GUIDE · WEBSITES
A small business website has one job: to help the right people decide to contact you. It does not need to be large or clever. It needs to answer a visitor’s questions quickly, work well on a phone, and be easy for Google to read. This checklist covers what we look for when we build a business website, including a mistake we found on our own site.
Most visitors decide within a few seconds whether to stay. Before they scroll, the top of your home page should answer three questions: what do you do, who is it for, and how do I get in touch?
Write the main heading in the words your customers use. “Bathroom renovations in Leeds” tells a visitor more than “Quality you can trust”. Put a clear button next to it, such as “Get a quote” or “Book a call”, and keep your phone number or email visible on every page.
You do not need dozens of pages. You need the right ones, each with a clear purpose:
The most common problem we see is a website that talks about the business instead of the customer. Replace general claims with specific answers. Instead of “We deliver excellence”, explain what happens after someone contacts you, how long a typical job takes, and what they need to prepare.
Give each service its own page. Someone searching for “office cleaning” and someone searching for “end of tenancy cleaning” have different questions, and one page cannot answer both well. Separate pages also give Google a clear page to show for each search.
Use plain words and short paragraphs. Many visitors read on a phone, and some read in a second language.
For most small businesses, more visitors arrive on a phone than on a computer. Test every page on a real phone before launch, not only in a desktop browser.
Every extra step loses enquiries. Keep the contact form short, confirm on screen that the message was sent, and reply quickly. If customers prefer WhatsApp, offer it as well as the form.
Protect the form from spam without annoying real people. A hidden field that only automated bots fill in stops a lot of spam without asking visitors to solve puzzles. Keep mail passwords and other secrets on the server, never in the page itself.
If you work with customers in other countries, say so, and mention how you handle time zones and languages. That small line removes a common doubt.
Visitors look for signs that you are real and that others trust you. The strongest proof is specific: a named client, a city, a short description of the problem and what you did.
Use reviews in your customers’ own words, with their permission. Do not invent reviews or polish them until they no longer sound like a person. Visitors notice, and fake reviews break the rules of most platforms, including Google.
Photos of your real work, team or premises usually do more than stock images.
Good search results start with pages Google can read. Each page needs its own title and a short description, written for people. A sitemap tells Google which pages exist, and Google Search Console shows which pages are indexed and which searches bring visitors.
Check that your words are in the page itself. Many modern websites build their text with JavaScript after the page loads. Google can often run it, but not always quickly or completely. On our own site, we found that the privacy policy and terms showed their full text to visitors but only a title in the plain page. We fixed it by writing the full text into the page when the site is built.
If you serve customers locally, set up a Google Business Profile with the same name, address and phone number as your website.
A website is never finished on launch day. Check Search Console every few weeks to see which pages appear in Google and which do not. Count the enquiries you receive and ask new customers how they found you.
Every question a customer asks you is a possible new page or article. Answer it once on the website, and you will answer it for the next hundred visitors too.