It's surprisingly easy for a small business website to become either too little or far too much.
At one end, there's a homepage with a logo, three sentences and a contact button. At the other, there's a navigation menu containing seventeen pages because somewhere along the way someone decided every possible piece of information deserved its own place.
Neither is automatically wrong. But before deciding which pages your website needs, there's a more useful question to ask:
What does someone need to know, understand or do when they visit your website?
That's where your website structure should start.
Your homepage should help people find their way.
Your homepage doesn't need to tell visitors absolutely everything about your business. It needs to help them quickly understand where they are, what you do and where they should go next. That usually means a clear introduction to the business, your main products or services, enough information to build interest and trust, and obvious routes to the things people are most likely looking for.
Think of your homepage as the entrance rather than the entire building.
Someone interested in a particular service should be able to find it. Someone ready to contact you shouldn't have to hunt for your details. Someone who has never heard of your business should understand what you actually do without reading six paragraphs first.
A homepage has done its job when people know where to go next.
Your services deserve enough explanation.
“We offer marketing, design and websites.”
Great.
But what does that actually mean?
A services page should help a potential customer understand what you offer, who it's for and what they can expect. Depending on the business, that might all fit comfortably on one page. If your services are more complex or substantially different from each other, separate pages may make more sense.
Don't create an individual page for every service purely because someone told you more pages are better for SEO. And don't squeeze ten completely different services into three vague sentences because you want the website to stay minimal. Give each service as much space as it needs to be understood. No more. No less.
Do you really need an About page?
Probably, but not because visitors desperately need to know what year the company was founded. An About page can answer questions that your service pages can't. Who are the people behind the business? Why does the company exist? What kind of experience or approach do you bring? What might make someone feel comfortable choosing you rather than another business offering something similar?
This is especially useful for service businesses where people aren't simply buying a product. They're choosing someone to advise them, enter their home, photograph their wedding, manage part of their business or guide them through an important decision.
Your About page doesn't need to be your autobiography. It needs to give people a reason to know and trust the business behind the offer.
Make contacting you ridiculously easy.
If someone has decided they want to contact you, don't turn it into a scavenger hunt. A clear Contact page is useful, but your contact options shouldn't necessarily live there alone. Depending on the business, a phone number, WhatsApp button, booking link, enquiry button or email address may also make sense elsewhere on the website.
And be clear about what happens next. If someone fills in a form, what are they contacting you about? Which information do you actually need from them? If appointments must be booked online, don't make people email you first just to receive the booking link.
The easier the next step is to understand, the easier it is to take.
Your website should answer the questions people ask before contacting you.
This doesn't automatically mean you need an FAQ page. Sometimes frequently asked questions fit much better directly on a service or product page. If delivery takes five working days, say it near the product information. If a tour includes lunch, put that on the tour page. If your design process starts with a consultation, explain it where you describe the service.
An FAQ page becomes useful when you genuinely have a collection of recurring questions that don't fit naturally elsewhere. Don't create one because websites are apparently supposed to have FAQs. Create one because people actually have questions.
Show the work when the work matters.
For photographers, designers, architects, builders, event professionals and many other businesses, seeing previous work can be far more convincing than another paragraph explaining how passionate you are. A portfolio, gallery, case study or project page gives people something tangible to judge. But again, choose the format that makes sense for the business.
A photographer may need a substantial gallery. A marketing company may benefit more from a few cases explaining the challenge and solution. A contractor might simply need clear before-and-after examples. And if you're going to show work, show work you're still proud of and would happily do again. Your portfolio doesn't need to contain everything you've ever made.
Testimonials can help. Generic praise less so.
Testimonials can provide useful reassurance, particularly when they speak to something a potential customer may be wondering about.
“Great company!” is nice.
“They explained the entire process clearly, kept us updated and delivered two days before our deadline” tells you considerably more.
If you have strong customer reviews, use them where they support the decision someone is making. They don't necessarily need their own page. A testimonial beside a service, project or booking section can often be more useful because it appears exactly where reassurance is needed.
What about prices?
There isn't one correct answer here either. For some businesses, displaying prices makes perfect sense. Products, tickets, standard services and clearly defined packages often benefit from transparent pricing. It helps visitors understand whether something fits their budget and can reduce unnecessary enquiries.
For other businesses, the final cost depends heavily on scope, requirements or circumstances. In that case, forcing everything into a neat price table may create more confusion than clarity.
You can still provide context where possible: starting prices, examples, what affects the price or how quotations work. The goal isn't necessarily to publish every number. It's to give people enough information to understand what they're considering.
Do you need a blog?
No. Slightly awkward thing to write on a blog, but there we are.
A blog can be useful when you have genuine knowledge, advice or information worth sharing. It can support search visibility, answer customer questions, demonstrate expertise and give you useful content to refer people to.
What it shouldn't become is an obligation to publish something every Tuesday because somebody once told you Google likes fresh content. If you have useful things to say, write them. If you don't, your website will survive without a weekly article called Five Reasons Why [Your Product] Is Important.
Promise.
Don't forget the boring pages.
Privacy policies, cookie information, terms and conditions, shipping or return information may not be the pages you're excited to design, but depending on what your business does, where it operates and what information it collects, some of them may be necessary. The exact legal requirements vary, so this isn't the part to copy blindly from another company's footer. Work out what applies to your business and make the relevant information accessible.
Boring can still be important.
Your navigation doesn't need to show everything.
Not every page on your website needs a place in the main menu. Your navigation should prioritize the places most visitors actually need. Secondary information can live in the footer, be linked from relevant pages or sit one level deeper within the site. If your main menu has become so crowded that you're shrinking the font to make everything fit, that's probably a sign to reconsider the structure.
More options don't always make a website easier to use. Sometimes they just create more decisions.
Think about the journey, not just the pages.
It's easy to build a website page by page: Homepage. Done. About. Done. Services. Done. Contact. Done.
But visitors don't experience your website as a checklist.
Someone might land directly on a service page from Google, never see the homepage and then want to know who you are. Another person may arrive through an Instagram link, look at your work and immediately want to contact you. Someone else may spend ten minutes reading before they're ready to take any action at all.
Look at how those pages connect. Is there a logical next step? Can visitors move between related information easily? Does every important page lead somewhere useful? A website is a collection of pages. A good website makes them work together.
A quick website content check
Open your website and try looking at it as someone who knows very little about your business. Then ask:
- Is it immediately clear what the business does?
- Can visitors quickly find the main products or services?
- Do those pages provide enough information to understand the offer?
- Can people see who is behind the business when that matters?
- Are common questions answered in sensible places?
- Is there enough proof - work, reviews, experience or information - to build trust?
- Are prices or the pricing process clear enough where relevant?
- Is contacting, booking or buying straightforward?
- Are there pages in the navigation that don't really need to be there?
- Is important information hidden somewhere people are unlikely to find it?
- Does every important page give the visitor somewhere logical to go next?
If you're adding pages simply because other websites have them, stop.
If customers keep asking for information they should have been able to find online, that's worth looking at.
Build the website your business needs.
There isn't one perfect website structure for every small business. A five-page website can be excellent. A fifty-page website can be excellent. Either one can also be confusing, incomplete or unnecessarily complicated. Start with the people using it. Give them enough information to understand your business, answer the questions that matter and make the next step easy. Then add pages because they have a job to do, not because they're on somebody else's website checklist.
Your website doesn't need every page. It needs the right information in the right places.
Hope this helps. 🍒