The only four pages most small businesses need.

When someone signs up with us, the first question they ask is "how many pages?" — and it's almost always the wrong one. The right question is what each page is for.

After 412 sites, we can tell you the answer is almost always the same four. Contact. What you do. When you're open. Who you are. Everything else is either a feature of those four, or a page that exists to make the site-owner feel productive.

Here's how we think about the cut.

1. Contact — but do it right

Contact is page one. Not "About." Not "Services." Contact. Because the entire job of a small-business website is to turn a person who found you on Google into a person who walks through your door, picks up the phone, or fills out a form.

A good contact page has: the phone number in two places, a one-field "tell us what you need" form, your address on a map, your hours if they're not obvious, and — this is the one people miss — what happens next. "We'll call you back within an hour during business hours." That's the whole difference between a lead and a bounce.

FIG 01 · CONTACT, DONE RIGHT

Call us: (510) 555-0149

Or drop a line — we'll call back within an hour.

Send →

2. What you do — not "services"

Never call this page "Services." The word has been ruined by template sites. Call it "Menu," "Work," "What we fix," "The shop" — whatever your people would actually call it when they're telling a friend.

The content: three to seven things you do, each with one sentence of detail, each with a price or a price range. If you can't tell me the price, tell me the range. "Most haircuts are $45–$75." "Drain cleaning starts at $129." If you won't put a number on the page, you're asking the customer to do homework they don't want to do.

"If you won't put a number on the page, you're asking the customer to do homework they don't want to do."

3. When you're open — and when you're not

This one sounds obvious. It isn't. Half the sites we rebuild have the hours buried in the footer, and the other half have them wrong. Put them in the header, and — if you close for holidays or lunch — say that too, on the same page. The Googlebot reads this. So does Karen at 11:47am trying to decide if she can still get a sandwich.

4. Who you are — briefly

This is the page everyone over-writes. Two paragraphs. A photo of you, not a stock image of a handshake. When you started, where, why. That's it. Don't write a manifesto on your bakery's About page. Nobody came for that. They came for bread.

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What we cut

Things that are almost always filler: blog, portfolio, testimonials, press, values, mission, FAQ.

• Blog — unless you'll actually write it. Ninety percent of small-business blogs have three posts from 2019.
• Testimonials — on a dedicated page, no. Sprinkled next to the thing they're praising, yes.
• Values / Mission — nobody reads these. If you must, it's two lines on About, not a page.
• FAQ — only if you actually have five or more questions you hear every week. Otherwise you're just padding.

The exception

The one kind of page we add, often: a proof page. For a plumber, it's "service areas" with a map. For a bakery, it's "the menu, today." For a salon, it's "our stylists." These aren't universal pages — they're specific to your trade. When we meet, that's most of what we're trying to figure out.

So: four pages, plus one proof page. That's the shape of almost every site we ship. If yours has fifteen, ask what each one is doing for you. Most of them aren't.