Of 20 logistics homepages we opened on 28 October 2026, 11 did not say in the hero what the company sells. Speed was rarely the problem: 18 answered inside web.dev's 0.8 second "good" line for time to first byte. The gap is in the first sentence and in the form behind the demo button, where the median first step asked for eight fields.
Below are the ten tests, every measurement and what a freight broker, 3PL or logistics software team can copy. The sample is 12 software vendors (TMS, visibility, last mile, supply chain suites) and 8 freight and fulfilment providers, all well known, so read it as a study of choices rather than a ranking.
The rubric: ten pass or fail tests
Each passed test scores one point: clarity and speed 0 to 3, the demo path 0 to 4, a total out of 10. The clarity and speed tests match our Professional Services Websites scorecard. The self-serve test is new, because logistics buyers increasingly expect a quote or a trial without a call.
| Dimension | Test, one point each | Basis |
|---|---|---|
| Clarity | C: names a category buyers search, such as TMS, freight forwarding or last mile delivery | NN/g homepage guideline |
| Clarity | A: names who it serves: shippers, carriers, brokers, a mode or a company size | NN/g homepage guideline |
| Clarity | S: gives one concrete specific: a number, a named client, a mode or a place | Our test |
| Speed | Time to first byte 0.8 s or less | web.dev "good" TTFB |
| Speed | HTML transfer 155 KB or less | Almanac 2025, 90th percentile for home pages |
| Speed | HTML transfer 79 KB or less | Almanac 2025, 75th percentile for home pages |
| Demo path | A demo, quote or contact form one click from the first screen | Our test |
| Demo path | Five fields or fewer on the first step | A round line, used in all our scorecards |
| Demo path | Reply time or call length stated on the form page | Our test |
| Demo path | A self-serve route on the first screen: free trial, sign-up or instant quote | Freightos instant quoting data, 2025 |
Source: Nielsen Norman Group, 2002; web.dev, 2025; HTTP Archive Web Almanac, 2026; Freightos, 2025
Clarity method. The hero is the h1 and the line beneath it, rendered in headless Chromium at 1,280 by 800 pixels after declining optional cookies. Navigation, logos, proof strips and the title tag do not count. Rotating heroes were scored on the first slide in the page source.
Speed method. Three consecutive curl requests per homepage at about 11:15 UTC from one connection in Serbia, recording time to first byte and compressed HTML size; we report the median run. We did not run Lighthouse for this sample, so total page weight is not scored.
Demo path method. We followed the most prominent demo, quote or sales link on the first screen and counted text boxes, dropdowns and text areas on the first step. A radio or tick-box group counts as one field, a phone number with a country picker as one, consent boxes and honeypots as none. We submitted nothing. Magaya was replaced by Shippeo after magaya.com served a maintenance page during the test.
The scorecard: clarity and speed
Letters show which clarity tests a hero passed.
| Site | Type | Hero headline | Clarity | TTFB (s) | HTML (KB) | Speed |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| project44 | Visibility | "Your Supply Chain at Work" | 0 | 0.34 | 84 | 2 |
| FourKites | Visibility | "Your supply chain, running itself." | 0 | 0.34 | 99 | 2 |
| Manhattan Associates | Supply chain suite | "AI-native always ahead" | 0 | 0.37 | 33 | 3 |
| Descartes | Logistics software | "Move The World" | 0 | 0.11 | 50 | 3 |
| E2open | Supply chain suite | "Cognitive Supply Chain Intelligence" | 0 | 0.44 | 17 | 3 |
| Shipwell | TMS | "AI Transportation Platform (TMS)" | 1, C | 0.06 | 32 | 3 |
| Turvo | TMS | "The #1 Modern TMS Solution" | 1, C | 0.08 | 40 | 3 |
| Shippeo | Visibility | "Track every shipment, know every ETA" | 1, C | 0.12 | 25 | 3 |
| Rose Rocket | TMS | "Transportation's Best AI Platform" | 0 | 0.20 | 64 | 3 |
| Onfleet | Last mile | "All Your Last Mile Delivery" | 1, C | 0.48 | 426 | 1 |
| FarEye | Last mile | Delivery management "for enterprise-scale operations" | 2, CA | 0.10 | 44 | 3 |
| Blue Yonder | Supply chain suite | "Your supply chain, orchestrated end to end" | 0 | 0.88 | 51 | 2 |
| Flexport | Forwarder | "Save up to 10%" on freight forwarding and customs | 2, CS | 0.10 | 64 | 3 |
| Uber Freight | Broker and TMS | "Transportation Orchestration" | 0 | 0.88 | 226 | 0 |
| C.H. Robinson | 3PL | "#1 global leader in Lean AI supply chains" | 0 | 0.30 | 23 | 3 |
| Flock Freight | Shared truckload | Truckload shipping, for shippers and carriers | 2, CA | 0.05 | 24 | 3 |
| Loadsmart | Broker and software | "Loadsmart AI runs your freight." | 0 | 0.17 | 31 | 3 |
| RXO | Broker | Freight "for shippers and carriers" | 1, A | 0.10 | 37 | 3 |
| GXO | Contract logistics | "Discover logistics at full potential." | 0 | 0.07 | 58 | 3 |
| ShipBob | Fulfilment | "Deliver faster. Sell more." | 0 | 0.08 | 77 | 3 |
Source: Octo Agency, headless browser read and three curl runs per homepage, 28 October 2026. FourKites redirected to fourkites.ai; Uber Freight to /en-US.
