What a small site is actually for

Most small business sites fail at something earlier than design. They were built without anybody deciding what the site is for, so every page is a little bit about everything and no page does a job.

Decide the one action

A site can have one primary action per page and one across the site. Enquire, buy, book, subscribe, call. Write it down before anything is built, because it decides the structure, the content and what gets cut.

The test is whether you could delete a page and lose nothing. On most small sites several pages pass that test: the mission statement, the news section with three posts from two years ago, the services page that lists everything anybody has ever paid for.

The pages that earn their place

• A home page that says what you do, for whom, and what to do next. Above the fold, in plain words.
• One page per thing you sell, each with a price or a reason there is no price.
• An about page that answers should I trust you with this, rather than describing a journey.
• A contact route that works, with a real way to reach a person.
• Whatever you publish that brings people in: articles, guides, examples of work.
• The policies you are obliged to have, which also function as trust signals.

That is a complete site for most small businesses. Six kinds of page, and the fifth is where growth comes from.

What a visitor is actually doing

Not reading. Scanning for whether this is the right place, which takes a few seconds and happens before they have taken in a single sentence of your copy.

They are checking three things: is this what I was looking for, is this a real business, and what does it cost. A page that answers those three quickly gets read properly. A page that opens with a slogan and a stock photograph answers none of them, and the reader goes back to the results.

Build the smallest version first

1. 01One page that states the offer, the price and the next step. This can be live this week.
2. 02Add one page per product or service once you know what people ask about.
3. 03Add the trust material: who you are, examples, policies.
4. 04Only then add anything that needs maintaining, such as a blog, and only if you will actually maintain it.

The common failure is the reverse: six months building a site with a blog nobody writes, while the offer is still not stated anywhere plainly. A single clear page that exists beats a complete site that does not.

The home page, concretely

Since it is the page people agonise over, it is worth saying what goes on it. In order: what you do and for whom, a photograph of the real thing, the three or four things you offer with a route into each, some evidence you exist and are competent, and the way to get in touch.

That is the whole page. What usually sits there instead is a slogan, a stock image, a paragraph about passion, and a carousel of three slides nobody sees past the first. The difference in outcome is not subtle, and the shorter version takes less work to build.

The about page is a trust page

It gets written as a history and read as a background check. Somebody is on it because they are considering spending money and want to know who they would be dealing with, which is a narrower question than your story.

So answer that: who does the work, what they have done, where you are based, how long this has existed, and a photograph of an actual person. A face and a place does more for an about page than three paragraphs of values, and it is the page most likely to be visited immediately before an enquiry.

The page you will not maintain

Before adding a blog, a news section or an events page, decide honestly whether it will be updated. An abandoned one is worse than its absence: a visitor reads the date on the last entry and draws a conclusion about whether the business is still trading, which is not the conclusion you were going for. If the answer is probably not, leave it out and put the effort into the pages that cannot go stale.