Tuesday evening, twenty past six. Someone is standing next to a car that won't start, searching on their phone for a garage nearby, and they tap your name. You get about five seconds. Not because they're rude, but because three other tabs are open with three other garages.

In those five seconds nobody scrolls. They look at the top slice of the screen — on a phone, roughly half a sheet of A4 — and then they decide: keep looking, or go back to Google.

That is the real job of your homepage. Not to look handsome. To win that decision.

Five questions, in this order

What do you do? In plain words, not a slogan. "We repair and service cars" is clear. "Your partner in mobility" is not. Rule of thumb: if your sentence could hang above the door of a completely different business, it's too vague.

Is this for me? A dental practice that also treats nervous children, a garage that also handles vans, a restaurant with a serious gluten-free menu — just say so. People are looking for confirmation that they're in the right place, and on most small-business sites that confirmation is buried three clicks deep.

Where are you? Put your town at the top, not only in the footer. You know you're in Leeds; your visitor doesn't, and for local services that is the first thing that loses them. "Bodywork repairs in Leeds and surrounding areas" does more work than three paragraphs about craftsmanship.

Can I trust you? One real photo of your premises, your van or your team beats ten stock images here. Add opening hours, a phone number a human answers, two or three recent reviews, and the year you started.

What do I do next? One clear next step. Call, book, request a quote. If you put three equally sized buttons side by side, a good share of your visitors will choose none of them.

Only four things belong above the fold

"Above the fold" means what someone sees without scrolling. On a phone, that's less than you think. What belongs there: one sentence saying what you do and who for, your town or region, one button, and an image of your actual business.

That's it. The rest of the page can be as long as it needs to be — anyone who scrolls is already interested.

The button that actually matters

On a phone that is almost always a call button. Not a phone number as plain text that someone has to copy out, but a button that opens the phone app. Open your own site and try it with your thumb, standing up, one-handed. If it takes more than two taps, you are losing customers right there.

What you can delete

The rotating slider at the top: gone. Almost nobody waits for slide two, and the first message slides away while someone is still reading it. Pick your most important message and leave it still.

The welcome text ("Welcome to our website, we're glad you're here") can go too. It spends the most valuable line on the page saying nothing. Same for the mission statement about passion and quality: everyone writes that, so it distinguishes nothing. Put down what you concretely do, who for, and where.

The neighbour test

You don't need an agency for this. Ask someone who doesn't know your business — a neighbour, a customer, your accountant — to open your homepage on their own phone. Let them look for five seconds, then turn the screen away.

Ask three questions: what do we do, could you be a customer here, and what would you tap now? If any answer hesitates, you know exactly which of the five questions is missing from the top. Do this with three people and the pattern is obvious immediately.

What to do this week

  • Open your homepage on your own phone and write down literally what is visible without scrolling. Missing what you do, who for, or where? That's your first edit.
  • Rewrite that top sentence in plain language, with your town in it. One sentence, short enough to read aloud in a breath.
  • Run the neighbour test with three people who don't know your business, and note their first answer each time.

If you get stuck on what that one sentence should be, or you'd simply like a second pair of eyes, that's a conversation we have often at ITSysPro — half an hour on your homepage usually produces three concrete changes.