Short answer: a small business website needs five to eight pages, one clear action per page, proof that you are real and competent, and a fast mobile experience. Everything else is optional. Most sites fail not because something is missing but because there is too much competing for attention.
The pages you actually need
Start here and add only what your business genuinely requires.
Home page. Says what you do, who for, and what to do next. Someone should understand your business within five seconds of landing.
A page per core service. One page per thing you sell, not one page listing everything. Service pages are what rank in search and what people read before they enquire.
About page. For small businesses this is often the second most visited page. People are checking whether you are real, local and trustworthy.
Contact page. A form, an email address, a phone number if you take calls, and a location if it matters. Do not make people hunt.
Proof page. Case studies, reviews, results or client logos. Whatever form it takes, you need something that shows the work rather than describing it.
What every page needs
The structure matters more than the volume of content.
- A single clear heading that says what the page is about
- One primary action, repeated rather than competing with three others
- Proof close to the point of decision, not buried on a separate page
- Copy written for a customer rather than for a search engine
We cap ourselves at two calls to action across an entire site. More than that and every option gets weaker.
The technical basics
None of this is optional, and all of it is invisible until it is missing.
Speed. Slow sites lose enquiries. Aim for a page that becomes usable in under two seconds on a mid-range phone on 4G, not on your office fibre connection.
Mobile first. Design for the smallest screen and let it scale up. Testing on a desktop browser window that has been dragged narrow is not the same as testing on a phone.
HTTPS and a working SSL certificate. Browsers now flag sites without one, which is the fastest possible way to lose trust.
Analytics. If you cannot see what people do on your site, you cannot improve it. Privacy-friendly options like Umami or Plausible avoid cookie banner complexity entirely.
Structured data. Schema markup helps search engines and AI answer engines understand what your business is and does. It is a small job that pays off for years.
The forms question
Most small business sites lose enquiries at the form, not before it.
Ask for the minimum you need to have a useful first conversation. Name, email and a message will do for most businesses. Every additional field reduces the number of people who finish.
Then make sure the form actually works. Send yourself a test enquiry monthly, and check it is not landing in spam. Broken forms are the single most common problem we find when auditing existing sites.
What you can skip
Plenty of standard website features add cost and clutter without adding enquiries.
- A carousel or slider on the home page
- A blog you will not maintain
- A live chat widget nobody is monitoring
- Stock photography of people in offices who are not your team
- A "our process" page longer than the service page it supports
If you cannot explain what a page or feature is for in one sentence, it probably does not belong.
Turning the checklist into enquiries
Having the right pages is the starting point, not the finish line. The gap between a tidy site and a site that produces work is usually conversion, not design.
We have covered that separately in how to get more enquiries from your website, which is worth reading before you sign off on any build.
Budget and upkeep
Once you know the page count and the features, you can price the build with reasonable accuracy. Our guide to what a website costs in the UK sets out the bands and what sits inside each one.
Factor in the running costs at the same time rather than after launch. Website care plans explains what maintenance should actually cover and what it should cost.
If you want us to build it, our web design service covers the whole process from brief to launch with fixed pricing against a defined scope.
Common questions
How many pages should a small business website have?
Five to eight pages covers most small businesses properly. That is a home page, a page for each core service, an about page, a contact page and one proof page such as case studies or reviews.
Do I need a blog on my website?
Only if you will actually maintain it. An abandoned blog with three posts from two years ago damages credibility more than having no blog at all.
Does my small business website need to be mobile friendly?
Yes. The majority of small business site traffic now arrives on mobile, and Google indexes the mobile version of your site rather than the desktop one, so a poor mobile experience affects both conversions and rankings.
What is the most important page on a small business website?
Usually the service page for whatever you most want to sell, not the home page. Home pages get traffic but service pages get decisions, so that is where the strongest copy and clearest calls to action belong.
Let's build something that actually works.
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