Of 20 large professional services homepages we opened on 21 October 2026, 12 did not say in the hero what the firm does. Nearly all answered quickly: 17 returned the first byte inside web.dev's 0.8 second "good" line. The gap is in the words on the first screen and in the form behind the contact link, where the median first step asked for nine fields.
Below are the ten tests, the measurements and what a mid-sized firm can copy. The sample is four law firms, four accounting firms, four consultancies, three engineering and architecture firms, three IT services firms and two recruiters, all large, so read it as a study of choices, not a ranking.
The rubric: ten pass or fail tests
Each passed test scores one point: clarity and speed 0 to 3, the enquiry path 0 to 4, a total out of 10. The clarity and speed tests match our 24 B2B SaaS Websites Scored on Clarity, Speed and Demo Path teardown. The phone test is new, because professional services buyers call more than software buyers do.
| Dimension | Test, one point each | Basis |
|---|---|---|
| Clarity | C: names the service in words buyers use, such as law firm, tax or engineering | NN/g homepage guideline |
| Clarity | A: names who the firm serves: a sector, company size, client type or place | NN/g homepage guideline |
| Clarity | S: gives one concrete specific beyond the category: a number, place, credential or named client | 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 |
| Enquiry path | An enquiry form one click from the first screen | Our test |
| Enquiry path | Five fields or fewer on the first step | A round line, used in our SaaS scorecard |
| Enquiry path | Reply time or call length stated on the enquiry page | Our test |
| Enquiry path | A phone number shown on the enquiry page | Ruler Analytics call share, 2026 |
Source: Nielsen Norman Group, 2002; web.dev, 2025; HTTP Archive Web Almanac, 2026; Ruler Analytics, 2026
Clarity method. The hero is the main headline and the line under it, rendered in headless Chromium at 1,280 by 800 pixels after declining optional cookies. Navigation, logos and the title tag do not count. For rotating heroes we scored the first slide, what a visitor sees on arrival. A slide promoting a report or article scores zero: it describes the content, not the firm.
Speed method. Three consecutive curl requests per homepage at about 09:38 UTC from one connection in Serbia, recording time to first byte and compressed HTML size; we report the median run. For context only, we also ran Lighthouse 12.8.2 once per homepage in its default mobile mode.
Enquiry path method. We followed the most prominent contact or hiring link on the first screen, or the nearest one if none was visible, and counted text boxes, dropdowns and text areas on the first step. A radio or tick-box group counts as one field; consent and newsletter boxes as none. We submitted nothing.
The scorecard: clarity and speed
Letters show which clarity tests a hero passed: C for category, A for audience, S for a specific.
| Site | Type | Hero, first slide | Clarity | TTFB (s) | HTML (KB) | Speed |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Clifford Chance | Law | Article promo on cross-border M&A | 0 | 0.14 | 41 | 3 |
| Cooley | Law | "Counsel, beyond convention." | 0 | 1.15 | 12 | 2 |
| Mishcon de Reya | Law | "Finding our edge at the edge of what's possible" | 0 | 0.20 | 53 | 3 |
| Irwin Mitchell | Law | "Expert legal advice when you need it most" | 1, C | 1.25 | 136 | 1 |
| Grant Thornton (US) | Accounting | "Integrated solutions for connected risks" | 0 | 0.08 | 48 | 3 |
| BDO USA | Accounting | "Grow with confidence", then assurance, tax and advisory | 1, C | 0.27 | 23 | 3 |
| RSM US | Accounting | Assurance, tax and consulting "for middle market leaders" | 2, CA | 0.75 | 22 | 3 |
| Azets (UK) | Accounting | "Move forward with confidence", then accountancy | 1, C | 0.29 | 29 | 3 |
| PA Consulting | Consulting | "Bringing ingenuity to life." | 0 | 0.85 | 29 | 2 |
| Huron | Consulting | "Power enterprise growth with Huron +AI" | 0 | 0.40 | 31 | 3 |
| Slalom | Consulting | "AI in motion" | 0 | 0.08 | 40 | 3 |
| West Monroe | Consulting | "Consulting reimagined" | 1, C | 0.07 | 26 | 3 |
| Arup | Engineering | "We are engineering a more sustainable world" | 1, C | 0.05 | 30 | 3 |
| AECOM | Engineering | Sustainability report promo | 0 | 0.08 | 36 | 3 |
| Gensler | Architecture | Research article promo | 0 | 0.08 | 29 | 3 |
| Thoughtworks | IT services | "We do AI that works" | 0 | 0.06 | 21 | 3 |
| Endava | IT services | "Technology is our how. And people are our why." | 0 | 0.09 | 60 | 3 |
| Accenture | IT services | "Together we reinvented" | 0 | 0.14 | 30 | 3 |
| Hays (UK) | Recruitment | "Ready for your next career move?" with job search | 2, CA | 0.07 | 37 | 3 |
| Robert Half | Recruitment | "Anything's possible when you have the talent" | 1, C | 0.07 | 29 | 3 |
Source: Octo Agency, headless browser read and three curl runs per homepage, 21 October 2026. Azets redirected to its UK page on azets.com; Clifford Chance to /home.html. Kearney was replaced by PA Consulting after it answered repeat requests with an HTTP 403 bot challenge.
