What should a small business website include?

Most small business sites have too many pages and not enough answers. Someone lands on yours with a question already in their head, and every page that does not help them answer it is a page they have to get past. Here is what earns its place.

The five things every visitor is checking

Before anyone contacts you they are quietly working through a list. It is the same list in every trade:

• Do you do the specific thing I need? Not your category — my problem.
• Do you work where I am?
• Are you real? A photograph of the actual place does more here than any amount of copy.
• Roughly what will this cost, or at least how is it priced?
• How do I reach you, right now, with the least effort?

If your site answers those five clearly, it is doing its job. Everything after that is refinement.

The pages that earn their place

Home

Say what you do, for whom, and where — in the first sentence, above the fold, in plain words. “Boiler repairs and servicing across north Leeds, same-day callout” beats any tagline about excellence. Then the proof: photographs of your work, and one obvious way to get in touch.

Services

One page per service if you want to be found for each of them; a single page with clear sections if you are just starting. Say what is included, what it costs or how it is priced, and how long it takes. Vagueness here reads as evasiveness, and people move on.

About

Not your life story. Who you are, how long you have done this, any qualifications or registrations that matter in your trade, and a real photograph. This page exists to make you a person rather than a form.

Contact

Phone, email, address, hours, map. On a phone the number should be tappable. If you only take enquiries through a form, say when you reply — silence after submitting a form is where most enquiries are lost.

Proof

Reviews, before-and-after photographs, a short list of past jobs. This can live on the home page rather than its own. What matters is that it is specific and verifiably yours — invented testimonials are recognisable and they cost you more than having none.

A five-page site that answers the real questions beats a fifteen-page site that buries them.

Pages people add out of habit

• A blog nobody updates. Two posts from three years ago make a business look closed. Either commit or leave it off.
• A gallery of stock photography. It signals the opposite of what you intended.
• “Our values” and “Our mission”. Nobody chooses a plumber on values. If you have a genuine principle that affects the customer — fixed prices, no callout fee — put that on the home page instead.
• An FAQ that answers questions nobody asked. Use the questions customers actually ring you with; those are also the ones people type into search.

The parts everyone forgets

Opening hours, including holidays. Whether you charge for callouts. Which areas you cover, by name. Payment methods. Parking. Whether you are accessible. These unglamorous details are what people are actually looking for, and leaving them out generates phone calls you did not need to take.

Add the legally required pages for your trade and country too — registration numbers, professional body membership, and privacy or cookie notices if you collect anything at all.

A reasonable starting shape

Home, one services page, about, contact. Publish that, then add pages as you learn what people ask. A site that grows out of real questions ends up better organised than one planned in a single sitting — and it goes live months earlier.