Answer the four questions above the fold
Someone arriving from a search has four questions, and they will leave if the first screen does not answer them. What is this, where is it, is it open, and how do I book.
That sounds obvious and is routinely missed in favour of a large photograph and a slogan. The slogan can stay, but the town, the hours, and the booking action need to be visible without scrolling.
The pages you genuinely need
A small local business does not need twenty pages. It needs a handful that each do a job, and a page per service is where the ranking and the converting both happen.
- Home. What you do, where, and the primary booking action.
- One page per significant service, with prices, durations, and specific questions answered.
- About. Real people, real photographs, real history. This page converts better than owners expect.
- Contact. Address, phone, email, a map, and the hours again.
- Booking, if it is not embedded everywhere else already.
Prices, or a reason there are none
Withholding prices is the most common conversion mistake in local services. The reasoning is usually that price should be discussed in context. The effect is that a visitor who cannot find a number assumes the worst and goes to a competitor who published theirs.
If prices genuinely vary, publish a range, a starting price, or a worked example. "Full colour from £95, typically 2 to 3 hours" is enormously more useful than "contact us for pricing", and it filters out enquiries you did not want anyway.
Photographs of the actual place
Stock photography is instantly recognisable and quietly corrosive. A visitor who sees a generic smiling model learns nothing about whether they want to walk into your building.
Photographs of your real space, your real team, and your real work do the opposite. They are also the honest version, which matters because the visitor will find out either way when they arrive. If the room is small, show the small room well.
Make contact details selectable and tappable
A phone number rendered inside an image cannot be tapped, copied, or read by a screen reader, and cannot be indexed. The same applies to an address in a graphic.
Write them as text. Make the phone number a link that dials on mobile. Put the address in the footer of every page. These are three small details that between them account for a surprising share of lost enquiries.
Answer the questions you are tired of answering
Whatever you explain most often on the phone belongs on the site, in the customer's own words. Parking. Whether you take children. Whether you have step-free access. How long the appointment takes. Whether you take walk-ins. What to bring.
This is the single cheapest improvement available to most local sites. Every question answered on the page is a call you do not take and a visitor who does not leave to find out elsewhere.
What to leave off
The list of things that cost more than they return is fairly consistent across local businesses.
- An image carousel on the home page. Visitors rarely see slide two, and it slows the first paint.
- Anything that plays sound or video automatically.
- A pop-up before the visitor has read anything.
- A blog that has not been updated in two years. An empty blog is worse than no blog.
- Live chat nobody staffs, which promises an answer and delivers silence.
- Awards, badges, and certifications nobody outside your trade recognises.
Get the mobile version right first
Most local traffic is on a phone, frequently on mobile data, sometimes standing outside deciding whether to come in. If the site works beautifully on a large monitor and awkwardly on a phone, it works awkwardly for nearly everyone who uses it.
Test it on a real phone, on mobile data, not a resized browser window on office wifi. Tap every button with a thumb. That test finds more real problems than any checklist, including this one.