A roofing company in the Midwest hired me in March to fix one page. Nine service cards in a three-by-three grid, each with a stock photo and a 40-word description. The page got traffic and almost no calls. Below is the whole job, start to finish.
The original page, in their words
“Residential Roofing: Our team of experienced professionals is committed to delivering quality roofing solutions for your home. Contact us today to learn more.”
Repeat that pattern nine times with the noun swapped (Commercial Roofing, Gutter Repair, Storm Damage) and you have the page. Every card described the company’s commitment and ended with the same invitation to learn more. A homeowner with a leak after a hailstorm could read all nine cards and still have no answers to the three questions in their head: do they handle my problem, what does it cost, and how fast can someone get on my roof.
The page also carried a contact form with seven fields, one of them a required “describe your project” box. After a hailstorm, a homeowner with water on the kitchen floor isn’t writing an essay. I cut the form to three fields and put the phone number above it in bold.
What I asked before writing
I sent the owner my brief template and got back two gold nuggets: a folder of customer reviews, and thirty minutes with his best estimator on the phone. The estimator, unprompted, said the real fear after hail is “getting talked into a full replacement when a repair would do.” That line became the spine of the page.
The review folder was better than any brief. Four of the twenty-six reviews mentioned being “talked into” or deliberately not talked into work. Three named the estimator by name. One said, “they showed me photos of the whole roof and told me only one slope needed work.” I used that review almost as written, with the customer’s permission, and the photo detail became a line about every inspection ending with a photo set the homeowner keeps.
The rewrite
One page, one column, in the order a worried homeowner actually reads.
Headline first: “Hail damage in Douglas County. Free inspections, honest repair-or-replace calls, most roofs fixed within two weeks.” Twenty words that name the problem, the area, the price of the first step, the ethical promise, and the schedule.
Under it, one paragraph in the owner’s voice about the repair-or-replace decision, quoting him almost verbatim. Then a price band, because a roof quote sends people running: “Most repairs land between $400 and $1,200. Full replacements start around $8,500 and we itemize every line.”
Then three proof blocks, each with one review and one photo of the actual roof. Then the rough edges, admitted: “We are booked about ten days out after big storms. During that window we tarp anything that is leaking, free, even before we quote the work.”
Then one action, three times: book the free inspection.
Each proof block ran the same shape: one review quote, one photo of the actual roof with the damage circled, and one line on what the fix cost and how long it took. No stock photo survived the cut. The nine cards became nine short sections in a single column, three to five lines each, in the order a frightened homeowner asks: can you fix this, what will it cost, how fast, and who says so.
The two weeks
Week one: brief back, an hour on the phone with the estimator, the review folder read end to end. Week two: a first draft built on the six answers, then a walkthrough call where we changed four lines and deleted two paragraphs the owner was fond of. The page shipped on a Tuesday. Nothing his team had to learn. The whole job lived in one document.
What changed, honestly
The stock photos and matching cards had felt professional to the team. The single column felt plain to them for about a week. Then the numbers settled it: form submissions on the page went from about twelve a month to just over thirty, with the same traffic. The owner also reported that the calls got shorter, since people arrived already knowing the price bands and the schedule. Fewer tire-kickers, more booked inspections.
The closer detail: his estimator said inspection calls dropped from about fifteen minutes of explaining to five of scheduling, and the inspections that followed closed at a higher rate. When the buyer arrives already holding the price bands and the schedule, the conversation starts at the decision instead of the definition.
I take no credit for the traffic. The page just stopped losing the visitors it already had.
The reusable lesson
Services pages sell reassurance in a fixed order: the problem you solve, the honest scope, the price, the proof, the schedule, one action. Cards and carousels hide that order behind design. Print the page, read it top to bottom as a nervous customer, and fix whatever interrupts the six answers in a row.
Those six, in the words a customer types at midnight: can you handle my problem, what does it cost, how soon can you start, what do you guarantee, who has done this before you, and what do I do next. A services page is six answers and a button. Everything else is decoration with a budget.