What a small business website needs

A useful small-business website is shorter than most people expect. It has to say what you do, where you do it, and how to get in touch — clearly, on a phone. This is that list. It isn’t a sales page, and it doesn’t invent results for businesses I haven’t worked with.

Say what you do in one glance

When someone opens the page, they should know what the business is without guessing. “Plumber covering Mansfield and Sutton” beats a slogan that could belong to anyone. The first screen should also show a phone number or a button, because a lot of local jobs start while someone is standing in the problem.

Write it the way customers search. People type “boiler repair”, “end of tenancy clean” or “café near me”, not necessarily the phrase on the side of the van. You can still sound like yourself. The plain words need to be real text, not buried in a picture.

If you want the page written for a particular trade or type of business, the notes on websites for small businesses split that out: trades, restaurants, salons, gyms, shops, consultants, freelancers, startups and personal sites. Each one is about the website, not a listing of those businesses.

Make it easy to get in touch

Give people a form that arrives with you, a phone number they can tap, and an email address. Put those on every page, not only on a contact page they have to hunt for. If the number is drawn inside a logo, a phone can’t dial it.

If you travel to customers, list the towns you cover. If customers come to you, put the address, the hours and a note on parking. Keep that name, address and phone identical to your Google Business Profile and your Facebook page. When the details disagree, neither a customer nor a search engine knows which to trust.

Your customers’ searches are not the same as yours. A plumber’s customer types “plumber near me” or “emergency plumber”. The plumber, looking for help, types “website for plumbers”. A good site is built for the first kind of search. The pages on this site are for the second. I can’t promise a position for either.

The pages most businesses need

Most small businesses can launch with four pages.

• A home page that says what you do and how to enquire.
• A services page, with each job named separately if you do more than one thing.
• A short about page, so people know who they will deal with.
• A contact page.

Add a gallery when the work is visual. Add a menu or a price list when people expect to check prices before they travel or book. Add another page only when it answers a different question.

You do not need a dozen pages that repeat the same sentence.

Show the real business

Use photos of your own work, your van, your premises or the people who do the job. Phone photos in daylight are fine. Stock photos of a different workshop make the site look like a template, and customers can tell.

If you are insured, registered or qualified, say so and show a detail a customer can check, such as a Gas Safe number you actually hold. Don’t add badges for schemes you aren’t part of. Don’t borrow reviews, star ratings or client stories. A straight description of how you work is more useful. If a customer later leaves a review on Google, that review is theirs.

Phones, security and the title

Most visitors will be on a phone. Text needs to be readable, buttons easy to tap, and the page shouldn’t force people to pinch and zoom. If you already have a site that fails that test, the honest fix I offer is a new build, described on make my website mobile friendly. I don’t patch someone else’s page builder.

The site should load over HTTPS, so the browser doesn’t warn that the connection isn’t secure.

Every page needs its own title and description: the line in Google, and the sentence under it. “Home” is not a title. You don’t need to stuff a town into every sentence. You do need the page to say, in normal language, what it is about.

If the old site is the problem — not just the phone layout — that’s a website redesign. Sometimes a small update is enough. Often the foundations aren’t worth patching.

A domain you own

The site should live on an address you control, such as yourbusiness.co.uk, not only on a Facebook page or a free subdomain. A domain is the address. It is not the website. It costs around £5–£10 a year, and you should buy it so the account is yours.

A first website doesn’t need a complicated brief. A website built from scratch can start from a name and a few true sentences. You don’t need a logo first.

What it costs, and what can wait

The small-business website I build is £500. That’s a cheap website for a small business in the sense of a fixed price, not a bargain template. If you’d rather spread it, a pay monthly website uses one of three plans — £150 then £50 a month for 7 months, £100 then £100 a month for 4 months, or three payments of £166.67, £166.67 and £166.66. Each totals £500.

A few things can wait.

• A blog, unless you will actually write it. An empty news page from three years ago does the opposite of helping.
• Online booking, until you know you want a particular system.
• Card payments, until you have your own Stripe account. I can connect the links then.
• Extra pages that repeat the homepage.

The mock-up is free. Asking for one doesn’t commit you to the rest. If you want to see a homepage for your own business, use the mock-up form.