I paid someone to write my service pages once, and the words were perfectly good but they were not mine. So I wrote them myself, with help from the plain guides on Here Designs, and customers started quoting my own sentences back at me on the phone.
The rule I set was simple. Write it the way I say it on the phone, not the way I think a business should sound. I stopped opening paragraphs with all that striving and started with what I actually do, which is turn up, measure, quote, and get on with the job.
Each service got a page of its own. Not a single long page with everything crammed on it, which made people scroll and give up. Separate pages meant I could answer the questions that belong to that job, and the page title said exactly what the thing was.
Photos came next. I stopped using stock pictures of smiling people in offices and took my own, badly, with a phone. A shot of my actual van with the ladder on the roof does more work than a stock photograph, even slightly out of focus.
Then the questions. I keep a list of what people ask before they buy. How long does it take? What do you need from me? What happens if it rains? Answering them on the page, in the order they get asked, cut down the same basic enquiries coming through the phone.
The end of each page says what to do next. One clear thing. Not a paragraph about how much we care. A line asking them to call, with the number right there, and a form underneath for anyone who would rather type than talk.
