The five-second homepage test (and how to pass it)

Show a stranger your homepage for five seconds, then take it away. If they can't answer three questions, every pound you spend driving traffic there is working twice as hard as it should.

The three questions

What does this business sell? Not “something creative” or “something premium” — the actual thing. Who is it for? Me, or someone else? What should I do next? One obvious action.

Why five seconds

That's roughly the patience of a visitor who clicked an ad, a search result or a social post while thinking about something else. They don't read homepages; they glance at them, and the glance decides whether the visit continues. Clever headlines lose to clear ones at a glance, every time.

How to pass: the headline

Say the thing. “Hand-poured soy candles, made in Yorkshire” beats “Light up your life”. “CBT therapy in Sheffield — in person or online” beats “A journey towards wellness”. The poetic version can live further down the page, after clarity has done its job. (Ours is a question — “Who's minding the shop?” — but the answer is on screen with it, plus what we build and for whom.)

How to pass: the next step

One primary button, above the fold, saying what actually happens: “Shop the range”, “Book a free 20-minute call”, “Get a quote”. Vague buttons (“Learn more”) leak intent. Two buttons is fine — one primary, one quieter — six is a corridor of doors.

How to pass: the proof strip

One line under the fold that answers “why trust you?”: reviews count, an accreditation, years trading, a named client. Small, factual, no adjectives.

Test it tonight

Ask someone who's never seen your site. Five seconds on a phone, then the three questions. Where they hesitate is your to-do list — and it's usually a headline rewrite, not a redesign.

Want the test run properly on your whole site, with the fixes in priority order? That's the £450 conversion audit — or start with the free 20-minute call.