A cabinet ad found me last week.
I’m sourcing cabinets for a design project, and the promise stopped my scroll: custom cabinetry, built here in the USA. That’s rare. So I clicked.
Then the website started talking. Luxurious. Premium. Top-tier materials. Page after page of what the company believed about itself.
It never answered the one question I came with.
What is the box made of?
Nobody Comes to Your Website to Hear You Talk About Yourself
Every buyer shows up with a question you didn’t write.
The homeowner who smells mildew in the bathroom isn’t searching for “building performance evaluation.” She’s lying awake wondering whether the air in her house is making her kids sick, and whether the person who finds the problem is the same person who gets paid to fix it.
I didn’t care about “elegant.” I wanted to know plywood or particleboard, framed or frameless, and how long it would take. I wanted to know it would hold up through a Florida summer.
Most websites answer none of that. They open with the company. Our services, our process, our team, book now.
That is a company talking to itself in public.
New here? The Jenn Files is for owners building something that can’t be broken.
“Book Now” Is a Proposal on the First Date
Over the past few weeks I’ve taken a hard look at the websites of six small businesses. Good companies, growing, well reviewed, with real expertise behind them.
Every one of them had the same problem.
A nervous visitor lands on the homepage and gets exactly two choices. Book now or call.
Think about who’s on the other side of that screen. They’re worried, or curious, or not sure you’re the right fit. They aren’t ready to spend money, and they are definitely not ready to talk to a salesperson.
So they leave, and you never know they were there. That’s traffic you already paid for and money you never see.
Below the line:
The ten-minute homepage test that exposed the same problem on all six sites.
What to give a visitor who isn’t ready to call or book.
The five items I want in every article before a service business bothers to publish it.
