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Deep dives into design thinking, creative process, and the intersection of business and aesthetics.
A homepage should answer the buyer before they ask.
Plenty of homepages are still built like the inside cover of a brochure. There's a "Welcome to…" headline over a stock photo of a handshake, and underneath it a mission statement about excellence. It's all written to be read at leisure, by someone who has already decided to take an interest in you.
That isn't how people arrive. A homepage isn't a brochure; it's a sales rep that works nights and weekends. Its job is to work out whether the visitor is a good fit and, if they are, to deal with their doubts and move them towards a conversation. If your best salesperson stood in the corner of a meeting holding a pamphlet, waiting for the client to speak first, you'd have a word with them. A lot of websites do exactly that, and nobody pulls them up on it.
What your homepage has to answer in the first few seconds
People landing on a homepage scan before they read, and they decide quickly whether to stay. Within a few seconds, the top of the page has to answer four questions:
What do you do?
Who is it for?
What does the client get out of it?
Why should I believe you?
If a visitor has to open the menu or wade through a dense paragraph to find out whether you're a B2B consultancy or a shop, most won't bother. They'll go back to the search results and try the next one.
Clever headlines are the usual culprit. "Elevating Visions for Tomorrow" could belong to a bank or an optician, and it leaves the reader to work out what you sell. "Commercial architecture for Irish retail" answers the first two questions in five words, and the rest of the page can get on with the other two.
Route people by how ready they are
Visitors don't all arrive in the same frame of mind, and the homepage has to work for more than one of them.
Some are ready now. They've done their research and they have a deadline. They want to talk to someone, and your company history can wait. For them, a "Book a call" button should be visible at the top right of every page, all the time. On a phone it should sit where a thumb can reach it. Tucking it inside a hamburger menu because the header looked tidier that way in the design presentation loses you the people who were ready to call.
The rest are still deciding. They have you open in one tab and two or three competitors in the others, and they want two things quickly. One is a direct route to your services, with enough about scope and how you work to tell whether you cover what they need. Burying the services under "About" fails them at the first step. The other is evidence: case studies they can reach in one tap, ideally with a client name they recognise.
We plan homepages around both groups. That usually means fewer, more obvious options, and nothing important hidden for the sake of a cleaner layout.
Put the proof near the top
Testimonials used to go at the bottom of the page, just above the footer, on the theory that the visitor would read the whole pitch and then look for reassurance. That assumes more patience than most visitors bring with them.
So we put evidence high on the page, often directly under the main headline: client logos, or a specific result you can stand behind. You're asking a stranger for their time, and it's reasonable to show them why you're worth it before you ask. If a visitor sees early on that you've worked with, say, the University of Limerick or The Crescent Shopping Centre, they relax a little and give the rest of the page more of their attention.
Specific copy brings in better enquiries
Vague copy attracts vague enquiries. Many businesses water down the message because they're afraid of putting anyone off, and "We help businesses grow" is the classic result. "Businesses" covers everything from the coffee shop on the corner to a pharmaceutical multinational, so the line tells neither of them anything. If you want better leads, narrow it: "We build e-commerce for Irish SMEs that need online sales to carry more of the business." Some people will read that and leave, and most of them were never going to hire you anyway.
Where you are is part of this. A line as ordinary as "Senior design team based in Limerick" does more work than it appears to. It tells a buyer there are real people behind the site, in their time zone, who know the local market. That holds for clients further afield too, because a specific place reads as more genuine than a vague claim to be everywhere.
Take out whatever makes people hesitate
Anything that slows a visitor down or gives them a reason to pause costs you enquiries, and most of it sits in parts of the site nobody on your team looks at any more.
Navigation is the first place to check. A main menu with a dozen items gives people so much to choose from that they often choose nothing. Keep it to a handful and give each item a plain label. "Solutions" means nothing to a visitor; "Plumbing services" does. People will click "How we work" long before they click "Our philosophy".
Then the contact form. Don't ask for a phone number unless you're going to ring it, and don't ask for a budget before the page has given the visitor any reason to trust you. Every field you add is one more small reason to give up halfway.
Give the ready buyer a button and everyone else a way in
The call to action is where the page asks for the business, so the wording matters. "Submit" and "Click here" describe the mechanics. "Start your project" or "Get your audit" describe what the visitor gets.
In the hero section we usually recommend two. The primary is a high-contrast button, "Book a consultation", for the visitor who's ready. The secondary is a quieter text link, "View our work", for the one who isn't yet. Not everyone wants a meeting on their first visit, and giving them something useful to do instead keeps them on the site without pushing.
A useful exercise before you change anything: open your homepage on your phone, as if you'd never heard of the company, with two competitors' sites open in other tabs. If it takes more than a glance to tell what you do and who it's for, that's where to start.
Related Brainstorm services and work
Website strategy and UX services · View conversion-focused case studies · Plan a stronger website
Updated 24 September 2026. Dave Curtin, founder and Creative Director of Brainstorm, leads website strategy, brand direction and technical delivery for Brainstorm clients.