The scorecard: demo path and totals
| Site | Route from the first screen | Clicks | Fields | Reply time | Self-serve | Path | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| project44 | Demo | 1 | 5 | No | No | 2 | 4 |
| FourKites | Talk to an Outcome Advisor, an AI chat | 1 | No form | No | No | 0 | 2 |
| Manhattan Associates | Contact Us | 1 | 9 | No | No | 1 | 4 |
| Descartes | Contact Us, then an enquiry-type menu | 1 | 12 | Same day | No | 2 | 5 |
| E2open | Talk to an expert | 1 | 8 | No | No | 1 | 4 |
| Shipwell | Request a Demo | 1 | 8 | No | No | 1 | 5 |
| Turvo | Schedule A Demo | 1 | 6 | No | No | 1 | 5 |
| Shippeo | Book a demo | 1 | 7 | No | No | 1 | 5 |
| Rose Rocket | Talk to Sales | 1 | 6 | No | No | 1 | 4 |
| Onfleet | Talk to a delivery expert | 1 | 11 | 15-minute call | Free trial | 3 | 5 |
| FarEye | Book a Meeting | 1 | 3 | No | No | 2 | 7 |
| Blue Yonder | Contact Us | 1 | 11 | No | No | 1 | 3 |
| Flexport | Get started | 1 | 7 | No | No | 1 | 6 |
| Uber Freight | Connect with an expert, form on the homepage | 1 | 9 | No | No | 1 | 1 |
| C.H. Robinson | Get a quote | 1 | 16 | No | No | 1 | 4 |
| Flock Freight | Start shipping, then Get a live demo | 2 | 7 | No | Sign-up | 1 | 6 |
| Loadsmart | Book a demo | 1 | 8 | No | No | 1 | 4 |
| RXO | Get a Spot Quote | 1 | 9 | No | No | 1 | 5 |
| GXO | Menu, Contact us, Start the conversation | 3 | 8 | No | No | 0 | 3 |
| ShipBob | Work email field in the hero | 0 | 1 | No | No | 2 | 5 |
Source: Octo Agency, rendered form pages, 28 October 2026; no form was submitted. ShipBob's email field leads to a four-step quote, so later steps are not counted.
Clarity: the category word is missing, and "AI" fills the gap
Nielsen Norman Group's first homepage guideline asks for a tagline that sums up what the company does, especially if the company is new or not famous. Eleven of these 20 heroes do not.
The misses share a pattern. Seven lean on "supply chain" plus an abstraction: project44's "Your Supply Chain at Work", FourKites' "Your supply chain, running itself.", Blue Yonder's "orchestrated end to end", E2open's "Cognitive Supply Chain Intelligence", C.H. Robinson's "Lean AI supply chains" and the suites from Manhattan Associates and Descartes. Ten of the 20 put "AI" in the headline or the line beneath it. A buyer comparing TMS vendors learns that each one has AI, not which one handles LTL, drayage or parcel.
The passes are plain. Shipwell and Turvo say TMS in the headline. Shippeo says it tracks every shipment and ETA. Onfleet says last mile delivery, Flock Freight truckload shipping. None of them is a clever line, and all of them tell a stranger where they are in four words.
Audience appeared three times. FarEye names "enterprise-scale operations"; Flock Freight and RXO name shippers and carriers. Freight marketplaces serve two sides, and the hero is where a carrier decides whether to read on. C.H. Robinson handles it with two buttons, "Ship with us" and "Haul with us", which works for routing but does not count as the hero saying it.
Only Flexport gave a number. "Save up to 10% on global logistics" is a vendor claim, but it is a claim a buyer can test in a call. Nobody else put a lane, a mode, a customer name or a volume in the first sentence.
