What should a small business website include?

The five pages to start with

1. Home

Above the fold on a phone: what you do, where you do it, and the action. Below it: your services as a scannable list, why someone should trust you, and the action again. If a stranger cannot describe your business after ten seconds on this page, nothing else on the site matters.

2. Services

One page per service once you have more than two or three — because that is how people search, and because separate pages can rank separately. Each one should cover what is involved, who it suits, roughly what it costs, how long it takes and what happens next.

3. Service areas

The suburbs you cover, written out as text. Include travel limits and call-out fees. “Servicing all of Sydney” sounds impressive and answers nothing.

4. About

This is where small businesses beat big ones. Who runs it, how long you have been doing it, what you are particular about, a photo of an actual person. Write it in first person if you are the business.

5. Contact

Phone number as a tappable link, a short form, the hours you answer, and your real location or service-area statement. Include an ABN — Australian customers check.

What belongs on every page

• A tappable phone number, visible without scrolling on mobile.
• One obvious action, repeated where a decision becomes plausible.
• A statement of coverage — which suburbs or areas.
• At least one trust signal: licence number, insurance, years trading, a genuine review.
• A photo of real work, real people or real premises.
• A title and meta description written for that page specifically.

The trust signals Australians actually look for

ABN. Licence numbers where the trade requires them — NSW building and electrical work, for example, must be advertised with the contractor licence number. Public liability insurance. Real photos rather than stock. Genuine Google reviews, linked to the profile so they can be verified. Clear pricing or at least a range.

What does not work: stock photos of models in headsets, invented review counts, badges nobody recognises, and “award-winning” without naming the award.

What you can skip

• A blog you will not maintain. Three posts from 2023 look worse than none.
• A gallery with no context. Twenty unlabelled photos say less than three explained ones.
• Live chat with nobody behind it. An unanswered chat is worse than no chat.
• Long company history. Two sentences, on the about page.
• Carousels and hero sliders. Most visitors never see slide two.
• Pop-ups on arrival. They cost more enquiries than they capture on mobile.

The technical minimum

• Loads fast on mobile data — compressed images, no unnecessary scripts.
• Readable without zooming, with tap targets big enough for a thumb.
• HTTPS, with one canonical version of each URL.
• A sitemap and robots.txt, with the site verified in Google Search Console.
• A Google Business Profile linked to the site, with matching business details.
• A privacy policy if you collect anything through a form — which, with a contact form, you do.

A sensible order to build in

1. Home, services, contact — enough to be credible and reachable.
2. A page per service, as soon as you have more than a couple.
3. Service areas, once you know which ones you actually want work in.
4. Proof — projects, before-and-afters, case studies — as it accumulates.
5. Guides answering the questions you answer on the phone every week.

That order matches how a business grows, and it means you are never paying for structure you cannot fill.