What should a small business website have?

Which pages does a small business website need?

Think in types of page, not a fixed number. A firm with five services might need a dozen pages; a café might need six. But every small business site should cover these in some form:

• Home: what you do, for whom and where, with a clear route into each service.
• Services: one page per main service rather than one long list. Each page can then answer the specific questions people search for, and rank for them.
• Prices or a price guide: even “from” prices or typical ranges. A visitor who can't find a price often assumes it's too high and moves on.
• About: who you are, real photos, qualifications and how you work.
• Reviews: real client words, ideally from Google or a platform your sector trusts.
• FAQ: the questions you answer on the phone every week, answered once, properly.
• Contact: phone, email, a short form, address, map and opening hours.
• Legal and GDPR: a privacy policy, cookie information and consent where you use tracking, and terms where relevant. Requirements vary by country: German business sites generally need an Impressum, for example, and UK limited companies must show certain company details. Check your own country's rules or ask an adviser.

What should people see before they scroll?

The first screen decides whether someone stays. In a few seconds it has to answer four questions: what do you do, where, for whom, and what should I do next?

Compare “Welcome to our website” with “Bookkeeping and tax returns for small firms in Utrecht. Book a free first call.” The second tells the visitor they're in the right place and gives them one obvious step.

Keep it to one call to action: “Book a call”, “Get a quote” or “Reserve a table”. Two buttons of equal weight make people hesitate. Put a short line of proof close by, such as your Google rating or years in business, and cut the slider. Rotating banners mostly hide your message behind an animation.

Which trust signals actually persuade people?

People buy from businesses they can picture. Stock photos of smiling models at a laptop tell a visitor nothing, and most people spot them instantly. Real material does the opposite: it shows the person they'll speak to and the place they'll walk into.

A short film is the fastest way to do that. Sixty to ninety seconds of you at work answers more questions than a page of text, and I've written about how video on a website affects enquiries separately.

• Real photos of your team, premises and finished work.
• A short video of how you work or what the space feels like.
• Reviews with names, from a platform people recognise.
• Credentials: qualifications, memberships, registrations, years in business.
• Specifics: prices, process steps and time frames. Vague sites feel risky.

How do you make it work on a mobile phone?

For most local businesses, the majority of visitors arrive on a mobile phone, often with a thumb and not much patience. Check your own analytics, but design for the phone first and the desktop second.

• Pages that load in two or three seconds on mobile data: compressed images, no heavy sliders, no video that autoplays with sound.
• A tap-to-call number and a tap-to-email link in the header.
• Short forms: name, a contact detail and a message, plus one question at most. Every extra field is a reason to stop.
• An embedded map and a written address, so directions are one tap away.
• A call or booking button that stays visible on long pages.

Which SEO basics should be built in from the start?

Adding SEO to a finished site costs more than building it in on day one. None of this is advanced, but it gets skipped when a site is rushed out.

• A unique page title and meta description for every page, written for the search that page should appear in.
• One main heading per page that says plainly what the page is about.
• Your business name, address and phone number written exactly as on your Google Business Profile.
• Readable URLs such as /tax-returns rather than /page?id=12.
• Descriptive alt text on images, and files compressed before upload.
• Structured data for your business type, and a sitemap submitted in Google Search Console.
• Internal links between related services, FAQs and articles.

What this looks like on two real sites

Two websites I built in Plovdiv show how the same checklist scales. For Vanya Velkova, a psychologist, I built a 60-page site with a hero video and my own photography, Bulgarian copy, a booking and contact form, reviews brought in from Superdoc.bg, GDPR pages and 50 SEO articles.

For Danini Correct, an accounting firm, the site runs to 39 pages in Bulgarian and English, with an enquiry form, Google Maps, testimonials, an FAQ, legal pages and 20 articles. Different sectors, same backbone: clear services, visible proof, easy contact and pages Google can understand.

If you'd rather have one person handle the lot, from copy and photos to video and SEO, that's the websites and marketing side of SocialDany. For budgets, see how much a small business website costs.