A small business has no budget for experiments. A website needs to do one thing: turn the person who found you into a call, a message or an order. Everything else is decoration.
Here is what a website for a small business must contain — in the order a visitor actually looks for it.
1. Who you are and what you do — within five seconds
The most common mistake is an opening line like „Welcome to our website”. That says nothing. The top of the home page should state what you do, for whom and where. For example: „Garden landscaping and grounds maintenance — Novi Sad and the surrounding area.”
Below it, one button with a clear action: Request a quote, Call us or See prices.
2. Contact details that need no hunting
Phone and address in the header, a contact form on every important page, and a map if you have premises. On mobile the phone number must be tappable — one touch, the call starts.
- Phone and e-mail visible without scrolling
- Opening hours
- Address and map for shops and offices
- A short form — name, contact, message. Nothing more.
3. A separate page for each service
If you do three things, do not bury them in one paragraph on the home page. Each service deserves its own page, because that is how people search. Separate pages also mean each can rank for its own topic.
That is how we structured our services — split out, with an explanation of what the client actually gets.
4. Proof that you know the work
Photos of your work, examples, numbers, client names, reviews. Without them you are just another site with nice words. For trades and services, before-and-after photos do the job better than any copy.
For us that role is played by the portfolio — concrete projects instead of promises.
5. Prices, or at least a ballpark
You do not have to publish a price list down to the last euro, but complete silence about price pushes people towards a competitor who at least wrote something. A range, packages or a „from” figure is enough. We break our own pricing down in how much a website costs.
6. Loading speed
If a site takes more than three seconds to load, a good share of visitors give up. The usual culprits are enormous photos straight off a phone and too many plugins. Images should be resized and served in a modern format, and anything unused should go.
7. A mobile version that actually works
Most people will open your site on a phone. That means readable text without zooming, buttons big enough for a thumb, a menu that opens without a fight and forms that are not maddening to fill in. Always test on a phone, not only on a desktop.
8. Basic SEO and a Google Business profile
A title and description for every page, sensible URLs, image alt text, and above all a Google Business profile if you work locally. For a small business in any city, that profile often brings more calls than the website itself. More in SEO basics for your website.
9. The basic legal side
Company details, a privacy policy and a cookie notice. If you sell online, add terms of purchase, returns and delivery.
10. Measurement
Without analytics you do not know whether the site works. The minimum is a tool showing how many people arrive, from where and which pages they view. That is what you then use to fix what is not working.
What you do not need
- A full-screen intro animation
- An auto-rotating slider with five slides nobody manages to read
- Background music
- A „News” page last updated three years ago
A short checklist
- Is it clear within five seconds what you do and where?
- Are contact details visible without scrolling?
- Does each service have its own page?
- Is there proof — photos, examples, reviews?
- Does the site load in under three seconds?
- Does everything work properly on a phone?
- Do you have a Google Business profile?
If the answer to several of these is not „yes”, that is your list for the next step. If you would rather we handled it, request a quote — we reply within 24 hours.