A homepage should answer the buyer before they ask.
Plenty of homepages are still built like the inside cover of a brochure. There's a "Welcome to…" headline over a stock photo of a handshake, and underneath it a mission statement about excellence. It's all written to be read at leisure, by someone who has already decided to take an interest in you.
That isn't how people arrive. A homepage isn't a brochure; it's a sales rep that works nights and weekends. Its job is to work out whether the visitor is a good fit and, if they are, to deal with their doubts and move them towards a conversation. If your best salesperson stood in the corner of a meeting holding a pamphlet, waiting for the client to speak first, you'd have a word with them. A lot of websites do exactly that, and nobody pulls them up on it.
What your homepage has to answer in the first few seconds
People landing on a homepage scan before they read, and they decide quickly whether to stay. Within a few seconds, the top of the page has to answer four questions:
What do you do?
Who is it for?
What does the client get out of it?
Why should I believe you?
If a visitor has to open the menu or wade through a dense paragraph to find out whether you're a B2B consultancy or a shop, most won't bother. They'll go back to the search results and try the next one.
Clever headlines are the usual culprit. "Elevating Visions for Tomorrow" could belong to a bank or an optician, and it leaves the reader to work out what you sell. "Commercial architecture for Irish retail" answers the first two questions in five words, and the rest of the page can get on with the other two.
Route people by how ready they are
Visitors don't all arrive in the same frame of mind, and the homepage has to work for more than one of them.
Some are ready now. They've done their research and they have a deadline. They want to talk to someone, and your company history can wait. For them, a "Book a call" button should be visible at the top right of every page, all the time. On a phone it should sit where a thumb can reach it. Tucking it inside a hamburger menu because the header looked tidier that way in the design presentation loses you the people who were ready to call.
The rest are still deciding. They have you open in one tab and two or three competitors in the others, and they want two things quickly. One is a direct route to your services, with enough about scope and how you work to tell whether you cover what they need. Burying the services under "About" fails them at the first step. The other is evidence: case studies they can reach in one tap, ideally with a client name they recognise.
We plan homepages around both groups. That usually means fewer, more obvious options, and nothing important hidden for the sake of a cleaner layout.
Put the proof near the top
Testimonials used to go at the bottom of the page, just above the footer, on the theory that the visitor would read the whole pitch and then look for reassurance. That assumes more patience than most visitors bring with them.
So we put evidence high on the page, often directly under the main headline: client logos, or a specific result you can stand behind. You're asking a stranger for their time, and it's reasonable to show them why you're worth it before you ask. If a visitor sees early on that you've worked with, say, the University of Limerick or The Crescent Shopping Centre, they relax a little and give the rest of the page more of their attention.
Specific copy brings in better enquiries
Vague copy attracts vague enquiries. Many businesses water down the message because they're afraid of putting anyone off, and "We help businesses grow" is the classic result. "Businesses" covers everything from the coffee shop on the corner to a pharmaceutical multinational, so the line tells neither of them anything. If you want better leads, narrow it: "We build e-commerce for Irish SMEs that need online sales to carry more of the business." Some people will read that and leave, and most of them were never going to hire you anyway.
Where you are is part of this. A line as ordinary as "Senior design team based in Limerick" does more work than it appears to. It tells a buyer there are real people behind the site, in their time zone, who know the local market. That holds for clients further afield too, because a specific place reads as more genuine than a vague claim to be everywhere.
Take out whatever makes people hesitate
Anything that slows a visitor down or gives them a reason to pause costs you enquiries, and most of it sits in parts of the site nobody on your team looks at any more.
Navigation is the first place to check. A main menu with a dozen items gives people so much to choose from that they often choose nothing. Keep it to a handful and give each item a plain label. "Solutions" means nothing to a visitor; "Plumbing services" does. People will click "How we work" long before they click "Our philosophy".
Then the contact form. Don't ask for a phone number unless you're going to ring it, and don't ask for a budget before the page has given the visitor any reason to trust you. Every field you add is one more small reason to give up halfway.
Give the ready buyer a button and everyone else a way in
The call to action is where the page asks for the business, so the wording matters. "Submit" and "Click here" describe the mechanics. "Start your project" or "Get your audit" describe what the visitor gets.
In the hero section we usually recommend two. The primary is a high-contrast button, "Book a consultation", for the visitor who's ready. The secondary is a quieter text link, "View our work", for the one who isn't yet. Not everyone wants a meeting on their first visit, and giving them something useful to do instead keeps them on the site without pushing.
A useful exercise before you change anything: open your homepage on your phone, as if you'd never heard of the company, with two competitors' sites open in other tabs. If it takes more than a glance to tell what you do and who it's for, that's where to start.
Related Brainstorm services and work
Website strategy and UX services · View conversion-focused case studies · Plan a stronger website
Updated 24 September 2026. Dave Curtin, founder and Creative Director of Brainstorm, leads website strategy, brand direction and technical delivery for Brainstorm clients.