121 | What planning a wedding taught me about service business websites
Hiring wedding suppliers taught me a LOT about where service businesses are going wrong with their websites…
Planning my wedding back in 2024 meant I was finally the customer for once, hiring loads of service-based businesses and viewing a LOT of websites. In this (slightly ranty) episode I'm sharing everything that process reaffirmed about what should and shouldn't be on your service business website to actually convert.
(Oh, and there's a story about one of our dogs that you will not forget...)
What Your Service Business Website Actually Needs (Lessons From Planning My Wedding)
As a website designer, I’m usually the one building the websites, not hiring people from them 😅 But planning our wedding flipped me into full customer mode, trawling through supplier websites and getting weirdly worked up about the same things I bang on about to my clients all day long.
So this episode got a little bit ranty (with love, I promise) as I walk through the things that drove me up the wall as a customer, and the stuff every service business website really needs if you want people to trust you, contact you, and book you.
(Plus, the story of how one of our dogs made our wedding ceremony very memorable…)
LINKS MENTIONED IN THE EPISODE:
The Sell With Your Site Kit (plan, write & optimise your website to convert): https://www.byrosanna.co.uk/sell-with-your-site-kit
Sign up to my weekly ‘Re:Fresh’ emails: https://www.byrosanna.co.uk/newsletter
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First, some context about our wedding (and yes, the dog)
We split our wedding over a weekend: a tiny 10-person ceremony in Devon on the Friday (parents, sisters, partners, and our two dogs), then a country house for the weekend where more of our friends joined us, and a Great Gatsby themed party on the Saturday. It was so much fun I wish I could go back and do it all again!
… Although perhaps except for one bit.
We brought our 2 dogs along to our intimate wedding ceremony with us, and I *shit* you not - one of them had full blown diarrhoea right after we finished saying our vows.
We had to pause the entire wedding, get the cleaners in, and I was sat there in my wedding dress completely unable to help 💀 Mortifying at the time, but I'll be honest, it makes a brilliant story and it was the talking point of the whole weekend.
Anyway. Because we had two venues and loads of moving parts, I ended up hiring a LOT of suppliers: musician, hog roast, private bar, photographer, videographer, plus looking into hair and makeup.
Which meant a lot of websites, and brings me to the actual point…
What every service business website needs
1. Put your location on your website (yes, even if you work online)
This was my number one rage-inducer. We were getting married in Devon so obviously I was looking for local suppliers, and you would not believe how many websites didn't say where they were based! 👹😡
If you're a location-based, in-person business, for the love of God, put your location front and centre on your website. Home page ideally, or at the very least your About or Services page… make it stupidly easy to find.
But even if you're NOT location-dependent (eg. I'm a website designer, I can work with anyone in the world), you should still put your location somewhere. Two reasons:
Connection. People love supporting businesses local to them! I get people messaging me all the time going "oh I love that you're in Cornwall, I used to holiday there when I was younger!" etc. It's an instant talking point.
Local SEO. "Website designer in Cornwall" doesn't mean I only work with Cornwall people, but it means when someone in Cornwall searches, I'm far more likely to show up for them, instead of drowning in a sea of competitors. Adding your location for local SEO is a genuinely easy win.
2. Show good-quality photos (especially if you're a visual business)
I won't labour on this because I know professional photography isn't always in budget for small business owners, but if your business is visual - food, hair, makeup, anything where people are buying based on what you create - the photos matter enormously!
Please, no fuzzy, dark, rushed phone snaps. Even without money for a full shoot, you can dedicate a bit of time to photographing your work in good daylight, at a time when you're not frantically doing it for a client in the evening.
We ended up booking food suppliers purely on word-of-mouth recommendations (being honest, their website photos were NOT selling it to me!), but without that personal recommendation, they might not have got a client!
3. Have an about page (with an actual photo of you)
Another common gap - no About page. I know a lot of small business owners hate talking about themselves or having their photo taken. I get it. But if you work closely with people, or on an important moment in their life (like, say, a wedding), trust and human connection are everything.