The scorecard: enquiry path and totals
| Site | Route from the first screen | Clicks | Fields | Reply time | Phone | Path | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Clifford Chance | None visible; footer contact form | 2+ | 7 | No | No | 0 | 3 |
| Cooley | Menu icon, then Contact | 2 | 9 | No | No | 0 | 2 |
| Mishcon de Reya | Contact us | 1 | 11 | No | Yes | 2 | 5 |
| Irwin Mitchell | Contact us in the hero | 1 | 5 | Next working day | Yes | 4 | 6 |
| Grant Thornton (US) | None visible; meeting request form | 2+ | 10 | No | No | 0 | 3 |
| BDO USA | Contact Us in the hero | 1 | 6 | 1 to 2 business days | No | 2 | 6 |
| RSM US | Contact RSM | 1 | 9 | No | Yes | 2 | 7 |
| Azets (UK) | Contact us | 1 | 10 | No | No | 1 | 5 |
| PA Consulting | Contact | 1 | 9 | No | No | 1 | 3 |
| Huron | Contact Us | 1 | 10 | No | No | 1 | 4 |
| Slalom | Let's talk, form on the homepage | 1 | 8 | No | No | 1 | 4 |
| West Monroe | Contact Us | 1 | 11 | No | Yes | 2 | 6 |
| Arup | Contact, an office list with no form | n/a | n/a | No | Yes | 1 | 5 |
| AECOM | None visible; contact form | 2+ | 8 | No | Yes | 1 | 4 |
| Gensler | Contact Us | 1 | 6 | No | No | 1 | 4 |
| Thoughtworks | Contact | 1 | 7 | No | No | 1 | 4 |
| Endava | Let's connect | 1 | 10 | No | No | 1 | 4 |
| Accenture | None visible; contact form | 2+ | 8 | No | Yes | 1 | 4 |
| Hays (UK) | For Organisations, then Get in touch | 2 | 3 | No | No | 1 | 6 |
| Robert Half | Find talent, then Book consultation | 2 | 9 | No | Yes | 1 | 5 |
Source: Octo Agency, rendered enquiry pages, 21 October 2026; no form was submitted. Hays shows three fields and a Next button, so later steps are not counted.
Clarity: big firms sell the brand, not the service
Nielsen Norman Group's first homepage guideline asks for a one-sentence tagline that says what the company does, and says even well-known companies should tell first-time visitors the site's purpose. Twelve of these 20 heroes do not.
The misses fall into two groups. Seven are brand lines: Cooley's "Counsel, beyond convention.", PA Consulting's "Bringing ingenuity to life.", Endava's "Technology is our how", Accenture's "Together we reinvented", plus Mishcon de Reya, Huron and Thoughtworks. Five open on a campaign or a piece of content: Clifford Chance, AECOM and Gensler on an article or report, Grant Thornton on a cyber risk campaign and Slalom on an AI video. Firms this size can afford it because buyers already know them. A 60-person firm copying the look cannot.
The category word is cheap, and eight passed on it. BDO, Azets and Robert Half put a slogan in the headline and the service in the line beneath, so a buyer who skips the slogan still reads "assurance, tax, and advisory services".
Audience was nearly absent. Only RSM, "for middle market leaders", and Hays, whose hero is a job search for candidates, named who they serve. For a mid-sized firm, "for family-owned manufacturers in the Midlands" tells a buyer more than any slogan.
Nobody gave a specific. No hero carried a number, a named client or a credential, yet Gensler's meta description cites 58 offices and more than 6,000 professionals, and Mishcon's more than 1,400 people. The fact exists; it sits where only search engines read it.
Recruiters have two audiences. Hays and Robert Half lead with candidates; the employer route, which earns the fee, takes two clicks to reach a form on both.
