One services page or a page for each service

For your trade 6 min read

How to decide whether your trade needs a single services page or a page per job, the test that settles it, and what belongs on either one.

You do six things. Somebody has told you each one should have its own page, and somebody else has told you that is overkill for a business with one van.

They are both describing real sites. The difference between the version that works and the version that clutters your site up is not the number of pages.

The question underneath the question

The question is whether you can say something different about each one.

A page exists to answer a person who came looking for one specific thing. If two of your services would end up with the same paragraph, the same photograph and the same price, they were always one page and a list.

The test that settles it

Try to write three hundred words about the service that a customer would actually read to the end. Not three hundred words about how seriously you take the work. Three hundred about the job itself: what goes wrong, what you find when you get there, what you do, how long it takes, what it depends on.

If it comes out easily, that service has a page. If you are padding by the second paragraph, it belongs as a section on the main page.

Most owners can do this for two or three of their services and not for the rest. That is a normal answer.

When one page is the right answer

One page, with the services as clear sections down it, is the right shape more often than the internet suggests. It is right when:

You do a handful of closely related things and the customer thinks of them as one job. You are one person and the site is there to get you rung, not to catch every possible search. Your services overlap so heavily that a stranger could not tell you which one they need. Or you have no photographs and nothing to say yet, in which case three honest sections beat six thin pages while you gather the material.

There is no penalty for a good single page. Plenty of trades are better served by one clear page and a phone number than by a menu that takes two taps to get through.

When a service has earned its own page

Split when at least two of these are true, not one.

Somebody searches for it by name. People type the job, not your category. A phrase that a customer would actually type is a page.

It is priced differently enough to need its own explanation. If one service is a flat figure and another is a day rate, they need different money paragraphs, and the money is worth writing down.

It is a different customer. Emergency work at midnight and a planned installation booked in March are not the same person in the same mood. The emergency page should be shorter and the phone number should be nearer the top.

You have your own photographs of it. Real pictures of that work, taken by you, are half of what makes a service page worth reading.

It has its own questions. If a service generates five questions on the phone that no other service does, the answers make the page on their own.

What goes on a single service page

Keep the order the way somebody thinks about it, not the way a brochure is written.

What the job is, in the words a customer uses. What it costs, or how you price it. How long it takes and how soon you could get there. What you need from them before you start. What actually happens on the day, step by step, because that is the part people are nervous about. One or two photographs of the work. Any question you answer on the phone every time, answered here instead. Then the phone number, and a form for the people who will not call.

That is a full page. Nothing on that list is filler, and if you cannot fill half of it, you have your answer about whether the page should exist.

What the main services page does once the others exist

It stops being a wall of text and becomes a menu.

Each service gets a heading, two or three sentences in plain words, and a link through to its page. Put the one that pays your bills first rather than the one you enjoy most, and put the emergency one where a thumb lands without scrolling. If somebody lands on the menu page by accident, they should be able to tell in five seconds whether you do the thing they need.

The pages that quietly make a site worse

The failure mode is a page per service where every page is the same page with one word swapped. Six near-identical pages do not read as thoroughness. They read as a site assembled by somebody who did not know the work, which is the opposite of what you were buying.

The same trap catches town pages, and for the same reason: the page exists to catch a phrase rather than to answer a person. If a page has nothing on it that could only have been written by you, it is not earning its place.

Thin pages also cost you time. Every page is a thing to keep true when your prices, your area or your equipment change.

Check these before you split anything

• You can write three hundred words a customer would read to the end
• You have at least one photograph of that work, taken by you
• The service is something people search for by name
• You can say what it costs or how you price it
• You can say how long it takes and how soon you can come
• At least one question is unique to this service
• The page would say something no other page on your site says
• You will still be able to keep it accurate in a year
• The main services page links to it in plain words

If you get four ticks, split it. Two, leave it as a section and revisit when you have photographs.

Questions people ask

How many service pages is too many?

The number stops mattering once each page has something on it only you could have written. Twelve real pages are fine. Four thin ones are not.

Should every service be in the menu at the top?

No. Put your main category in the top menu and let the services live on the page underneath it. A menu with nine items on a phone is a menu nobody reads.

What about a service I only do twice a year?

Leave it as a line on the main page. If those two jobs a year are the ones you want more of, that is a different decision, and then it earns a page.

Two of my services are almost the same. One page or two?

One, with both names in the heading and a paragraph explaining the difference. Customers who are unsure which they need are better served by a page that tells them.

Can I start with one page and split it later?

Yes, and that is usually the cheaper order. Write the single page first, watch which sections people ask about on the phone, and give those the pages.

Will more pages get me more traffic?

Nobody can promise that, and pages made only to have more pages tend to be the thin ones. Write the page because a customer needs it, and treat anything else as a bonus you did not count on.