A good-quality photo of yourself and a page that talks a bit about you and your approach makes people trust you so much more. I recommend it to every single one of my website clients.
4. Put at least a rough guide to your prices
I'm not going to make this the great pricing debate because the internet is already full of those opinions. But could you maybe put at least a rough guide to your pricing on your website.😁😇
And no, it's not about competitors snooping or people price-comparing, it's about your customers not wanting to waste time. If someone (especially a busy person, or someone in the wedding world with a hundred things to tick off) has to email you and wait for a reply just to get a ballpark, it's a genuine turn-off.
5. Give people more than one way to contact you
A lot of the sites I used had a contact form and nothing else. Now, I'm not saying slap your phone number up (personally I wouldn't), but you're technically supposed to have an email address available as well as a form (#compliance), and the practical reason is that contact forms break.
This actually happened to me! I filled in a supplier's form, never heard back, and it turned out the form wasn't working. I had to chase them another way and the whole thing felt clunky. So keep the form, but have a clear email address too as a backup.
6. Add a "where did you find me?" field to your contact form
Tip of the day (and so many suppliers were missing this), add a "how did you find me?" field to your contact form.
I also prefer it as a field people can type into rather than just a dropdown, because then they can tell you exactly what they searched on Google or in an AI tool, or who recommended them. That is unbelievably useful marketing data! If you know where your enquiries are actually coming from, you can pour more energy into what's working.
7. Answer questions before they're even asked (hello, FAQs)
The best supplier website I came across had loads of genuinely useful FAQs, clearly laid out and not overwhelming. I'm someone who reads every single word of a page before I commit financially (I know we all assume most people scan, but people like me exist!), so a site that answers all my questions before I've even thought of them is my absolute dream.
Tell people what to expect. Show them your process so they know where they stand. The trick is balancing "as much helpful info as possible" with a design that doesn't feel cluttered or overwhelming, and that's still SEO-optimised.
(Honestly, balancing exactly that is my entire job as a website designer!)
8. Keep communicating after they've booked
This last one isn't a website thing, but it's too important to leave out. In the wedding world, you book suppliers a year or more in advance, pay a deposit, and then... silence. I didn't hear from most of ours until right before the day, and as someone who likes to know everything's in hand, I found that genuinely stressful.
I ended up emailing loads of them a few weeks before, essentially going "hi, you're still coming, right?"😅
You shouldn't have to do that as a paying client!
I book design clients up to 4 months ahead, and I do check-ins throughout so they know I'm still here, still excited, still getting everything ready. It makes people feel supported and reassured that they made a good decision. That proactive communication is exactly what people remember, and exactly what makes them recommend you, because it sets you apart from everyone who ghosts until the last minute.
FAQs
Should I put my prices on my website?
At least a rough guide, yes. It's not about competitors or price-comparison, it's about respecting your customer's time. Making people email and wait just to get a ballpark figure is a common reason they click away and book someone more transparent instead.
Do I need my location on my website if I work online?
It helps, even for fully remote businesses. Adding your location creates a connection point (people love supporting local businesses) and boosts your local SEO, so you show up when nearby people search - without limiting who can actually work with you.
What should a service business about page include?
A good-quality photo of you and a genuine bit about who you are and how you work. If you work closely with clients or on important moments in their lives, that human trust is often the deciding factor in whether they book you. I have a whole blog post about creating a great About page!
Being the customer for once reminded me that your website isn't really for you, it's for a slightly stressed person trying to tick something off their list and decide whether to trust you with their money (or their wedding). Make it easy for them, and you'll convert so many more of them.
Hop onto your own site and check: have you got these covered? Most are small, quick tweaks that make a real difference to your conversions and your client loyalty.
If you want the full framework for planning, writing and optimising a website that actually sells for you, that's exactly what my Sell With Your Site Kit is for - the toolkit to plan your pages, write your content, and turn your traffic into paying clients.
