Why I stopped putting icon cards on trade sites
Standing rule
Art direction · Trades · Copy
Three cards with three line icons is a way of appearing to answer a question.
The default for a service business is a grid of cards: an icon, four words, a sentence. It scans well. It fills a viewport. It also communicates approximately nothing that the visitor did not already assume.
Somebody buying a five-figure installation they cannot evaluate is not scanning. They are trying to work out who is lying. Cards are optimized for the wrong reader entirely.
On the last one I built, the category’s icon grid was replaced with long-form prose, numbered like a specification, including an explicit list of the questions to ask any installer — questions the reader can carry straight to a competitor’s quote. That only works when the underlying expertise is real. Which is the point: the format quietly reveals whether there is anything behind it.