Pillar site mockups: IA and buyer-experience critique

Scope: home.html, hr-audit.html, charlotte.html against mock.css. Structure, flow, conversion only. Brand untouched.

1. The buyer's five questions, in the order they ask them

Net: 1, 3, and 5 get answered. Question 2 is answered last when the name forces it first. Question 4 has no answer yet, but home puts the empty slot in position 2.

2. Module order per page

Home

Current: Hero → proof strip (empty) → service table → NC/SC rules → industries → Load Report → founder → FAQ → form.

Recommended:

1. Hero. One line under the lede: "Not a PEO. Independent, fixed fee, and we'll say so if a PEO is the wrong answer." Replace the "Charlotte" fact slot with "Not a PEO."
2. Triage (new). "What's going on at your firm?" Four choices: asked "are we compliant?" / hired in a new state / PEO renewal came in high / nobody owns HR. Each returns a card with service, price, duration, one CTA. Replaces the proof strip and the industries grid; pass the choice to the booking form.
3. Load Report sample, moved up, cut to the three fails plus a link to the full sample on the audit page. Nine identical rows on two pages is padding.
4. Service table, four columns (Service, What you get, Duration, Price). Link every row; today only A-1 links. Give brokerage its own short section: "Compare PEOs, free" currently lands on a table row with no CTA in it.
5. How we get paid (new trust module). Four fixed-fee lines, then brokerage: who pays, what percent, where it's disclosed, whether the PEO's price to the client changes. Confirm that last claim with Caleb first. Add "recommended no PEO in N of M comparisons" once N is real.
6. Multi-state, with an exposure calculator: pick states and headcount, get the registrations, E-Verify, workers' comp, wage-notice and final-pay rules triggered, ending in "N items. The audit checks all of them." Scope v1 to the 10 to 12 states Pillar sees most; fifty maintained rulebooks is a liability.
7. Founder, credentials repeated beside the booking.
8. Proof, real only, directly above the scheduler. No proof, no module.
9. FAQ, cut to three.
10. Scheduler (see section 4). Drop form-then-calendar unless the form pre-qualifies.

HR Audit

Current: Hero + tiers → who it's for → sequence → sample → checklist → FAQ → book.

Recommended:

1. Hero + tiers. State the state rule in each tier ("+$X per additional state") or drop the caps.
2. Who it's for, with both routing links working.
3. Sample Load Report with a page flip (new), moved above the sequence. The page promises "rule, fix, owner, week"; the sample shows status and week. Each row should expand to finding, rule, fix, owner, size (DIY / project / ongoing), and priced exposure. That's the product; show it before the process.
4. Exposure anchor (new, three lines). The sample says "back-overtime plus the I-9 penalty range against a $4,000 audit" and gives no number, beside a note that says numbers beat adjectives. Cite the published per-form I-9 penalty range times headcount, with source.
5. Sequence.
6. Checklist, grouped under the nine areas, collapsed. Heading says 41 checks; the list shows 26. A CPA will count.
7. How we get paid, short version.
8. FAQ, with "Is the audit privileged?" second. That's a managing partner's first question.
9. Book, with credentials, one proof line, and a fallback for people who won't pick a time now.

Add the full footer. Audit and Charlotte have a one-line footer and no mobile nav, so a phone user gets a logo and one button.

Charlotte

Current: Hero + map → why Charlotte + findings → services → quotes (empty) → FAQ → book.

Recommended:

1. Hero. Promote "on-site within 45 minutes of Uptown" from the map card to a hero fact; it's the one thing the national page can't offer. Point the hero CTA at the on-page #book.
2. SC-employer check (new, the local calculator). "Staff in York or Lancaster County?" Yes returns the four SC obligations and a CTA.
3. Local proof, real, or the page stays unpublished.
4. Common findings. Don't use fail/watch pills for frequency; a red "Most firms" reads as a verdict on the reader.
5. Services table, every row linked.
6. Why Charlotte prose, cut to two paragraphs.
7. FAQ. Keep the Catapult answer.
8. Book, with the location hidden field.

Cut the "Named, with permission." heading and the internal note under it; both would ship as visible copy. Add an "Other Carolinas offices" row, since nav and breadcrumb "Locations" both go to "#".

Mobile, all pages

Six-column tables scroll sideways, so the price column is off-screen. Report rows drop their header at 700px, so "Week 1" and a pill sit under a finding with no label. The hero diagram's 10px SVG text renders near 6px on a 360px screen.

3. Copy fixes

• "Four ways in. One standard of work." Five rows follow. Use "Five services. Most firms start with the audit."
• "Find out what your HR is carrying before it fails a load test." Use the buyer's words: "Been asked 'are we compliant?' Get an answer with a document behind it."
• Four names for one action: "Book an HR audit," "Get a fixed quote in 20 minutes," "HR risk check," "Scope call." Use "Book the 20-minute scope call" everywhere.
• "0 commissions on audits and projects" → "Fixed fees. One disclosed exception."
• "0 upsell" → "Same fee if a PEO is the answer."
• "Forty-one checks, not a questionnaire." → "The 41 checks, by area."
• "Where are your people?" → "States where you have employees."
• Charlotte H1 "and across the line" → "and across the state line."

4. Accessibility and form UX

1. No <main>, no skip link, nav unlabeled. .nav hides at 960px with no menu replacing it.
2. Contrast. --ink-50 on white is about 3.9:1 and carries 11.5 to 13px text: form help, report row numbers, diagram title, footer legal, map zips. The Pass pill is about 3.6:1, Watch about 3.3:1. All fail AA; Fail passes. Darken until 4.5:1.
3. .report and .rules are div grids styled as tables, with no row or cell semantics. Use real tables with th scope, or add visually hidden cell labels ("Fix by: Week 1").
4. .tablewrap scrolls horizontally but isn't focusable; keyboard users can't reach the price column. Add tabindex="0" and a label.
5. Heading skip on the audit page: h1 to h3 in "Who it is for." The tiers have no heading. aria-label on the load-diagram div is ignored; use figure.
6. Form: both selects preselect a real value, so required does nothing and bad data ships silently. Add an empty "Select" option. No autocomplete, no button type, no error, loading, or success state. The "150+ (we'll refer you)" option still books a call.
7. Focus: only inputs get a custom ring. Buttons, links, and summary on navy rely on the browser default, which can vanish on dark ground. Specify a 2px green :focus-visible ring. scroll-behavior:smooth ignores prefers-reduced-motion.
8. Scheduler iframe: give it a title, a loading state, and a mobile height rule. Put headcount, states, and trigger in the HubSpot booking form so Caleb's calendar doesn't fill with 8-person firms.
9. Twenty-plus href="#" links across the three pages; each resolves at launch or comes out. Minimum pages: /how-we-get-paid/, a services index with four anchors, /locations/, /resources/state-guides/. Build those before the six industry pages.