Lawn care website must haves: 12 things homeowners check

Lawn care website must haves come down to what a homeowner checks before picking up the phone. They want to know what you do and where, whether you come to their street, what it roughly costs, whether other people in town are happy with you, and how to get on your list. Below are the 12 things that answer those questions, in about the order someone reads down the page on a phone.

Mowing and landscaping customers read the page differently. Weekly mowing and treatment customers are buying a routine, so they care about price, schedule and your route. Landscaping customers are buying a project, so they want to see work you've done and get a sense of the budget. If you do both, your site needs to serve both, and the sections below say which items go where.

Top of the page: service, town and one button

The first screen on a phone does most of the work. Someone who lands there from a Google search decides in a few seconds whether to keep reading.

1. Say what you do and where. Your headline should name the service and the town in plain words: "Weekly lawn mowing in [town]" or "Patios, walls and plantings in [county]". A company name and a slogan don't tell anyone they're in the right place.

2. Show whether you serve their street. List the towns or ZIP codes you cover right under the headline, or let people type in their ZIP and see the answer. If you run set route days, show them ("Tuesdays in [town]"). A homeowner who sees their town named will keep going, and one who doesn't usually goes back to the search results.

3. Give them one clear button. Pick the action you want most and make it the big button: call, text, or sign up for the season. Keep the phone number tappable at the top as well. Two or three buttons of equal size make people stop and think, and thinking on a phone often ends with them leaving.

For mowing and treatment: plans, how often, price and rain days

This is the part recurring customers read closely, and it's where a lot of lawn care sites stay vague.

4. List your plans and how often you come: weekly, every other week, or a season plan with one monthly payment. Say what a visit includes, too: mow, edge, trim, blow off the drive and walks, mulched or bagged clippings. If you offer fertilizing or weed control, list the rounds and roughly when they happen, and only advertise treatments your state license covers.

5. Put a price, or a "from" price, on the page. Homeowners want a number before they call. Something like "Weekly mowing from $[your price] a visit for a typical quarter-acre lot," plus one line saying bigger lots get measured and priced in writing before the first cut. That gives them a starting point without promising one price for every yard. If you're still deciding this year's numbers, the winter checklist post has a December section for that.

6. Cover rain days and the fine print. Say what you do when it rains on their day, whether they can skip a week, and whether there's a contract. These are the questions that otherwise turn into phone calls in May. A short answer each, in plain words, is enough.

For landscaping projects: portfolio, budget ranges and how a job runs

A homeowner thinking about a new patio or a backyard redo is spending real money and can't try you out for a week first. Your site has to show them what you've built and how you work.

7. Build a portfolio that names the town and the scope. For each project, put a few photos and two or three lines: the town, what you did, and roughly how long it took. "Paver patio and seat wall, [town], about two weeks" tells a buyer far more than a gallery of unlabeled pictures. Before photos help a lot if you have them. Use your own work only, and ask the homeowner before you post pictures of their yard.

8. Give budget ranges. Most homeowners have no idea what a retaining wall costs, and some won't call at all because they're afraid of the number. A rough range by project type helps them decide whether to reach out. As an example layout, with your own numbers in place: "Most of our patios fall between $[low] and $[high], depending on size and material." It also filters out people whose budget is a long way from yours, which saves you a site visit.

9. Explain how a project runs. Lay out the steps from first call to final walkthrough: the visit, the design or sketch, the written quote, the deposit, the schedule and cleanup. People hiring a landscaper for the first time don't know what to expect, and seeing the steps makes it less of a gamble. If you're booked months out for installs, say so here. People will plan around a wait if they know about it.

Proof: reviews, years and insurance

Homeowners are letting a crew onto their property, often while they're at work. They want some sign that you'll show up and do the job right.

10. Show reviews from real customers. Put your Google reviews on the site or link straight to your Google Business Profile, with names and dates where you can. A few recent reviews from people in nearby towns will carry more weight than one old quote with no name on it. Never write reviews yourself or edit what a customer said.

11. Say how long you've been in business, and that you're licensed and insured, if that's true. "Mowing in [town] since [year]" is a plain fact that people trust. If you carry liability insurance, say so, and offer to send the certificate, since some HOAs ask for one. If your state requires a license for pesticide application or for certain landscape work and you hold it, list it. Leave out anything you can't back up.

Photos of your own crew and trucks belong in this section too. You don't need many. A couple of shots of your people at work on lawns in your area show there's an actual crew behind the site.

The forms: signup vs quote request

12. Use the right form for the job. A mowing customer and a landscaping customer need different forms, or one form that splits early.

For weekly service, use a short signup form: name, service address, phone or email, and which plan. You'll measure the lot and confirm the price anyway, so there's no reason to ask more up front. The spring signup page post goes through that form and the page around it in detail.

For landscaping, use a quote request that asks a bit more: what kind of project, the address, a rough budget range, when they'd like it done, and a spot to add photos of the yard. The budget question, phrased as a few ranges to pick from, tells you whether the job is worth a site visit before you drive out.

If you use one form for both, make the first question "Weekly service or a one-time project?" and show the right fields after that. Either way, test the form by sending yourself a message, and say on the page how fast you reply.

Not sure how your current site stacks up against this list? The free site check gives it a score, and you can ask for a short written report on what to fix first.

FAQ: lawn care website must haves

Do I need separate pages for mowing and landscaping?

If you do a fair amount of both, yes. A mowing customer wants prices and route days, and a landscaping customer wants photos and budget ranges. One page trying to do both usually does neither well. A home page that sends people to each is enough.

I only mow. Do I need a portfolio?

Not a project portfolio. A few good photos of lawns you cut, with clean edges and stripes, plus your reviews do the same job. Spend the effort on items 2, 4 and 5.

What can I leave off?

Long company history, a mission statement and stock photos of lawns you didn't mow. None of them help a homeowner decide, and they push the useful parts further down the page.

How many of these do I really need before spring?

Items 1, 2, 3, 5 and 12 matter most for mowing, because they're what a homeowner needs to sign up. For landscaping, add 7 and 8. The rest can wait until you have time.

We build and look after lawn care websites with prices, route days by ZIP and a form that splits weekly service from one-time projects. See Pruitt Lawn Co., a sample design for a fictional business. It's $99 to start, refunded if you pass on the preview, and $399 all in at our founding price for the first 25 clients. Grow is $199 a month, or $1,990 paid yearly (12 months for the price of 10).