Against the Hero-Card Grid

The standard pattern: a section called "Why us" or "Features" or "How it works", set in three or four equal columns, each with an icon at the top, a two-word headline, and a paragraph below. The columns are roughly the same width, the icons roughly the same colour, and the paragraphs roughly the same length.

It is a defensible pattern. It is also, almost always, the wrong one for a brand site.

Why it is wrong

The hero-card grid is a hedging instrument. It exists because the writer could not decide which of the four things to lead with, so they led with all of them. The visual symmetry signals that they are of equal importance. They almost never are.

The reader, faced with four equally-weighted columns, reads none of them. They scan the icons, decide they have got the gist, and scroll. The four sentences inside the columns — which the writer agonised over — go unread.

What to do instead

Pick the single most important thing. Make it a section of its own. Give it a full-width type-led headline, a paragraph of body, and, if it warrants one, a single supporting image.

Then do the same for the second most important thing.

The result is a vertical rhythm of three or four sections, each carrying one idea, each given the space to be read. The total word count is unchanged. The proportion of words actually read goes from around fifteen percent to something closer to seventy.

The grid was never about communicating. It was about not having to choose. Choose.