What should be on a small business website? A page-by-page checklist

A small business website has a short job: tell a person who already half wants to hire you what you do, where, for how much, and how to reach you, before they go back to the search results. Plenty of sites fail that job by burying the phone number and leaving the hours off. This checklist lists the 6 pages a service business needs, what goes on each one and the mistake to avoid, then the add-ons for your trade. To see finished pages, browse the website examples by industry; to decide who should build yours, read I need a website for my business: 5 ways to get one.

Why should contact details come first?

Contact details come first because they are what visitors look for. In BrightLocal’s Consumer Search Behavior survey (1,000 US consumers, April 2025), 85% said contact information and opening hours are an important factor when they research a local business, and 46% called them very important. In the same BrightLocal survey, 56% said they often or always check that business information is consistent across the sources they find. So the first rule of the checklist has nothing to do with design: your phone number, your hours and the area you serve go on every page, and they match your Google Business Profile to the letter.

Two details follow from how people arrive. 73% of local searches start on a mobile device (BrightLocal, Consumer Search Behavior 2026), so the phone number is a tap-to-call link, not a string of digits in an image. And Google says businesses with complete and accurate information are more likely to show up in local results (Google Business Profile Help, checked October 14, 2026), so the hours on the site and the hours on the profile change together.

What pages does a small business website need?

A service business needs 6 pages. Each one answers a question customers ask in a particular order, and each one has a mistake that shows up again and again.

The 6 pages every service business needs, what goes on each and the mistake to avoid.

Page	Its job	What goes on it	Common mistake
Home	Route the visitor in one screen	What you do, where, and how to reach you in the first screen; links to each main service; 3 to 6 photos of real work; 2 or 3 real reviews; the phone number again at the bottom	A slideshow of stock photos and a paragraph about passion and commitment before the first useful fact
Services	Explain each service in your words	One section or page per service: what it covers, who it is for, what happens on the visit, a price or range, and a button to request it	One page that says “we offer a full range of services” and lists nothing
About	Show who turns up	Your name and photo, how long you have been doing the work if you can state the year, licenses and insurance if you hold them, the area you live and work in	A mission statement with no person in it
Photos and reviews	Prove it	Your own job photos with a line on what each shows; reviews copied word for word from Google or another platform, with the reviewer’s first name and date; before-and-after pairs if your trade has them	Stock photos, and reviews with no name, no date and no source
Service area	Tell people whether you come to them	The towns, zip codes or radius you cover; travel fees if any; the hours for emergency calls if you take them	A map with no words, which search engines cannot read
Contact	Make the next step easy	Phone number as a tap-to-call link, email, hours, address if customers visit, a short form that emails you, and a line on how fast you reply	A form with 10 required fields and no phone number

A restaurant, shop or studio replaces the service area page with a menu or product page, written as text rather than a PDF: 85% of US diners look at a menu online before deciding on a new restaurant and 80% look at the website (TouchBistro, 2024 report, 1,500 US diners). The photos and reviews page carries only real material. Invented reviews are a legal problem as well as a credibility one; a site with 3 real reviews beats a site with 30 fake ones.

What should a services page include?

A services page should let a stranger decide whether you do their job and roughly what it costs, without calling to ask. For each service, in this order: the name customers use for it, not the trade term; what it covers and what it does not; who it is for, by symptom or situation; what happens on the visit, in 3 or 4 steps; a price, a range or a starting price and the factors that change it; and a button that requests that specific service, so the form arrives already knowing what the job is.

If you offer more than 4 or 5 services, give the main ones their own pages. One page per service lets the page title say exactly what it is, which is what a search engine and an AI assistant match on. How to write website copy for a local business covers the wording.

Do I need reviews and photos on my website?

Yes, and both have to be real. BrightLocal’s Local Consumer Review Survey 2026 (1,002 US adults) found 97% of consumers read reviews for local businesses and 54% then visit the business’s website, up from 32% in 2019. Those visitors arrive expecting the site to confirm the reviews they just read, so put 2 or 3 of your strongest Google reviews on the home page and the rest on their own page, copied exactly, with the reviewer’s first name and the date, and link to the platform they came from. How to get Google reviews and show them covers asking for them.

