By business type

A website does a different job for every business

Three small businesses, three completely different problems for the same page to solve. This is why a template with your photographs dropped into it does not work.

Plumbing

Water is moving across a floor right now, and the visitor has ten seconds of patience.

So the page leads withBe useful in the first ten seconds

Salon & barber

Clients are loyal to a stylist, not a business — the site should name them.

So the page leads withGive each stylist a presence of their own

Restaurant

Two things get looked at: the menu and the hours. Everything else is decoration.

So the page leads withThe menu is the website

24 of these are written out below — what each kind of business actually needs its website to do, in plain words. They’re worth reading even if you build the site yourself.

The catalog

24 trades, grouped by what the site is for

Not by industry code — by the job the page has to do, because that is the axis on which the advice actually differs. Each line is the tension that trade’s site has to resolve.

Home & trades

Work that happens at someone's address — usually booked in a hurry, always local.

Five guides

HVACHalf your visitors are standing in a hot house with a dead system, on a phone.PlumbingWater is moving across a floor right now, and the visitor has ten seconds of patience.ElectricalThe demand has moved to panels, EV chargers and generators — most sites haven't.LandscapingThe same page in January and May is a page that misses most of the year's demand.CleaningYou're selling a standing arrangement, not a single clean — the site should say so.

Health & personal care

Businesses where a person sits in a chair and has to trust whoever is standing over them.

Three guides

DentalTwo questions decide everything: do you take my insurance, and will it hurt.Salon & barberClients are loyal to a stylist, not a business — the site should name them.Personal trainingNobody is buying training. They're buying you, and hoping not to be embarrassed.

Looking after people & pets

Recurring, relationship-led work where the person paying often isn't the one attending.

Two guides

Pet careOwners are handing over someone they love. Everything on the page is about that.TutoringThe person reading the page is not the person who'll be in the lesson.

Storefront & counter

Places people physically turn up to, usually deciding on a phone a few minutes away.

Two guides

RestaurantTwo things get looked at: the menu and the hours. Everything else is decoration.Auto repairEvery visitor arrives assuming they're about to be upsold. Start there.

Studio & practice

Expertise sold by the project or the month, where the portfolio or the credential is the pitch.

Two guides

PhotographyA gallery that takes six seconds on a phone has already lost the booking.BookkeepingNaming the software you work in matches you to clients faster than any paragraph.

Software & apps

Products that live on a screen — the site's job is to explain them and turn a curious visitor into a signup.

Four guides

SaaSNobody reads a feature list cold — they need to grasp the job in one line.Mobile appHalf your visitors are on the very phone the app is meant to live on.AI productThe category is full of hype, so the page that shows a real result wins.MarketplaceYou're selling to two different people at once, and neither can be an afterthought.

Online shops & brands

Selling direct to people who will never see a storefront, decided entirely on the page in front of them.

Two guides

E-commercePeople aren't buying a product cold — they're deciding to trust a brand they just met.Print-on-demandThe design is the whole product, and it has to be for someone specific.

Side hustles & creators

One person, a specific offer, an audience — a home of your own that isn't rented from a platform.

Three guides

CoachingPeople don't buy coaching. They buy the after — where they'll be once it works.NewsletterA signup form isn't a reason to subscribe — the page has to make the case first.Online courseThe page is the whole sale — by the time they click buy, they've already decided.

Already up and running

You already have the business, and maybe a site that's holding it back — this is about the replacement.

One guide

Small businessYou already have a business and a site — this is about the one that should replace it.

How these were written

Every one of these was written by hand, one trade at a time.

The cheap version of this page is one template with the noun swapped 24 times. That is the thing search engines flatten and readers can smell, and it would have taken an afternoon. These took longer and say something different on every page, which is the only reason to publish them at all.

No competitor is named on any of them.We are new. Arguing against companies with decades of customers is not an argument we have earned yet — and what your trade’s site has to do is the more useful thing to write about anyway.

No invented customer, review or statistic.Where you see a screenshot it is a site Helm actually published. Where we have not built one for a trade yet, the page says so rather than showing you something suggestive.

Useful even if you never sign up.Each guide is what we would tell you about your own website if you asked us at a bar. Take it and build the site yourself if you like.

Your business isn’t on this list

Expected — there are only 24 so far. Helm isn’t limited to them, because it never asks you to pick a category. The build starts from a conversation about your actual business, which is the whole reason it can handle one nobody wrote a guide for.

Start a plan →

Atlas· listens first

I run a mobile bike repair van out of a trailer.

Then people find you when something’s broken and they can’t get to a shop. Do you cover a set radius, or go wherever the job is?

Anywhere within about twenty minutes.

Illustrated — a drawing of the opening exchange, not a screenshot.

Tell Helm about your business.

A few minutes of conversation, then a plan you read and approve before anything gets built.

Start a plan

Four of your team are working today — Atlas listens, Orion plans, Forge builds and Compass goes live. Echo and Ledger — marketing and analytics — are Arriving soon, and we say so rather than selling them today.