If It Doesn't Fit on a Phone Screen, Nobody Saw It

Open your own website on your phone, the way almost everyone who's going to buy from you opens it. Don't scroll. Just look at what fits before your thumb moves.

That's your website, for most people. Not the whole page, that rectangle. If you put what you like there, your story, a nice line, an enormous logo, and leave the price and the contact button for further down, then for most visitors those things don't exist.

What Goes on the First Screen, and in What Order

What your business is about we've covered at length in "What Your Website Has to Say on Day One." Here we're talking about something narrower: what survives the cut.

1. What you do, in one sentence. Not the business name alone, but the trade said in plain words: "In-home physical therapy in Portland."

2. What it costs, or starting from what. A number, even if it's "from $45."

3. The contact or booking button, visible without scrolling.

Three things. That's what fits. Anything else you add pushes one of those three off the screen.

The Button Isn't Just Another Box

On a computer, a contact link can be a discreet word in the top corner, because a cursor points precisely. On a phone the pointer is a thumb, and a thumb is imprecise, often in motion, sometimes the only hand free.

So the button needs to be big enough to hit without aiming, far enough from other tappable things that a near-miss doesn't do something else, and placed where a thumb naturally rests, which is the lower half of the screen, not the very top corner.

A link that technically works but needs two attempts is a link that loses people on the second attempt.

What Breaks on a Phone and Nobody Checks

Three things break quietly. Long headlines that read beautifully on a laptop and turn into six cramped lines on a phone. Tables, which almost never fit: a price table with four columns either shrinks to unreadable or runs off the edge, and the part that runs off is the part with the price. And photos with text in them, which become illegible the moment they're scaled down.

The fix for tables isn't a smaller table. It's not a table: the same information as short lines, one item per line.

The Test That Takes Two Minutes

Open your site on your phone. Don't scroll. Ask three questions: does it say what I do, does it give a price or a range, and can I tap the button without aiming?

If any answer is no, that's the whole to-do list. Everything else on the page can wait.

What You Walk Away With

A first phone screen with three things on it and nothing else: what you do, what it costs, and the button. A button big enough for a thumb and placed in the lower half of the screen. Tables rebuilt as short lines, and text taken out of photos. And a two-minute check you can repeat after every change.