The standard
Six things a generated site does. Six things yours will not.
Most small business websites now come out of the same handful of tools, and they share the same tells. You have seen them without knowing their names. Below: the six tells, each one shown beside what you get instead. Then two whole sites you can scroll, one generated and one finished. Then this page measured against the list.
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01
Rounded everything
Pill buttons, softened cards, corners rounded because the tool's default was rounded. It is the single fastest way to spot a template.
Sharp geometry, decided
Square corners on every element, including the favicon in the browser tab. Nothing on the page is a leftover setting.
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02
Gradients as decoration
Colour fading into other colour behind the headline because the empty space made someone nervous.
One colour, one job.Everything else stays quiet.One accent, used on purpose
A single colour that marks what matters: the price, the button, the thing to read next. Everywhere else, restraint.
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03
Whatever font the computer had, plus one cursive word
A system font stack is the absence of a decision, so your brand looks different on every phone. Then one word in the headline is set in a script face for personality. That word is the tell.
Transform your smile.Set in a display face and a reading face, chosen for the practice and served from its own site.A chosen pair of typefaces
A display face and a reading face, picked for the business, served from your own site so nothing is fetched from Google to render your name.
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04
The section march
Seven to nine near identical blocks in a row: heading, three cards, button, repeat. Scroll and nothing changes.
Four sections that each say a thing
Fewer, longer, and different from one another. This page has four. Yours will have as many as it needs and not one more.
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05
Card soup
Every idea in its own floating box with its own drop shadow, so nothing on the page is more important than anything else.
Cleaningsfrom $120Fillingsfrom $180Same day pain8:00 and 1:15Hierarchy you can feel
Rules, borders and type size do the work. When something is in a box on your page, it is because it earned one.
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06
Copy that describes a process
"We leverage a client centric approach to deliver solutions." Nobody says that out loud, and nobody reads it.
Two slots held every weekday for pain that cannot wait.Price in writing before treatment starts. One dentist, first visit to last.Words a customer would actually say
Your prices, your town, your hours, the question people ring you with. Specific is the whole difference, and it cannot be templated.
Both windows change together: the same fictional business, the default on the left and the finished page on the right.
The default
What a template does with the brief. Every tell left in, built as an exhibit in its own document.
Built to the list
What a person does with the same brief, finished to this standard.
Every business here is fictional. The defaults are separate documents built to show the tells, so nothing in them enters the code of this page, which is what the counts below measure.
This page, measured against its own list.
The counts come from this page's own code. The specimens in the list are images and the default above is its own document, so neither enters them. Open the source and check. If you buy a site, the same receipt comes with it.