What ranks: the search snippet often says more than the hero
We cannot see another company's rankings from outside, but we can read what each homepage hands a search engine. Google's documentation says title links come from the title element, the main visual title, h1 headings and other prominent text, and that when several headings look equally important it may use the first one.
| Check | Passed | Misses |
|---|---|---|
| Title tag names the category | 14 of 20 | project44, FourKites, Descartes, Flock Freight, RXO, GXO |
| Exactly one h1 with text in the served HTML | 15 of 20 | Turvo, Rose Rocket, Uber Freight, Flock Freight, ShipBob |
| Organization-type structured data | 16 of 20 | Descartes, Shippeo, Onfleet, Blue Yonder |
Source: Octo Agency, served HTML of each homepage, 28 October 2026
The titles are often the better copy. Blue Yonder's says "End-to-End Supply Chain Management Solutions" while the h1 in its HTML is just the brand name. C.H. Robinson's title says "Third Party Logistics (3PL)" over a hero about Lean AI. Descartes' title is "Home | Descartes".
Uber Freight sends no h1 at all before JavaScript runs; the headline appears only after the page renders. ShipBob's served HTML carries several h1 tags, including "Chaos-proof your fulfillment", while the rendered page showed "Deliver faster. Sell more.", so a crawler and a visitor can read different headlines. Google's Organization markup guidance recommends the structured data on the home page; Descartes, Shippeo, Onfleet and Blue Yonder have none.
Speed: fast servers, a few heavy documents
Time to first byte barely separated this sample. web.dev calls 0.8 seconds or less good and over 1.8 seconds poor. On our median of three requests, 18 of 20 homepages were good, with a median of 0.15 seconds. Blue Yonder and Uber Freight, both at 0.88 seconds, missed. On the first, uncached request Blue Yonder took 1.23 seconds. A visitor arriving from an advert may well be that cold request, and our website speed statistics collect what slow responses cost in bounce and revenue.
HTML weight split the sample more clearly. The Web Almanac's 2025 page weight chapter puts home page HTML at 34 KB at the median, 79 KB at the 75th percentile and 155 KB at the 90th. Our median was 47 KB compressed, and 16 of 20 came in under 79 KB. Onfleet sent 426 KB compressed and Uber Freight 226 KB; uncompressed, Uber Freight's document was 1,478 KB and Rose Rocket's 1,087 KB, most of it framework data written into the page. A phone on a warehouse floor has to parse all of it before the hero settles.
Demo path: one click is normal, the form is long
Eighteen of 20 sites had a form one click from the first screen; ShipBob put one in the hero itself. The two exceptions are telling. FourKites' "Talk to an Outcome Advisor" opens an AI chat agent instead of a form, with a "Prefer to talk to a person?" link underneath. GXO's homepage shows only a brand video and a menu icon, and its form sits three clicks in.
First steps ran from one field to sixteen. Across the 19 forms the median was eight, and only ShipBob (one), FarEye (three) and project44 (five) passed our line. C.H. Robinson's quote form asks for a full address, origin, destination, item description and package type before a person sees the request, and RXO's spot quote asks for lanes, dates, equipment and weight. Quote forms have a reason to be long; demo forms rarely do. Our demo request conversion rates post covers what length does to completion.
Five asked about volume. Rose Rocket asks for loads per month, Onfleet for monthly delivery volume, Flexport for annual international shipments, Flock Freight for dry van shipments per month and Loadsmart, optionally, for annual freight spend. That one question does more routing work than job title and country combined.
Two said when they would reply. Descartes promises a same-day response above its form. Onfleet says the form takes about a minute and offers a 15-minute intro call on the next screen. Loadsmart says it will be in touch "soon", which is not a time.
Two offered a way in without sales. Onfleet puts "Start free trial" beside its sales button, and Flock Freight's "Start shipping" leads to a sign-up and a quote tool. Freightos' 2025 State of Online Freight report, from a company that sells digital freight booking, says half of the top forwarders and four of the five largest ocean carriers now offer instant quotes. None of the forwarders and brokers in our sample showed one on the first screen.
How to use this
The ten tests take about 30 minutes per site. Run them on your homepage and two competitors.
1. Read your hero cold. Cover the logo and menu and ask someone outside the company to name the category, the customer and one fact. If the answer is "something with AI and supply chains", rewrite the line beneath the headline first.
2. Match the title and the h1. One visible h1 in the HTML that says what you sell, and a title tag that says the same thing in search words.
3. Split demo and quote. A demo form needs a name, a work email, a company and one volume question. A quote form can be longer, but say so, and say when the quote arrives.
4. Offer one route without a call. A trial, a sign-up or an instant quote for a standard lane lets the smallest buyers qualify themselves.
Our conversion rate by industry benchmarks give the numbers to measure against afterwards, and the Logistics Demo Request and Lead Form Statistics 2026 post goes deeper on the forms. When we build marketing sites in Webflow, we would run these ten tests on the staging site before launch, and our marketing website service explains how we scope that work.
