What a small business website should include

By the Site Squad team. Published October 05, 2026. Last reviewed October 5, 2026.

A small business website has one job: a stranger on a phone decides in under a minute whether to call, book, order or visit. Everything below serves that decision. Use it as a checklist for your current site or as a brief for whoever builds the next one.

1. The first screen answers three questions

What you do, where, and what to do next. "Emergency plumber in Leeds. Call now." beats a slogan. The phone number or booking button sits in the first screen on a phone, not behind a menu. Most visits are on mobile, so check the first screen at phone width before anything else.

2. One page per main service

A page each for the three to eight things people search for: boiler repair, root canal, couples counseling, wedding photography. Each page says who it is for, what happens, what it costs or how pricing works, and how to book. Service pages are what Google and AI assistants match to a question.

3. Proof: reviews, credentials, real photos

Your Google rating and a handful of real reviews, quoted with the reviewer's first name. Licenses, registrations and insurance where your trade has them. Photos of your actual premises, van, team or work, not stock. A before-and-after gallery where the trade allows it. Proof is the difference between a site that looks fine and a site that gets the call.

4. Contact that works in one tap

A tap-to-call number, a tap-to-email address, a short form that reaches a real inbox, a map, and your WhatsApp if you use it. Test the form. A surprising number of business websites have a form that goes nowhere.

5. Hours, address and area, written out

Opening hours in text (not only in an image), the full address, the areas or neighborhoods you serve, parking or transit notes. This is also what local search and AI assistants read when someone asks "near me" or "open now".

6. Pricing, or how pricing works

If you can publish prices, publish them; they filter the wrong customers out and build trust with the right ones. If you cannot, say how it works: a free quote, a fixed call-out fee, a price range, or a first consultation price.

7. An About page with people in it

Who you are, how long you have done this, why you do it. A photo of the owner. For solo professionals this page is often the most visited after the home page.

8. Fast, accessible, and readable on a phone

Pages that load in under two seconds on mobile data. Text you can read without zooming. Buttons you can hit with a thumb. Contrast and labels that follow WCAG 2.1 AA practices, which also protects you under accessibility law in several countries.

9. The machine-readable layer

A title and description on every page, a sitemap, local business structured data (name, address, phone, hours, services, area), and plain text that states the facts. This is what lets search engines and assistants such as ChatGPT, Claude and Perplexity describe you accurately when someone asks for a business like yours.

10. The pages your trade needs

A menu for a restaurant. An emergency line for a plumber or locksmith. A booking page for a salon or clinic. A gallery for a builder or a photographer. A price list for a groomer. A team page for a practice. A class timetable for a studio. A case results page for a lawyer. The generic five-page site misses the one page that matters in your trade.

11. Privacy, terms and the small print

A privacy page, cookie wording if you use tracking, and terms if you take bookings or payments. Not exciting, but required in most of the countries we serve.

What you can leave out

Sliders, stock photos of handshakes, a blog you will not write, "welcome to our website", background music, and anything that delays the phone number. If a section does not help the stranger decide, cut it.

A quick self-test

Open your site on your phone. Can you see what the business does and tap to contact it within five seconds? Are the hours and address in text? Are there real reviews and real photos? Does each main service have a page? If any answer is no, that is the next thing to fix.