what should be on the home page: the five things, and the three to delete

web · Sep 23, 2026 · 4 min read

your home page is met by people with no context, half a minute of patience, and seven other tabs open. everything on it either serves that meeting or wastes it.

the five things that do the work

  • what you do, for whom, in plain words — first screen. not a slogan. "wedding photography in parma and emilia-romagna" beats "we capture moments that last a lifetime" every single time, because the first one can be judged and the second one cannot. the visitor should know within five seconds whether they are in the right place.
  • one primary action, repeated. book, call, write, buy — pick the one that matters and make it impossible to miss. secondary actions can exist, quietly. the main one appears at the top, after the proof, and at the end.
  • proof, close to the claim. photos of real work next to the service, reviews next to the promise, numbers next to the results. a claim with no proof is an opinion; proof is what converts a skimmer into a lead. the tactics i use for exactly this are written up in the ux tactics on my own website.
  • services or products, few and named. three to six entries, named the way clients name them, each linking to its page. this is also how the page teaches search engines what you are, which is written about plainly in how many pages does my website need.
  • a short, human about. two lines on who is behind the work. people hire people; a page with no humans on it reads like a shell company.

the three things to delete

  • the carousel. nobody waits for slide three. the second and third slides get almost no views, and the first slot of your page — the most valuable pixels you own — spends them rotating.
  • the welcome paragraph. "welcome to our website, we are passionate about..." carries zero information. the visitor came to judge, not to be welcomed. replace it with the what-you-do sentence.
  • the jargon. integrated synergistic solutions mean nothing to anyone, including the person who wrote them. plain words are not a style choice; they are the difference between being understood and being scrolled.

the five-second test

hand your phone to someone outside your industry, home page open, five seconds, then take it back and ask: what does this company do, and what could you click? if both answers are wrong or hesitant, the page is not done, no matter how good it looks.

run the test before the redesign and after. the delta is your actual result, and it matters more than any opinion, including mine.

the closing thought

a home page is not a brochure cover. it is a counter in a shop: the visitor walks up, looks around, and decides in seconds whether to stay. clear words, visible proof, one obvious next step — the rest is furniture.

if you are near Parma and want your home page judged by the five-second test with honest notes: