What a small business website actually needs
Most small business sites have pages nobody reads and are missing the three things every visitor is looking for. A short list of what earns its place.
The short answer
- How many pages does a small business website need?
- Usually five or six. A home page, one page per service you actually want more of, an about page, a contact page, and somewhere for proof. Pages beyond that tend to be written once and never read, while the pages that matter stay thin.
- What is the most common thing missing from a small business website?
- A clear next action. Most sites describe the business competently and then leave the visitor to work out what to do — no obvious phone number, no form above the fold, no indication of what happens after you get in touch.
Every visitor to a small business site is trying to answer three questions, usually in under thirty seconds.
Do they do the thing I need? Do they serve people like me? How do I get hold of them?
A site that answers those three quickly beats a prettier site that does not. Most of what gets added beyond them is decoration.
The pages that earn their place
Home. What you do, who for, and where to go next. It is a signpost, not a brochure. The most common mistake is trying to say everything here, which means nothing is findable.
One page per service you want more of. Not per service you offer — per service you want more of. If a service is 5% of revenue and you would rather it were zero, it does not need a page. Each of these should say what is included, what is not, and what happens first.
About. Who is behind it. For an owner-operated business this page does more work than people expect, because the buyer is partly deciding whether to trust a person.
Contact. Every route in: phone, form, email, address if you have premises, hours if they matter.
Proof. Whatever you honestly have. Real customers, real work, real photographs. If you have none yet, say what you would do rather than inventing customers.
That is five. A blog makes six if you will actually maintain it.
What visitors look for that is usually missing
The phone number, visible without scrolling. For trades and clinics this is the main conversion path and it is routinely buried in a footer.
Whether you serve them. Location, service area, business size, sector — whichever applies. A visitor who cannot tell will assume no.
What happens next. “Get in touch” is weaker than “tell us what is happening and we will reply within a day”. People hesitate at unknowns, and what occurs after I press this is an unknown you can remove for free.
Prices, or an honest explanation of why not. You do not have to publish a price list. You do have to acknowledge the question. A page that never mentions cost reads as evasive.
What usually does not earn its place
- A rotating banner nobody waits through
- A mission statement written for nobody in particular
- Stock photography of people in an office that is not yours
- A “solutions” page that repeats the services page in different words
- Anything with the word synergy
The test
Open your site on a phone. Give yourself ten seconds — genuinely ten — and try to answer the three questions at the top of this page.
If you cannot, a visitor who has never heard of you certainly cannot. That is the whole of it, and it costs nothing to check.
Where to start if it is already wrong
Do not rebuild. In order:
- Put the phone number in the header, on every page
- Add one sentence saying who you serve and where
- Say what happens after someone makes contact
- Cut the pages nobody visits
Four changes, usually under a day, and they do more than a redesign does.
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