What ranks: the search snippet does the hero's job
We cannot see rankings from outside, but we can read what each homepage hands a search engine. Google's documentation says it builds title links from sources including the title element, the main visual title, h1 headings and other prominent text, warns that several headings of equal weight can confuse it, and suggests putting the main title in the first visible h1.
| Check | Passed | Misses |
|---|---|---|
| Title tag names the category | 14 of 20 | Mishcon de Reya, Azets, AECOM, Gensler, Endava, Accenture |
| Exactly one h1 with text in the served HTML | 12 of 20 | Clifford Chance, Mishcon de Reya, PA Consulting, Slalom, West Monroe, Gensler, Thoughtworks, Hays |
| Organisation-type structured data | 15 of 20 | Clifford Chance, Irwin Mitchell, Grant Thornton, Huron, Hays |
| Meta description present | 19 of 20 | AECOM |
Source: Octo Agency, served HTML of each homepage, 21 October 2026
Clifford Chance's title says "Global Law Firm" while its hero promotes an article; Grant Thornton's lists audit, assurance, tax and advisory while its hero talks about connected risks. Six titles carry only a slogan or the brand, including AECOM's, which reads "AECOM" over a page with no meta description. There, the hero offers Google nothing better to use.
Rotating heroes add a second problem: Slalom and Gensler mark every slide headline as an h1, the multiple-heading case Google describes.
Speed: everyone is fast at the server, some are heavy behind it
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, 17 of 20 homepages were good, and the median was 0.12 seconds. Cooley at 1.15 seconds, Irwin Mitchell at 1.25 and PA Consulting at 0.85 missed.
The first request tells a different story from the next two. Cold, with DNS and TLS set-up included, Cooley took 2.20 seconds, Irwin Mitchell 2.25 and Slalom 1.69; a minute later Slalom answered three requests in 0.08 seconds each. Most of these sites sit behind a content delivery network that serves a cached copy once one exists. A visitor arriving from an advert may well be the cold request.
HTML weight was low almost everywhere. 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 30 KB compressed. Irwin Mitchell was the outlier at 136 KB compressed and 1,190 KB uncompressed, of which 43% is inline script.
The weight sits behind the HTML. In one Lighthouse mobile run per homepage, total transfer had a median of 3.4 MB, against 2.6 MB for the median mobile home page in the Almanac, and 13 of 20 were heavier. Video did most of it: Gensler's homepage pulled 101 MB of MP4 during the test, Slalom's 116 MB of segments from its video host, West Monroe's 31 MB and Arup's 15 MB. A fast server does not help a phone that has to download that.
Enquiry path: one click is common, the form is long
Twelve of 20 sites had a working enquiry form one click from the first screen. Of the eight that did not, Clifford Chance, Grant Thornton, AECOM and Accenture show no contact link on the first screen at all, Cooley hides it behind a menu icon, Arup's contact page lists offices with no form, and both recruiters need two clicks to reach the employer form.
First steps ran from three fields to eleven. The median of the 19 forms was nine, and only Irwin Mitchell, at five, and Hays, at three before a Next button, passed our line. Mishcon de Reya and West Monroe asked eleven; Mishcon, Huron and Endava also asked how the visitor heard about the firm. Our Professional Services Demo Request and Lead Form Statistics 2026 post covers what form length does to completion.
Two firms said when they would reply. Irwin Mitchell promises that an expert will contact the visitor by the next working day; BDO says it will respond in one to two business days. Grant Thornton says a team member "will be in touch" and Hays "promptly", neither of which is a time. Optifai's 2026 benchmark, vendor data from 939 B2B companies, puts professional services firms at a 45-hour average response, with 22% answering inside five minutes.
Eight showed a phone number on the enquiry page. Ruler Analytics' 2026 benchmark, data from a call tracking vendor, counts calls as 52.6% of professional services conversions and puts the sector's conversion rate at 6.1%. Hinge Research Institute found in 2014 that more than 80% of potential clients visit a firm's website before deciding. On 12 of these enquiry pages a buyer who would rather talk has to go looking for a number.
How to use this
The tests take about 30 minutes per site. Run them on your homepage and two competitors.
1. Read your hero cold. Cover the logo and navigation, then ask someone outside the firm to name the service, the client type and one fact. Keep the slogan if you like it, and put the service and audience in the line beneath, as BDO does with its services.
2. Match the title tag and h1. One visible h1 that says what the firm does, and a title tag that says the same thing in search words.
3. Shorten the first step. Name, email, company and one "what do you need" field is enough to start a conversation. Ask the rest on the call.
4. Say when you will reply, and show the number. One sentence beside the button, and a click-to-call number on the same page.
Our Professional Services Website Conversion Rate Statistics 2026 post has the benchmarks to measure against. When we build marketing sites in Webflow we would run these same ten tests on the staging site before launch, and our marketing website service explains how we scope that work.
