What Pages Does a Small Business Website Actually Need?

Most small business websites have too many pages and too little information. An "About" page with three paragraphs about passion. A "Services" page with no prices. A "Blog" with one post from 2023. Meanwhile the opening hours are nowhere. We maintain 60-plus section types for a website builder and watch which ones real businesses publish and which ones they delete, so this is a list drawn from practice: what a small business site actually needs, what's worth adding, what to skip, and the order that works.

One note before the list. The question is usually phrased as "what pages," but for a small business the better unit is the section. A single page with eight well-ordered sections beats eight thin pages every time, because it reads top to bottom on a phone and nothing is a click away. We'll come back to one-page versus multi-page at the end.

The 6 essentials

If your site has these six, done properly, it works. If it's missing any, fix that before adding anything else.

1. A hero that says what you do and where. The first screen. One sentence, one photo, one button. "Family dentist in Portland, new patients welcome" and a "Book" button. Not a slogan. Not "Welcome to our website." The visitor should know in two seconds whether they're in the right place.

2. Services or products, with prices. The section people scroll to first after the hero. List what you offer in plain words and put a number next to each item, or at least "from." "Contact us for pricing" sends people to the competitor who wrote a price. If your prices vary, explain in one line how.

3. Real photos. Four to ten photos of your space, your work, your team, your products. Taken with a phone, in daylight. No stock. Visitors can spot a stock photo instantly, and it tells them you had nothing real to show.

4. Reviews. Two to six, copied word for word from Google or Facebook, with a first name. This is the trust section. If you don't have any yet, ask your last three happy customers today and add them tomorrow.

5. Contact, map and hours. Phone number that works with one tap, address with a map, opening hours, and a contact form that lands in an inbox you actually check. If you take bookings, this is where the calendar goes. Put the phone number in the header too, so it's visible at every scroll position on mobile.

6. Legal pages. Legal notice, privacy policy, and a cookie policy if you set tracking cookies. Linked from the footer. It looks professional, it's required if anyone in the EU or UK uses the site, and it takes an hour by hand or zero if your builder generates them from your details.

Worth adding for some businesses

These earn their place depending on what you do. Add the ones that answer a real question your customers ask.

• Menu. Restaurants, cafés, bars. With prices, readable on a phone, not a PDF. A QR-code version for the tables is a bonus.
• Bookings. Salons, clinics, trainers, consultants, restaurants. A real calendar with time slots, blocked days and a confirmation email. Businesses that let people book at 11 pm get the 11 pm customers.
• Before and after gallery. Salons, builders, cleaners, physios, landscapers. The most convincing section for any trade whose work is visible.
• Team. Anywhere people choose a person: salons, clinics, law firms, gyms. First names, photos, one line each.
• How it works. Professionals and services with a process: three steps from first contact to done. Removes the "what happens if I call?" hesitation.
• Quote request form. Trades and B2B. Three fields: name, phone, what's the job.
• FAQ. Five to eight real questions you get asked every week. Saves you phone calls and helps Google understand the page.
• Shop. If you sell products and can ship them. Keep it to what you actually stock.
• Blog. Only if you'll write. One post a month about real questions from real customers helps you rank for local searches. One post from two years ago hurts more than no blog at all.

What to skip

We see these on real sites constantly and almost none of them help:

• Auto-playing sliders. Nobody reads slide three. Pick one photo and one message.
• Animated counters. "1,247 happy customers" ticking up. It reads as filler.
• Background music or auto-play video. The visitor is on a phone in a waiting room. They close the tab.
• Mission, vision and values. Your customer wants to know if you're open on Saturday.
• A logo bar with three unknown brands. If the logos don't build trust, they take up space.
• A newsletter signup with no newsletter. Ask yourself when you last sent one.
• A live chat nobody answers. Worse than no chat: it promises a response that doesn't come.
• A "Welcome" paragraph. Start with what you do.

Every section should answer a question a customer has. If you can't name the question, delete the section.

The order that works and why

For a single-page site, this order reads naturally on a phone and matches how people decide:

1. Hero: am I in the right place?
2. Services with prices: what do you do and what does it cost?
3. Photos or before-and-after: show me.
4. Reviews: can I trust you?
5. Trade-specific section (menu, team, how it works, FAQ): answer the remaining question.
6. Contact, map, hours, booking: how do I act?
7. Footer with legal links.

Notice the call to action appears twice: in the hero button and in the contact section at the end. People who are convinced early shouldn't have to scroll to the bottom, and people who need the whole story shouldn't have to scroll back up.

One page or several? For a local business with up to ten sections, one page. It loads fast, reads top to bottom, and every section is a scroll away rather than a click away. Go multi-page when you have many distinct services each needing their own explanation, a shop with categories, or a blog. Even then, the home page should follow the order above on its own.

This is how the templates at 1h1app are built: 30 of them, one per trade, each pre-filled with the sections that trade needs, in roughly this order, and real example content to overwrite. The recipes for each trade are in what to put on a small business website, trade by trade.

A 2-minute audit checklist for your current site

Open your site on your phone and tick what's true:

1. The first screen says what you do and where, in one sentence.
2. There's a phone number or booking button visible without scrolling.
3. Services are listed with prices or "from."
4. The photos are yours, not stock.
5. There are real reviews with names.
6. Hours and address are correct and the map works.
7. The contact form goes to an email you check.
8. Legal notice and privacy pages exist and are linked in the footer.
9. Nothing auto-plays, slides or counts.
10. There's no section you can't name the customer question for.

Eight or more: your site is doing its job. Five to seven: fix the misses this week; they're usually quick. Under five: it's faster to rebuild from a template for your trade than to patch, and that's an afternoon, not a project. How to make a website without coding covers how. At 1h1app it's $16/month or $160/year (€16/€160 in Europe), with 7 days free and no card to start, and the legal pages and cookie-free analytics come with it.

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