What Does a Small Business Website Need to Have?
Start with the five-second test. Here are the non-negotiables, the pages worth building, and what you can safely skip.
The five-second test
Before listing anything, here's the test that matters. A stranger lands on your site. In five seconds, can they tell what you do, where you do it, and how to reach you? If yes, the site works. If no, no amount of extra pages or polish will fix it. Almost everything a small business website needs to have exists in service of that test.
So let's start there and work outwards.
The non-negotiables
A clear statement of what you do. Not a tagline — a plain sentence. "Plumbing repairs and hot water across Brisbane's south" beats "Excellence in flow solutions" every time. A clear way to contact you — phone, email, and a form, because different customers prefer different channels. Your service area, in plain words, because the most common reason a site visitor leaves is "I'm not sure they come to my suburb". And your hours, including when you'll actually reply. That's the floor. Miss any of these and the site is leaking customers it already earned.
The pages that earn their place
For most small businesses, a small set of pages does the job: a homepage, a services page (or one page per main service if there's enough to say), an about page, and a contact page. That's it, for a lot of trades and local services. You don't need a blog to rank, though it helps; you don't need a gallery unless your work is visual. We wrote a fuller breakdown of how many pages you actually need here: how many pages a small business website should have.
What doesn't earn its place: pages you build because a template came with them. Empty "FAQ" pages with two questions, "Team" pages with one person, "News" pages never updated. Every page that exists but says nothing is a small drag on the whole site.
The things that make it actually work
Fast loading on a phone. Most of your visitors are on mobile, and a slow site loses them before they've read a word. Real photos of your work, your ute, your shop — not stock. Customers can spot stock at a glance and it makes you look like a placeholder. A bit of proof: a few real reviews, a couple of recent jobs, the logos of anyone you've worked with. This is the part that converts a visitor into an enquiry, and it's the part most cheap sites skip.
The things that make it findable
None of the above matters if nobody arrives. So: page titles that describe what you do and where, a sensible structure Google can read, and content that actually answers the questions your customers type into search. This is the SEO work, and it's not optional — it's the difference between a site that exists and a site that brings in work. If yours doesn't, the diagnosis is here: why your website isn't getting any customers.
The things you can skip
Animations that delay the content. A giant hero video that takes six seconds to load on mobile. Pop-ups asking people to subscribe before they've read anything. Social feeds embedded on the homepage that slow everything down. Login areas for a site with no reason to log in. Anything that's there because someone saw it on another site, rather than because it serves the five-second test.
What I'd do
Start with the non-negotiables, add only the pages you can fill with real content, make sure it loads fast on a phone, and put real photos on it. That's a site that works. If you want to see what that looks like for your specific business, the easiest way is a free mockup — pick a style below, tell us about what you do, and we'll build you one. No payment, no obligation, and you'll know pretty quickly whether it's the version of your business you want online.