What a small business website should include

This list is for local businesses and service companies: clinics, salons, repair shops, contractors, consultants, cafés. Online stores have extra rules about selling and delivery.

The pages

The home page

On a phone, before any scrolling, a visitor should learn three things: what you do, where and how to reach you. A headline like "Auto repair in Midtown, with appointments the same week" says more than "Welcome".

Below that: your main services, a sentence each with a link to each service's page, something that shows other people were happy (reviews, clients, years in business) and the same contact button, repeated at the end.

The service pages

An important service needs its own page. Someone searching for "teeth whitening in Austin" lands more easily on a page about teeth whitening than on a list of twenty services.

On each service page:

• what the service includes and who it suits;
• the price, or a "from" price if it depends on the case;
• how long it takes and what the customer should know beforehand;
• the questions customers ask about it;
• a booking or contact button.

About

Customers want to see who they're dealing with: people's names, how long you've been in business, your training and real photos of the place and the team. Stock photos are easy to recognise and lower trust. A few true sentences about how you work help more than a long, general company description.

Contact

• the address, with a map and a button that opens directions;
• the hours for every day of the week;
• the phone number, which can be tapped to call on a phone;
• an email address and a form with few fields (name, phone or email, message);
• practical details: where to park, which entrance to use, whether there's step-free access.

The legal basics

• Privacy policy. California's Online Privacy Protection Act (CalOPPA) requires any site or app that collects personal information from California residents to post a privacy policy clearly, wherever the business is based. It must say what information is collected, who it's shared with, how people can review or change it and how the site responds to "Do Not Track" signals. In the EU, GDPR requires a privacy notice whenever you collect personal data.
• Accessibility. In March 2022 the US Department of Justice published guidance stating that the ADA applies to the goods and services that businesses open to the public offer online, and pointed to WCAG as the practical standard: text alternatives for images, enough contrast, a site that works with a keyboard, captions on video. In the EU, the European Accessibility Act has applied to e-commerce services since 28 June 2025; micro-enterprises providing services (fewer than 10 employees and no more than €2 million in turnover or balance sheet) are exempt.
• Cookies. For visitors in the EU, cookies that aren't strictly necessary (analytics, advertising) need informed consent before they're set. Several US state privacy laws also require disclosure and an opt-out for certain kinds of tracking.
• Business details for EU customers. The EU's e-commerce directive requires a business offering services online to show its name, address, email, trade register number and VAT number, where it has them, in a way that's easy to find. The usual place is the footer.
• Selling online. If you sell through the site, prices, delivery costs, return terms and the consumer rules of the places you sell to come on top.

What Google checks

• A title and description for each page, with the service and the area, not "Home" or "Page 1".
• One main heading (H1) per page, and subheadings that break up the text.
• Text as text, not inside images: prices, services and hours have to be readable by Google.
• Speed. Google's thresholds for a good page (Core Web Vitals) are: main content shown within 2.5 seconds, a response to a tap within 200 milliseconds and a layout that doesn't jump while loading. The most common causes of a slow site are uncompressed photos and too many scripts.
• Your business details as structured data (schema.org LocalBusiness): name and address, plus hours, phone and website. Google reads them straight from the page's code.
• The same details everywhere: name, address and phone identical on the site, your Google Business Profile and other listings.
• A sitemap and Google Search Console, so Google learns about your pages and tells you if it has trouble with them.

What helps visitors choose

• prices, even approximate ones;
• reviews, with a link to your Google profile;
• answers to common questions;
• real photos;
• one main button, repeated (call, book, request a quote), not five different options on the same page.

The checklist

1. The home page says what you do, where and how to reach you, without scrolling on a phone.
2. Every important service has its own page, with a price or "from" price.
3. The about page has real people and real photos.
4. The contact page has a map, hours for every day and a tap-to-call phone number.
5. There's a privacy policy, linked next to every form and in the footer.
6. For EU visitors, cookies that aren't strictly necessary load only after consent.
7. The site works with a keyboard, images have text alternatives and text has enough contrast.
8. Every page has its own title and description.
9. Photos are compressed and the site opens quickly on mobile data.
10. Your business details are marked up for Google and match your Google profile.
11. The site is added to Google Search Console, with a sitemap.
12. The domain is registered in your name or your company's.

For a concrete example in a particular field, we have checklists for coffee shops and restaurants. What a business website built by us includes is on our web design page.