The short answer
The van, inside and outside, and real client dogs after grooming. Then your face. Mobile grooming is bought on convenience and on trust in one person, and photographs are the only way to supply the second one before somebody has met you.
That is the answer. The reasons it is that and not something else are worth two minutes.
Why the van is the whole question
A salon client walks past the window and sees the room. By the time they book, the premises have done most of the persuading.
Your client cannot do that. They are being asked to hand a dog to a stranger and watch it go into a vehicle outside their house, with the doors shut, for a couple of hours, and most of them have never seen inside a grooming van. Left to imagine it, they imagine something between an ice cream van and a horsebox.
Four photographs settle it: the interior wide from the open back doors, the bath, the table with the restraint visible, and the exterior parked on an ordinary residential street. Not a wrap mock-up. The actual van, clean, on a normal day.
Why real client dogs and not stock
Stock photography of a groomed retriever tells an owner nothing except that you have a subscription. A before and after pair of a dog like theirs, shot in your van, tells them what will happen to their dog.
Shoot the pairs from the same spot on the table every time, so the only difference between the two frames is your work. Get written consent through a tick box in your booking intake, and frame everything so no house number, door or street sign identifies where a client lives.
Why your face matters more here than anywhere
The business is one person on a driveway. Owners are choosing a person, not a brand, and half of them will not be at home while you work. One clear photograph of you with a dog, face visible, in working clothes, beside the Book button, does more than a page of copy about being caring and professional.
What they want to read while they look
Photographs answer the safety question. A short amount of text answers the rest, and it should sit beside the pictures rather than on an About page nobody opens.
Insurance, and the fact that you hold it. Training and any qualifications, named accurately and only while current. How long you have been doing this. That the dog is groomed one at a time with no cage drying and no waiting in a crate all day, which is the genuine welfare advantage of your set-up and is routinely left unsaid. What happens if a dog is frightened or a groom has to stop early.
What they want to see about the practical side
Whether you come to their street, what it costs for their dog with travel included, and what they need to have ready. Those three sit alongside the trust material, because an owner who trusts you and cannot work out whether you cover their road still does not book.
Reviews, in the right place
Google reviews carry more weight for a van than almost any other business, because there is no premises to inspect. Ask for them at the point where the owner is happiest, which is when they see the dog. Put a few on the home page and on the area pages, ideally from clients in or near that area, rather than collecting them all on a testimonials page.
Where the pictures go
Not into a gallery at the end. A gallery is where photographs go to be ignored.
The interior and table shots go near the top of the home page above the price table. Two or three go on every area page, because an area page is often the first thing a stranger from search sees. Your face goes next to the main Book button, and before and after pairs go on the service pages.
Then keep them fast: sized, compressed, hero first, everything else lazy-loaded, no sliders. Photograph-heavy pages on patchy signal is exactly your visitor's situation.
Where this sits
Van photography, real client dogs and the trust material placed where the decision happens are part of a mobile grooming website as we build it, and real premises photography runs through all our pet business websites. What each package includes is on pricing. Show the van. The rest is easier afterwards.