The service business website checklist — what every page needs

A service business website has one job: turn a stranger searching for help into a phone call, a form submission, or a booking. Most service business sites have ten jobs and do all of them badly. This checklist is what works.

Home page

• A headline in plain English that answers: What do you do? Who is it for? Where? (not "Excellence in service since 2003")
• Your phone number, large, clickable on mobile, above the fold
• A primary CTA — "Get a free quote" or "Book a consultation" — that actually goes somewhere useful
• Three to five photos of real work, not stock
• Three trust signals: years in business, number of customers served, licensing
• Recent customer reviews — at least three, with names and the customer's city
• The service area, named: cities, counties, neighborhoods
• A footer with phone, email, address, hours, license number

Services pages (one per service)

Each major service should have its own page. Not a single 'Services' list with bullet points. Each page should include:

• The service name as the H1 — matching how customers search for it ("Water heater repair" not "Hot water services")
• A short paragraph: what this service involves, when you need it, how you do it
• Pricing or a price range. "Starting at $X" is fine if the work varies.
• Photos of this specific service being performed
• How long it usually takes
• What's included and what's not (the latter prevents the most expensive disputes)
• A CTA specific to this service — "Book a water heater inspection" not the generic "Contact us"
• A short FAQ — 3–5 questions you get on every call about this service

About page

• A photo of the actual person or team. Real photos, not stock.
• The origin story — short. 2 paragraphs maximum.
• Why customers should trust you specifically — licensing, certifications, years, training
• A specific personal commitment — what you promise that competitors do not
• Community involvement if true — sponsorships, local memberships, charity work

Contact page

• A phone number — large, clickable
• A short form: name, phone, what they need help with. Five fields max. Keep it under 60 seconds to complete.
• Your service area listed by city
• Office hours in your timezone with "Closed Sundays" or similar if true
• A Google Maps embed centered on your service area
• Auto-confirmation email after submission so they know it went through
• A response-time promise — "We reply within 4 business hours"

The page most service businesses forget: Reviews

A dedicated /reviews or /testimonials page that pulls and displays your Google reviews in full. This is the page that closes the sale for customers who land on your site after seeing your Google Business listing — they want to read more than the four reviews Google shows in the preview.

• Full text of recent reviews — 10–20 minimum
• Reviewer first name + last initial + city
• Date of review
• Service they got
• Photos when the customer left them
• A direct 'Leave a review on Google' button at the bottom

The page most service businesses get wrong: Pricing

Customers want to know what things cost. Most service business sites refuse to publish prices, hoping to force a phone call. The result: lower conversion, more tire-kicker calls, and customers who price-shop your competition instead.

Better approach: publish "Starting at" prices for your most common services, plus what affects the final price. "Drain cleaning starts at $149. Final price depends on access and severity." This filters serious buyers in and saves you time.

Technical checklist (page-agnostic)

• Mobile-responsive — over 70% of service business searches happen on mobile
• Lighthouse Performance score of 90+ on mobile
• HTTPS everywhere with a valid certificate
• A favicon (the tiny browser tab icon — missing it screams "amateur")
• A real 404 page that helps people get back on track
• Schema markup for LocalBusiness, Service, Review, and OpeningHours
• A sitemap.xml submitted to Google Search Console
• A robots.txt file allowing search engines
• Title and meta description on every page — written for humans, not just for SEO
• Open Graph tags for when the page gets shared on Facebook or LinkedIn
• A privacy policy and terms — required if you collect any form data

Want this done for you?

Every Vivid Local build comes with the full checklist above included. $499 / $1,499 / $2,999 depending on size. See plans →