Websites
What should your service business website do besides look good?
Help customers see what you do, where you work, and how to reach you. Try a simple phone test to see where your website makes them guess.
Justin CollierFounder, Arcadia Websites3 min readOpen your website on a phone and try to hire yourself. You should be able to find the right service, decide whether the business fits, and take the next step without guessing.
Nina has a few minutes before work to find a shop that can inspect her brakes. She pulls up a site on her phone. The shop looks clean in the photos, but the page just says “Full-service auto care.” She still has to find out whether they do brake inspections, where the shop is, and how to get a time.
The next shop puts those answers where she can see them. She knows where to go, what the shop will do first, and how to ask about availability. That’s the job I want a service website to do.
Help customers find the right service
Start with the words customers use when they call you. A menu that says “Brake inspections” gets Nina to the right page faster than one that says “Solutions.” A roofer can give leak inspections and replacements their own descriptions so customers know which one to ask for.
Say where you work while the customer is deciding. Put the shop location near the service details. If you travel to the customer, name the towns or neighborhoods you actually cover. Think about which detail saves you from taking a call you can’t help with.
See what Nina finds on her phone.
Serving the area
Full-service auto careQuality service for all your automotive needs.
Learn moreNina still needs to ask whether the shop inspects brakes and how to get a time.
Show what hiring you looks like
Nina sees that the shop starts with an inspection and calls to explain what it finds before quoting repairs. That short explanation tells her more about the visit than a wall of promises about great service.
Choose details you can stand behind. A real job photo with a sentence about the work helps a homeowner picture their own project. A remodeler can explain what happens during the first walkthrough. Show customers enough to know what they’re signing up for.
Make it easy to ask for the work
Pick an action you can follow through on. If your team needs to confirm the visit, use “Request a visit” and tell people who will get back to them. If calls work best, put a number they can tap on the service page itself.
Ask for the details you use to reply. The shop needs Nina’s contact information, the vehicle, and a short note about what she’s noticed. It can get the rest when someone calls her back.
Try to hire yourself from your phone
Open the service page the way a customer would, without going through your homepage. Can you read it without pinching and zooming? Can you see the service area and find the contact button? Check that the form says what happened after you send a test.
That’s the walkthrough I use when I build a custom site. We choose the jobs you want the site to bring in, decide what customers need to know, and check that the request reaches the right person. If you already have a site, start with one service page that gets calls with the same questions over and over.
Sources & a little context
These are practical setup recommendations. The scenarios are mockups, not recordings of customer calls or measured results. Features depend on your selected services and supported connections.
Guidance on useful page content, clear headings, and descriptive links.
Guidance on simple forms, clear field labels, and useful confirmations.
Explains how text and controls should fit narrower screens and larger text settings.
YOUR BUSINESS, YOUR SETUP
Build a website that brings you the right requests
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