Content checklist
What should a small-business website actually include?
Some features are essential for almost every business, some are genuinely useful, and some only matter if they fit how you actually operate. Here's the honest breakdown, grouped by how much it matters.
Essential
The baseline almost every business needs.
A clear proposition
What you do, who for, and why someone should pick you — understandable within seconds of landing.
Service information
What's actually on offer, described specifically enough that a visitor can tell if it's right for them.
About and trust content
Who's behind the business, real experience, and enough personality that it doesn't feel anonymous.
Genuine contact details
A phone number, email and, where relevant, an address — visible, not hidden behind a form.
A working enquiry route
A form or clear call to action that actually reaches someone and gets answered promptly.
Mobile design
Most visitors will arrive on a phone. If it's awkward to use there, it's not finished.
Page speed
A slow site loses visitors before they see anything — this is foundational, not optional.
SEO foundations
Sensible page titles, headings and structure so search engines can understand and index the site properly.
Accessible navigation
A menu and layout that makes sense to a first-time visitor and works with a keyboard or screen reader.
Policies
A privacy policy and cookie notice — a legal baseline, not a nice-to-have.
Useful
Worth having, if you can do it properly.
Reviews
Genuine testimonials or star ratings build trust quickly, if you have real ones to show.
Projects or case studies
Evidence of work done, useful for businesses where visitors want to see results before enquiring.
FAQs
Answers to the questions you get asked repeatedly, which also tend to help with search.
Analytics
Some way of knowing how many people visit and what they do — otherwise you're guessing at performance.
Google Search Console
Free, useful for understanding how the site actually appears in search results and catching problems early.
Only if relevant
Skip these unless they genuinely fit.
Pricing
Useful if your pricing is simple and comparable. Skip it if every job is quoted individually — a vague price range can do more harm than good.
Location pages
Only worth building if you genuinely serve distinct areas with something different to say about each. A single business with one premises doesn't need these.
A blog
Only worth it if you're prepared to write it properly and keep it going. An abandoned blog with three posts from two years ago looks worse than no blog at all.
Live chat
Useful if someone is actually available to answer promptly. Unanswered live chat undermines trust rather than building it.
Booking systems
Essential for some service businesses, irrelevant for others who take enquiries by phone or quote individually.
Don't over-build
We're not trying to sell you every feature on this page.
It would be easy to write this as a case for adding everything. It isn't. A sole trader with one service and one location doesn't need location pages, a booking system or a published price list — and adding them would just be clutter.
The point of this checklist is to help you tell the difference between what your business actually needs and what simply looks impressive on a features list.
For how many pages this content should be spread across, see our guide on page count and site architecture.
Before you ask
Content checklist questions, answered plainly.
See also how many pages you actually need and what makes a good business website.
Next step
Not sure what your site is missing?
Tell us what you've got.
Send us your current site or a rough plan. We'll tell you honestly what's essential, what's optional, and what you can skip.