The row of three icons tells visitors nothing, because every competitor claims quality, service and value too. Replace it with specific facts: what you do, where, for whom, and one piece of proof a stranger can check.

The row under the banner

Scroll past the banner on a great many small business home pages and the next thing you meet is a row of three icons.

A trophy or a star above the word quality. A handshake above service. A price tag or a piggy bank above value. Under each, two lines of text that could belong to any business in any trade.

The row usually arrived with the theme. The demo had three icons and placeholder text, and somebody filled them in with the first three good qualities that came to mind.

Nobody set out to say nothing. But nothing is what the row says.

Why the three words carry no weight

A reader weighs a claim, without quite thinking about it, by asking whether anybody would ever claim the opposite.

No business advertises poor quality, indifferent service or bad value. A claim nobody would deny gives the reader nothing to compare, so it is skipped.

The icons make it worse. They mark the row as a familiar layout, and familiar layouts are scanned rather than read.

So the row fills some of the most valuable space on the site, just below the first screen, and does no work at all.

What a visitor came to find out

Someone arriving from a search has a short list of questions and wants answers before scrolling far.

The fifth is the one the icon row was trying to answer. Quality and service are claims about trust, and trust comes from evidence, not adjectives.

Find the fact behind each word

Each of the three words was standing in for something real. The work is finding out what.

Quality usually means something specific: a licence, a warranty, a standard of materials, a way of checking work before leaving. Name that instead.

Service usually means how you deal with people: who answers the phone, how quickly a quote arrives, whether the same crew comes back to finish. Say which.

Value usually means a way of pricing: fixed quotes, no charge for estimates, itemised invoices. State the policy itself.

If nobody can say what a word stands for, it was decoration, and it can go.

Proof a stranger can check

Specific facts help. Facts a stranger could verify help more.

A count of reviews, with a link to where they are posted. The year the business started. A licence or registration number. Photographs of finished jobs, with the neighbourhood named.

Each is believable precisely because it can be checked. The visitor rarely checks; knowing they could is enough.

Customer comments count too, provided they are specific. A quote saying great service is the icon row again in quotation marks. One saying the crew covered the furniture and finished a day early is evidence.

A worked example

A glass company on the North Shore, with four installers replacing fogged windows, cutting mirrors and fitting shower doors, had the row under its banner: a diamond, a handshake and a dollar sign.

The words under each icon came from an old brochure, and nobody had read them since the site launched two years earlier.

The owner noticed the problem from the other end. New callers kept opening with the same questions: whether it replaced just the fogged glass, whether it worked in West Vancouver, whether it took small jobs.

Every answer was yes, and none of it was on the home page.

The row became three plain statements: new glass for fogged windows, frames left in place; North Vancouver, West Vancouver and nearby; small jobs welcome, with a fixed price agreed before work starts.

Beneath them went the year the company started, the warranty on new glass units and a link to its reviews. The three questions now had answers before anyone picked up the phone.

The phone makes the row longer

On a laptop, three icons sit side by side and take a modest strip of the screen.

On a phone, the same row stacks into a column. Three large icons, three headings and six lines of general text can fill a whole screen of scrolling.

That is an entire screen, near the top of the page, telling the visitor nothing, on the device most visitors are holding.

Specific facts are shorter as well. A list of four towns takes less room than a paragraph about a commitment to service.

Keep icons for concrete things

Icons work when they label something concrete and recognisable.

A handset beside the phone number, a pin beside the address, a clock beside the hours: each icon confirms what the text says, and people find the detail faster.

What fails is an icon standing for an abstraction. Nobody can draw quality, so the drawing becomes a trophy, and a trophy means nothing to someone staring at a fogged-up window.

Ask whoever answers the phone

The best source for the replacement facts is the questions customers already ask.

Whoever answers the phone knows them by heart: do you come out to us, do you take small jobs, how soon can someone look at it, do you charge to quote.

Each repeated question is a fact missing from the home page. Write down the most common ones over a week, and the answers become the new row.

The counter-case

A row of three can work. If each item is specific, such as a warranty length, a response time and a pricing policy, the row does its job. It is the vague words that fail, not the shape.

A business already well known in its town loses less to a vague row, because most visitors arrive already trusting the name.

And a home page needs some warmth. A page made entirely of facts can read like a form.

But the space under the banner is too valuable for words every competitor shares. Fill it with facts a stranger can use.

Before the next edit

  1. Look at the row under your home page banner.
  2. Ask what each word was standing in for.
  3. List the questions callers ask most often.
  4. Answer each one in a single plain line.
  5. Add one piece of proof a stranger can check.
  6. Check the result on a phone.
  7. Keep icons only beside concrete details.

Step three does most of the work. The questions customers ask are the facts they could not find, already phrased in the words they use.

How that part of the page looks on the device most customers use is covered in the phone version nobody at the office has seen.

Frequently asked questions

What is wrong with quality, service and value?

Nobody would claim the opposite, so the words give a visitor nothing to compare. Readers skip claims that every competitor makes and nobody can check.

What should replace the row of icons?

Specific facts: what you do, where, for whom, and one piece of proof a stranger could check, such as reviews or a licence.

Where do the replacement facts come from?

From the questions customers already ask on the phone. Each one is a fact missing from the home page, and the answers become the new row.

Are icons on a website always a bad idea?

No. Icons work beside concrete details, such as a handset beside the phone number or a pin beside the address. They fail when they stand for abstractions.

Why does the row matter more on phones?

On a phone the icons stack into a column, so vague text can fill a whole screen near the top, on the device most visitors use.

What counts as proof a stranger can check?

A review count linked to where the reviews are posted, the year the business started, a licence number, or photographs of real jobs with the neighbourhood named.

West Coast Media Solutions Inc. provides web design, web development, hosting, digital marketing, and business consulting to organisations across Canada, drawing on more than twenty-five years in the field.

Quality, service and value under your banner?

Send us the address. We will suggest the facts that should replace the row, drawn from your own customers' questions.

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