A potential customer arrives at the fictional Oak & Ladder site looking to request a visit in their area. The homepage explains the company’s history, lists services in running text, and shows a photograph of the van. The request form is three clicks down, under a heading that says Learn more. A returning customer who needs to change an appointment has no obvious place to start.
The site is doing one job well: it presents the business. It is doing another job less well: helping people begin what they came to do. This is not an either/or choice. A site can do both, and it is the marketer’s call what goes where. This guide helps you see that mix clearly, and check whether people who arrive can start the job they came to do.
The Oak & Ladder pages below are fictional teaching inputs. They are not test results.
Decide Where Explanation and Action Belong
This guide uses two labels of its own. They describe how a page is organized, not a verdict on the whole site, and not a quality ranking.
A brochure site (a brochure website), as used here, is organized mainly around presenting a business: who we are, what we offer, and how to reach us. Visitors mostly read, and the main action is often a contact or inquiry.
A task-led site is organized mainly around the jobs visitors came to do (book, check, apply, find, buy, pay). Those jobs are the first things shown.
A site can do both: present the business clearly, and help people start the jobs they came to do. Different pages can lean different ways, and it is the marketer’s call what goes where.
Brochure-like sites often also have a separate set of ad landing pages, each built to take visitors down a narrower path toward one conversion. Those pages are often kept out of search engine results, for example with a noindex tag that asks search engines such as Google not to list the page. That is practical guidance from experience, not a published finding. The main site can still explain the business, while those campaign pages do a tighter job. You decide which content belongs on which page.
Even a brochure-style page has tasks, such as finding opening hours or making contact. A task-led page still needs explanation, reassurance, and context. The useful question, on the page you are reviewing, is whether the people who arrive can see a route to what they came to do.
Name What Visitors Came to Do
Start with a short worksheet, not a score. You can begin from the agreed campaign goal or the team’s best understanding of the visit, and label those as assumptions until you can ask people what they came to do.
| What Visitors Came to Do | What They Need to Know First | Visible Route in the Header or First View? | Recommended Direction |
|---|---|---|---|
| [Task] | [Essential explanation or reassurance] | [Route, or none] | Preserve / clarify / add a route |
Name about three likely tasks, in the visitor’s words. Three is a manageable starting exercise, not a claim that every site has exactly three dominant needs. This is a review prompt, not a scoring system.
For Oak & Ladder, the completed worksheet might look like this:
| What Visitors Came to Do | What They Need to Know First | Visible Route in the Header or First View? | Recommended Direction |
|---|---|---|---|
| Check whether the company serves my area | The service area, in plain language | No clear route in the first view | Add a route |
| Request a visit | That a request is possible, and what happens next | Three clicks down, under Learn more | Clarify and move forward |
| Change an existing appointment | How to reach the booking they already have | None | Add a route |
“Our service area” names a topic. “Check whether you serve my area” names what the visitor wants to do.
Ask people what they came to do, and use their answers to correct the team’s assumptions. You do not need a large formal survey to start that conversation.
GOV.UK’s design principles put user needs first: if you do not know what people need, you will not build the right thing. Another of those principles, “Build digital services, not websites,” describes a service as something that helps people do something. Those principles were written for government services. Use them as a way of thinking, not as a rule that every business site must follow.
Match the Balance to the Business
These examples are editorial judgment, not research findings or fixed categories of businesses. Use them as starting assumptions about where your site’s emphasis might sit, then check those assumptions with visitors.
A business whose visitors arrive to do something with the site (book, search stock, pay, manage an account) will often put more emphasis on task entry points. A business that mostly sells a relationship or an in-person service, and wins by being understood and contacted, may put more emphasis on explanation and a clear inquiry route. Most need both: enough explanation for a first-time visitor, and an obvious route for the jobs people already came to do. The marketer decides how that mix is arranged, including what belongs on the main site and what belongs on a campaign page.
A specialist consultancy may need substantial context and credibility before an inquiry, and that explanation can legitimately lead on those pages. A returning-customer service may need direct access to ongoing tasks alongside information for new visitors. Completing a contact form is not the whole customer goal. The site needs to help visitors learn enough to decide and find a clear route to act.
If a priority task is finding an available option, such as a date, a location, or a specific offering, how prominent that search should be is covered in Should Site Search Be a Main Header Action?.
Check Whether the Main Tasks Have Visible Routes
Once you have named the tasks, look at the header and the first view — the top navigation, and what is visible before scrolling. Something obvious at a wide desktop width can be missing, or buried, at a phone width.
Online Website Previewer is a free tool and does not need an account. Paste the page address and press Preview to see the live page at the phone and desktop widths: 390 by 844 and 1920 by 1080 CSS pixels. Those are practical comparison sizes, not a match for your visitors’ devices. This check focuses on those two views. You can also look at the tablet width, 820 by 1180, if that view matters for the page.
Note which task entry points are visible without opening a menu or clicking elsewhere. The task itself does not have to be completed in the first view. Visitors only need a clear route to begin. A route that is absent is different from a route that sits inside a clearly labeled menu. Record both, and open the menu to check it. If the only way to start is inside the menu, say so, rather than treating that as a missing route.
The preview shows layout, not whether visitors succeed. It is a visual check in your current browser, not a test on a real phone and not an assessment of whether people can finish the job. Confirm an important route on a real phone as well.
Record missing or unclear routes, rather than redesigning the entire first view in your notes. If the first view mainly explains the business and the inquiry route is already obvious, that balance can be the right one. The finding is about missing routes, not about explanation existing at all.
If the question is how strongly to emphasize the tasks you have chosen, How to Review a Website’s Visual Hierarchy covers that judgment. If the question is how to arrange the mix of content in the first view, use What Belongs Above the Fold on Mobile?.
Nielsen Norman Group’s 2024 homepage-design principles advise emphasizing high-priority tasks with a clear visual hierarchy and giving visitors a clear starting point. Use that principle to check whether the page makes your chosen priorities visible.
Turn the Finding Into a Focused Brief
Send a short brief that names the page address, the tasks, what the first view currently does, and which routes to preserve, clarify, or add. Identify which preview size each observation applies to, and combine views only when the finding is the same. Separate what you observed from what you recommend.
A useful note could say:
For the Oak & Ladder homepage at [page address], our working assumptions are that visitors need to check coverage, request a visit, and change an existing appointment. Please confirm those priorities with visitors. At both 390 by 844 and 1920 by 1080, the first view mainly explains the company’s history. The route to request a visit is three clicks down, under Learn more, and there is no obvious route to change an appointment. Preserve the explanation that helps a new visitor trust the company, but make the routes to those three tasks explicit in the header or first view.
Recommend walking the route with someone who has a realistic need. Keep useful explanation. Do not turn every paragraph into a button.
This is a direction for the current site, not a decision to redesign it. If the next question is whether blocked tasks mean the site as a whole is failing, Signs Your Website Needs a Redesign is the place for that judgment.
