Stop Hiding Your Phone Number

This drives me insane. I visit a contractor's website. I'm ready to call. And the phone number is... where? Footer? Contact page? Buried in a paragraph on the about page?

When someone visits your site, they have a problem. Right now. Their basement is flooding. Their furnace died in February. A tree went through their roof during last week's nor'easter. They don't want to browse. They want to call someone immediately.

If your number isn't visible the instant they land on your site, on mobile, without scrolling, you just lost that customer. They hit back. They called the next result. Gone.

What "visible" means

I mean massive. Top of the page. Tap to call on mobile. Not tucked into the nav. Not in small text. A button that says "Call Now" or your number displayed in a font size that a 55-year-old homeowner can read without squinting.

And a form. Right there. Not on a separate page. In the hero section. Name, phone, one line about what they need. Three fields. That's it.

But what about my beautiful design?

I get it. Your designer spent time on that hero section with the full-bleed photo and the tagline. It looks great in their portfolio. But your designer doesn't pay your bills. Customers do. And customers need to reach you quickly or they reach someone else.

The ugliest, most conversion-optimized sites outperform beautiful sites that hide the call to action. Every single time. I'm not saying your site has to be ugly. I'm saying the contact method needs to be the most prominent thing on the page, not an afterthought.

A real example

An HVAC company in Dartmouth had a stunning website. Parallax scrolling, video backgrounds, the works. Their phone number was in the header nav in 12px font. Contact form on a separate page with 8 fields.

We put a sticky tap-to-call bar on mobile. Added a 3-field form in the hero. Made the phone number 24px bold in the top bar. Same site, same design otherwise.

Calls increased 40% in the first month. That's not a redesign. That's moving a phone number from where it's hard to find to where it's impossible to miss.