Photos do the same job for the eye. In a 2002 Stanford study of 2,684 people, the design look of a site appeared in 46.1% of the comments people made about whether to believe it. 10 phone photos of your own work, well lit and captioned, carry more weight than a page of polished stock images of a smiling crew who do not work for you.

What extra pages does my trade need?

Each trade adds 1 or 2 things the general checklist leaves out. The table lists them for the trades FreeWebGuy has a page for, with a link to the page that shows a finished site for each.

Trade add-ons for the 6-page checklist. Credentials are listed as things to show if you hold them.

Trade	Add this	Why
Plumbers	An emergency line and after-hours policy; a drain, water heater and leak service split	Plumbing searches happen during a problem; the page has to answer “now?”
Electricians	Your license number if you hold one; permits and inspections explained	Customers check licensing for electrical work
HVAC companies	Repair versus replacement pages; maintenance plan terms	The two jobs have different buyers and prices
Roofers	A roof inspection request; insurance-claim guidance if you offer it; before-and-after pairs	Storm-season visitors need a next step, not a brochure
Contractors	A project gallery by type; your process from estimate to handover	Buyers of large jobs want to see finished work and know the steps
Handyman	A list of the jobs you take and a minimum charge	“Do you do this?” is the whole question
Landscapers	Seasonal services and a maintenance plan page	Mowing, cleanup and installs sell at different times
Cleaning businesses	A checklist of what a standard clean includes; recurring plan options	Cleaning is bought as a defined list, then repeated
Auto repair shops	Makes you service; drop-off and pickup hours; diagnostic fee	Drivers filter by make and by whether they can get there
Junk removal	What you take and what you do not; pricing by load size	Price by volume is how this trade is bought
Pest control	Pests treated; one-time versus plan pricing; safety notes	Visitors search by pest and worry about pets and children
Locksmiths	A 24-hour line and your ID verification policy	Lockout searches are urgent and wary of scams
Salons	A full service menu with prices and a Book button	Price and booking are the decision
Pet groomers	Pricing by size or breed; a Book button; vaccination requirements	Owners need to know the price for their dog and how to book
Dentists	New-patient information; insurance plans you accept; a Book button	New patients check coverage before anything else
Restaurants	The menu as text with prices; hours; an order or reservation link	85% of diners look at the menu online before choosing a new restaurant (TouchBistro, 2024)

Sites that take appointments get a Book button. It opens the scheduler you already use, or a request-a-time form that emails you each request.

FreeWebGuy also builds for tree services, garage door companies, pool builders, real estate agents, accountants, law firms, tattoo studios, coffee shops, bakeries, fitness studios, veterinarians, tutors, florists and nonprofits, each with its own page under websites by industry. The hub lists every trade page as it is published.

What should I leave off a small business website?

Leaving things off is half the checklist. Remove or skip:

• Stock photos of other people’s work or staff. Visitors recognize them, and they make the real photos look worse.
• Prices or menus as PDFs or images. Search engines and AI assistants cannot read them, and phones render them badly.
• A blog you will not keep up. Two posts from last year do more harm than none.
• A home page video that plays itself. It slows the page and says nothing a sentence could not.
• A contact form with more than 4 or 5 fields. Name, phone, email, what you need. Ask the rest on the call.
• Claims you cannot back up: “best in town”, “#1 rated”. Use the specific facts you can prove instead: the license, the year you started, the real reviews.
• Pop-ups asking for an email address before the visitor has read a word.
• Anything that goes stale and has no owner: a promotion with an end date, a holiday hours notice, a “now hiring” banner from last spring.

What do I need to have ready?

For any builder, the same list: your business name as you want it shown, phone, email, address or service area, hours, each service in a sentence with a price or range, 10 to 20 photos of your work, your logo if you have one, the link to your Google Business Profile, and the login for a domain you own.

That list is what the FreeWebGuy brief asks for, and it takes about 3 minutes to answer. We build all 6 pages from it, with your trade’s add-ons, and send a first version within 48 hours of your brief. You pay $0 for the build and $15 a month for hosting only after you approve the preview. How it works shows the steps, and pricing lists what the $15 includes.