, tone of voice and the main call to action. It is the first part of our web design process, and the design stage includes two rounds of changes.

We also send more than one direction, because it is far easier to react to two real designs than to describe what you want in the abstract. A double glazing company in Thanet had three homepage designs two days after his first message. A scrap metal business in Maidstone had two within four days of enquiring.

Seeing a real homepage changes the conversation. A wellness retreat wanted to look like a luxury brand, and at the homepage stage we told the owner his existing logo did not match that. We produced alternative colourways and rebuilt the homepage in cream and racing green with gold accents. His reply was “This is much better.” A garden room company came with its own steer, saw our alternative next to it, and picked ours as the one to move forward with. Another business owner told us she had been sceptical when she first saw our advert, and that seeing the actual preview had changed her impression.

It is cheap to change your mind at that point, and expensive once ten pages have been built on top.

How we put this together

The order of sections is our own starting point for homepage designs across trades, shops and salons. The examples of things going wrong come from an audit of a live site, with the business kept anonymous. The client reactions are from real messages, quoted briefly. The figures on attention, carousels, pop-ups, phone usage and tap sizes are linked to the organisations that published them. We are a web design agency, so weigh the section about our own approach as you would anyone’s.

The short version

Say what you do and where. Give one clear next step. Show proof early. Cut anything that moves, pops up or plays without being asked. Then check it on a phone. Our guide to what makes a good website covers the pages beyond the homepage.

If you would like to see what your own homepage could look like, tell us about your business and we will design one for you to judge.

Sources

• Nielsen Norman Group, Scrolling and Attention: 57% of viewing time above the fold, 74% in the first two screenfuls.
• Nielsen Norman Group, Auto-Forwarding Carousels and Accordions Annoy Users and Reduce Visibility: why sliding banners underperform.
• Google Search Central, Influencing title links: headings and the main visual title are among the sources Google uses.
• Google Search Central, Avoid intrusive interstitials and dialogs: pop-ups that cover content, and the banner alternative.
• Google Search Central, Mobile-first indexing: Google indexes and ranks using the mobile version of a site.
• StatCounter, Desktop vs Mobile Market Share United Kingdom: mobile’s share of UK web traffic, September 2026.
• web.dev, Accessible tap targets: recommended touch target size and spacing.