What a small business website actually needs (and what it doesn't)
By Ramzy Brown ·
Plenty of small businesses still get by on Facebook and word of mouth. That works until someone searches your business name, finds nothing useful, and rings the competitor who does have a website.
You don’t need anything fancy. You need a site that answers the questions a customer has in the 20 seconds before they decide whether to call you.
The must-haves
What you do and where, in the first screen. “Wedding cakes in Wantage” beats “Welcome to our website”. Most visitors are on a phone and won’t scroll to find out.
A way to contact you with one tap. A phone number that dials when tapped, a WhatsApp button, and a short form. Put them at the top and the bottom of every page.
Proof you’re real. Photos of your actual work, your actual premises or your actual face. Reviews, quoted with the customer’s first name and town. Stock photos of smiling handshakes don’t count.
Your service area and opening hours. Customers want to know straight away whether you cover their town and when they can reach you.
A page for each main service. If you do kitchens and bathrooms, that’s two pages. It helps customers find the right thing, and it gives Google two pages to show for two different searches.
The Google bits people forget
- Google Business Profile. For local businesses, this often matters as much as the website. Claim it, fill in every field, add photos and link it to your site.
- Search Console. Free from Google. It tells you what people searched for to find you and flags problems with your site.
- Page titles that say what and where. “Electrician in Didcot | Smith Electrical” tells Google and the searcher exactly what the page is.
- Speed on a phone. If your site takes more than a few seconds to load on mobile data, a lot of people give up before it appears.
Things you can skip
- A blog, unless you’ll actually write in it. An empty blog with one post from 2021 looks worse than no blog.
- Sliders and carousels. Hardly anyone waits for slide three.
- Pop-ups asking people to join a newsletter on their first visit.
- Twelve pages of “about us”. One honest page is plenty.
How much should it cost?
It depends on what it needs to do, and anyone who quotes without asking you questions is guessing. What matters more is the ongoing cost: hosting, updates and changes. Ask any web designer what happens when you want a phone number changed in a year’s time, and whether you own the domain and the site if you leave.
At Two Sugars, you own everything and you get a fixed quote before we start. If you want us to look at what you need, tell us a bit about your business.
