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WebX/Studios
3 min read

The three words that kill a plumber homepage

"Welcome to [Name]." If it opens with that, you've already lost the customer.

By Sahil Pandya

Homepage copy is the one place on the internet where founders write in a voice they'd never use in person. They'd say 'Yeah we do hot water, same-day usually' on a phone call. They'd write 'Welcome to [Company Name], your trusted partner for all your plumbing needs' on the homepage.

The three words that kill a plumber homepage: welcome, trusted, needs. "Welcome" assumes the visitor cares who you are before they know if you can solve their problem. "Trusted" is a claim that literally means nothing — every plumber's site says trusted. "Needs" is the laziest noun in English. A burst pipe at 10pm isn't a need. It's a crisis.

Replace welcome-trusted-needs with three different words: what, where, when. What do you fix. Where do you fix it. When can you be there. If a homepage answers those three questions in the first scroll, the conversion rate doubles.

The test: read your homepage aloud to your partner. If they'd mock you for any sentence, delete that sentence.

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