What to include in a business website is easier to answer if you stop thinking about pages and start thinking about one nervous visitor. They have a problem, they’ve seen your name, and they want four things before they call: what you do, where you do it, proof that others were happy, and a way to reach you.
Build the site around those four and most of the page list writes itself. The rest of this article is the list we’d use, plus a sober look at what a small business site tends to cost.
What a good business website does
Think about the last time you hired someone to work on your home. You probably spent a minute or two on their site. You wanted to know if they did your kind of job, worked in your town, had satisfied customers, and could be reached.
Your customers do the same, often after reading your reviews. In BrightLocal’s Local Consumer Review Survey 2026, 54% of consumers said they check a business’s website after reading positive reviews, up from 32% in 2019. It’s a survey of 1,002 US adults about local businesses in general, so your trade may differ. It does suggest the site is where a half-made decision gets finished.
Having a site no longer sets you apart. In Clutch’s 2025 survey of 406 US small business owners, 83% said they have one. What sets one apart is whether it is easy to move around and relevant to the customer you want.
Easy means the menu uses customers’ words and the phone number is a tap or two away, including on a phone. We cover that in our piece on telling whether you have a mobile-friendly website. Relevant means that if you want more bathroom remodels and fewer small repairs, the site says so in what it shows. Our test for every page: does it help that customer decide to get in touch?
What to include in a business website
Here are the six things we’d look for. A new business doesn’t need all six on day one, and the order matters more than the count.
1. Your services, one page each
Many small business sites cover everything in a single line. Take a septic company in Richboro. Someone with a slow drain and a backed-up yard wants to know if the company pumps, inspects and repairs, how soon someone can come, and what happens after the call. A page for each of those answers them in the words they typed into Google. One page listing everything rarely does.
Give the services you most want to sell their own pages, and say where you work, so nobody in Allentown has to guess whether you’ll drive out from Doylestown.
2. An About page with a real person on it
You don’t need the company history. People want to know who will show up at their house. Say who owns the business, how long you’ve been at it, and which licenses or credentials you hold. Use a real photo of the team. A stock photo of strangers in hard hats tells visitors almost nothing.
3. Customers doing the talking
Anyone can say they do good work. In the same BrightLocal survey, 85% of consumers said positive reviews make them more likely to use a business. Put a few on the site, with permission and in the customer’s own words, especially ones that name the kind of job and the town. Don’t polish them into marketing copy.
4. An easy way to reach you
Put the phone number on every page where people can see it, and make sure it can be tapped. Add a short form for people who’d rather not call, and ask only for what you need to reply. Each page should say what the next step is, whether that’s an estimate or an appointment.
Then follow the form. Who gets it? How fast does somebody answer? A form that lands in an inbox nobody checks hasn’t helped anyone.
5. A blog, only if you’ll keep it going
This one is optional, and we’ll argue for skipping it if nobody has time. A blog earns its place when you have customer questions worth answering at length, such as how to tell whether a deck needs repair or replacement. Posts like that can help people find you in search. We’ve covered whether a blog helps your SEO in more detail. A blog with two posts from several years ago works against you.
6. Examples of your work
Examples beat descriptions. Imagine a fence installer in Skippack whose site shows five finished jobs, each with photos and two sentences on what the homeowner wanted and what got built. A visitor planning a fence can picture their own yard there. For a gym or a practice, the equivalent is photos of the actual space and a short walk through a first visit.
The photos on your phone are usually enough to start.
How much should a small business spend on a website?
The researched answer is a wide range. Clutch’s Web Design Company Pricing Guide 2026 says agencies typically charge $2,000 to $100,000, and that most projects reviewed on Clutch cost less than $10,000.
Read that with care. Clutch is a directory of agencies, so those figures describe agency-built projects for businesses of every size. They leave out sites that owners build themselves on a website builder. Treat the numbers as a reference point for conversations with designers, not a quote. For most small businesses, the second figure is the useful one.
Where you land depends on what the site has to do. A simple site covers a home page, an About page, a contact page and a page or two of services. Established businesses usually add a page for each main service and area, with writing done with search in mind. A full online store or custom software connections is a bigger project, and a local service company rarely needs one.
Some rules we’d follow with the budget:
- Put money where the goal is. If the site should bring in estimate requests, pay for the service pages and the contact process before anything decorative.
- Pay for content. Good photos of your own work and clear writing usually matter more than design extras.
- Count the ongoing costs: hosting, the domain name, maintenance and updates. Ask who handles each one after launch.
- Compare more than one proposal, and compare what each includes as well as the total. Our article on freelancers and complete marketing packages covers part of that decision.
What a website can’t do alone
A good website helps people who arrive decide to contact you. It doesn’t bring them there. That takes search visibility, a Google Business Profile, advertising or referrals. Search in particular takes time that depends on your starting point and your competition, and no one controls how long. A new site won’t promise a set number of calls.
It also depends on you. When we take on website design, we need your information, your photos and your opinions, because you know which jobs are worth having. After launch, we need to hear whether the inquiries are the right fit.
Write your list before you hire anyone
This week, before you talk to any designer, write three lists on one sheet of paper: the services you want more of, the towns you serve, and five photos of finished jobs. It takes about half an hour and costs nothing. You’ll be surprised how many of the pages fall out of it.
Send us the sheet, along with your current site if you have one. We’ll tell you what we’d keep, what we’d change, and why. Sometimes the answer is a new site, and sometimes it’s better pages on the one you have. Your first consultation is free. You can get in touch with us or call (215) 368-8900.