Small Business Website Checklist: What Your Site Should Include

The short answer

Most small business websites need the same core: a homepage that says what you do and where, a page for each main service or product range, an about page, a contact page, and a privacy notice. On every page, customers should find your phone number or email and one clear next step.

Underneath, the site should work well on a phone, load quickly, use HTTPS, and give each page its own title and description. Opening hours, booking, online selling, reviews and FAQs depend on the type of business.

A small business website doesn’t need to be large. It needs to answer the handful of questions every visitor arrives with: what do you do, do you do it where I am, can I trust you, and how do I get in touch or buy. This checklist sets out the pages and features that answer those questions, separates what most businesses need from what depends on the business, and lists the mistakes we see most often on Irish small business sites. For the ways to get a site built, see our business websites comparison.

Essential for most businesses vs useful depending on the business

Start with the left-hand list. Add from the right-hand list only where it helps your customers, since each item adds cost and upkeep.

Essential for most businesses

Plan for these on almost any site.

Homepage that says what, where and for whom
Service or product pages, one per main offer
About page with real people and history
Contact page with phone, email and location or area
Clear calls to action on every page
Privacy notice, and cookie consent where needed
Mobile-friendly, fast pages over HTTPS
Unique page titles and descriptions

Useful, depending on the business

Add where customers need them.

Opening hours, if customers visit you
Service area, if you travel to customers
Testimonials and reviews
FAQs that answer real pre-sale questions
Enquiry or quote form
Online booking for appointments or tables
Online shop and terms of sale
Analytics and a Google Business Profile

Pages most small business websites need

Core pages, their job and what each should contain
Page	Its job	Must include
Homepage	Confirm the visitor is in the right place and send them onward	What you do, where, a main call to action, links to key services
Service or product pages	Answer the questions that come before an enquiry or sale	What’s included, who it suits, area covered, price guide or how pricing works, a next step
About	Build trust in the people behind the business	Who runs it, experience, qualifications or memberships, real photos
Contact	Make getting in touch effortless	Phone, email, form if used, address or service area, hours, response time
Privacy notice	Explain what personal data the site collects and why	Who you are, what you collect, why, how long you keep it, people’s rights
Terms, where relevant	Set out the terms of sale or booking	For online sales: prices, delivery, cancellation and returns

Why each service needs its own page

A single “Services” page listing everything is the most common weakness on small business websites. A customer searching for “boiler service Tralee” should land on a page about boiler servicing, not a list that mentions it in passing. Separate pages let you explain each service properly, give each one a descriptive title, and link to it from elsewhere. If you only offer two or three things, one page each is still worth it.

What makes an about page useful

Visitors read about pages to decide whether to trust you. Name the owner, say how long you have been trading, list relevant qualifications, registrations or trade memberships, and use a real photo. “We are a passionate team dedicated to excellence” tells them nothing; “Siobhán has run the salon in Ennis since 2012” does.

What to put on the homepage

Work down the page in the order a visitor’s questions come:

A plain headlineWhat you do and where, in words a customer would use: “Electrician in Athlone and the Midlands”, not “Powering your future”.
One main call to actionCall, request a quote, book, or shop. Put it near the top, visible without scrolling on a phone.
Your main services or productsShort summaries linking to their own pages.
ProofA few genuine reviews, photos of your work, or recognisable clients.
Why choose youSpecific reasons, such as response times, guarantees or experience, rather than adjectives.
Where and whenLocation or service area, and opening hours if customers visit.
A repeat of the call to actionAt the bottom, for visitors who read to the end.

Leave out sliders that rotate messages, long welcome paragraphs, and news that will date. The homepage is a signpost, not the place to say everything.

What should appear on every page?

Your business name and logo, linking to the homepage.
A short navigation menu with plain labels: Services, About, Contact.
A visible way to get in touch: a tap-to-call phone number on mobile, or a button to your main action.
A footer with contact details, address or service area, hours if relevant, and links to your privacy notice and any terms.
Its own page title and meta description, written for that page.
Your company details if you are a company, such as registered name and number, which many businesses place in the footer.

Contact details, opening hours and service area

Phone and email. Write the phone number as text, not in an image, so phones can dial it with a tap. Use an email address on your own domain rather than a personal webmail address; it looks more established and stays with the business.

Address or service area. If customers come to you, give the full address, a map, and parking or access notes. If you travel to customers, list the towns or counties you cover. Google’s guidance for service-area businesses is to hide a home address from your Business Profile, and the same logic usually applies to your website.

Opening hours. Keep them identical on your website and Google Business Profile, and update both for bank holidays and Christmas. Out-of-date hours cause more annoyed customers than almost any other website error.

