Growing a Franchise
Candidates are vetting franchise brands long before inquiry. From franchisee validation to a clear financial outline, these are the key pages franchisors need on high-converting websites.
With more franchise buyers completing the majority of their research before inquiring with the franchisor, the franchise development website is more important than ever. It has evolved from a digital brochure into a conversion engine. Prospective buyers are now doing the heavy lifting in the shadows, and by the time they arrive at the site, they’re ready for immediate validation. If the user experience doesn’t meet expectations or the information they want is gated, they’ll bounce.
Having the proper pages and data points on a site sets the baseline for successful conversions. These are the top pages to be sure to include on your franchise development site for successful sales.
Static text cannot always adequately explain an operating model. Buyers today want a truthful, straightforward education, and video content provides just that. While the overarching approach is universal, the specific details must be tailored to each individual franchise model.
For example, Craig Sherwood, senior vice president of development for The Joint Chiropractic, explained that, for The Joint, this means addressing the primary barrier to entry for most owners: the idea that a franchisee must be a doctor.
“For us at The Joint Chiropractic, the page that generates the longest visit duration (nearly three minutes) is a video of common questions asked to our chief chiropractor, Dr. Steve Knauf,” Sherwood said. “Given the uniqueness of our business model, candidates want to understand how they can own and operate a medical business without being a doctor. Dr. Steve walks candidates through the process and how we support them in finding a Doctor of Chiropractic in their area.”
By offering a direct explanation from leadership, you answer heavy operational questions and push uncertain candidates to schedule the first call.
Candidates today are risk-averse and scrutinize every dollar. Telling them where those dollars will go up-front, and maybe even offering return-on-investment representations, can help build trust and interest. Franchisors have to prove their value propositions with hard data, and analytics prove it.
“The most visited page is the initial investment/start-up cost,” Sherwood said. “This is not a surprise, as this question is almost always the first a candidate will ask during the initial phone call. It is critical for a brand to be transparent with not just the initial investment information, but the royalties and fees associated with becoming a franchisee.”
Rather than hiding costs behind an inquiry form, franchisors should lay them out clearly. This builds trust with potential candidates, and it allows them to self-qualify, ensuring that, when they do inquire, they are educated and ready to discuss higher-level strategy, not basic investment questions.
Once a candidate is aligned with the operational model and has verified they can meet the initial investment requirements, they’ll naturally want to know where exactly the brand is growing. Static lists of growth markets or color-coded maps highlighting “available states” are outdated and do not help candidates visualize the whitespace in a meaningful way.
“The next busiest page is available territories and growth markets,” Sherwood said. “With so much population movement going on in the US right now (i.e., growth in Florida, Texas, to name just two), it is critical to have an interactive map that allows a candidate to see where the opportunities for growth exist. And not just from a state standpoint, but providing specifics about cities within that state.”
This functionality directly supports the buyer’s research process and turns what could be a passive observer into an engaged prospect.
Generic praise from franchisees doesn’t move the needle. Buyers want to see themselves in existing owners to answer the question: "Can someone like me succeed here?"
Franchisors must have validation pages, but the existence of the page isn’t enough.
“When we ask our franchisees for either a testimonial or to speak with a candidate, we want them to, one, share their background and, two, be very specific about their experience with our brand,” Sherwood said. “Sharing their background and experience is so important for candidates to understand in order to establish a common background. Candidates usually find that our franchisees have very similar backgrounds and starting points to them.”
Critically, Sherwood suggests embracing the challenges alongside the advantages, offering specific details about all aspects of operating the business.
“As far as being specific, we want candidates to understand the pros and cons of the franchise experience with The Joint. This makes sure that there aren’t any misconceptions from the get-go,” he said.
The crucial pages of a franchise development site benefit the franchisees browsing them, but they also inform the artificial intelligence tools that will aggregate the information for their own users.
As such, a significant shift for 2026 is how candidates find information off your website. With the rise of AI search tools, your website acts as the source of truth for aggregators, and inconsistent data leads to AI flubs that confuse or misinform your candidates.
“In the new age of AI, a growing amount of brand information is displayed outside of the brand website (i.e., ChatGPT, Co-Pilot),” Sherwood said. “To improve the quality of information displayed on those sources, it is important to have consistent information across all channels — website, podcasts, blogs, LinkedIn posts — as AI aggregates all of that information. The consistency of the message will help optimize that information for a candidate.”
For more information on high-performing franchise websites, check out these related stories on 1851 Franchise:
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