Reviews, testimonials and FAQs

Use genuine reviews with a name and, where possible, a location or job type: “Mary, kitchen fitted in Navan” is more believable than an anonymous quote. Don’t edit reviews in ways that change their meaning, and don’t present invented ones as real. Linking to your reviews on an independent platform adds credibility.

An FAQ section earns its place when it answers questions customers actually ask before buying: do you cover my area, how soon can you start, do you charge for a quote, what happens if I need to cancel. Ask whoever answers your phone which questions come up every week, and answer those.

Features that depend on the type of business

Optional website features, who tends to need them and what to check
Feature	Often needed by	What to check
Enquiry or quote form	Trades, builders, consultants, event suppliers	It asks only for what you need, and reaches an inbox someone checks
Online booking	Salons, clinics, fitness classes, restaurants	It works smoothly on a phone and syncs with your diary
Online shop	Retailers, producers, makers	Stock, delivery, refunds and VAT are planned, not just the checkout
Menu or price list	Cafés, restaurants, salons, barbers	It is a web page, not only a PDF, and easy to update
Portfolio or gallery	Builders, designers, photographers, landscapers	Images are compressed, captioned and show your own work
Location pages	Businesses serving several towns or with more than one premises	Each has genuinely local content, not the same text with a new town name
Newsletter sign-up	Shops, venues, businesses with seasonal offers	Clear consent, and a plan to actually send something

If you plan to sell online, our guide to ecommerce websites for small businesses covers everything a shop needs beyond these basics.

Privacy notice, cookies and terms

If your site collects any personal data, even just through a contact form, you need a privacy notice explaining what you collect, why and for how long. The Data Protection Commission’s guidance on transparency sets out what people must be told.

On cookies, the DPC’s cookie guidance says consent is normally required for non-essential cookies such as analytics and advertising, cannot be implied, and should be as easy to withdraw as to give. Strictly necessary cookies, such as those keeping a shopping basket working, don’t need consent. If your site uses no non-essential cookies, you may not need a consent banner at all, so ask your designer exactly what the site sets.

Terms and conditions matter most where you take bookings, deposits or online payments. If you sell to consumers online, the CCPC explains the information you must give. This is general information, not legal advice.

Mobile usability, HTTPS and page speed

These are basics any competent build should deliver, but check them yourself:

Mobile usability. Open every page on your own phone. Text should be readable without zooming, buttons easy to tap, and nothing should run off the side of the screen.
HTTPS. The address bar should show a secure connection on every page, including forms and checkout.
Page speed. Pages should appear quickly on mobile data. Oversized photos are the usual cause of slow small business sites. Google’s Core Web Vitals explain how it measures loading and stability.

Our business websites hub covers speed and mobile design in more detail.

SEO titles, descriptions and useful content

Each page’s title is often the headline people see in Google’s results. Google’s guidance on title links asks for a unique, descriptive, concise title on every page, and warns against vague ones such as “Home”. Its guidance on meta descriptions recommends a specific summary for each page rather than one description repeated across the site.

Weak and stronger page titles for a small business (examples)
Page	Weak title	Stronger title
Homepage	Home	Murphy Electrical \| Electrician in Athlone and the Midlands
Service page	Services	EV Charger Installation in Athlone \| Murphy Electrical
Contact page	Contact Us	Contact Murphy Electrical, Athlone \| Call or Request a Quote

Murphy Electrical is an invented business used for illustration.

Titles only help if the page behind them is useful. Write enough to answer the questions a customer has about that service, in your own words, including the places you work. Google’s SEO Starter Guide is a good plain-English introduction.

Analytics and Google Business Profile

Analytics tells you which pages people visit, how they found you, and whether they called, enquired or bought. Set it up in an account the business owns, not your designer’s, and configure it in line with your cookie consent. Look at it monthly; a page nobody visits either needs work or isn’t needed.

Google Business Profile is separate from your website but works alongside it for any business serving a local area. Google says local results are based mainly on relevance, distance and prominence, and that complete, accurate information helps. Link the profile to your website, and keep name, address, phone and hours consistent between them.

Website mistakes to avoid

A phone number that can’t be tapped, because it is inside an image or written with spaces a phone can’t read as a number.
A contact form that sends to an old address. Send yourself a test enquiry every few months.
The menu or price list only as a PDF, which is awkward on a phone and often out of date.
Christmas hours still showing in February, or bank holiday closures never mentioned.
Every service on one page, so none of them can be found in search.
Stock photos of people shaking hands instead of your own premises, team or work.
Only a Facebook link for contact, which excludes customers who don’t use Facebook.
A copyright year from years ago in the footer, suggesting nobody looks after the site.
Pages titled “Home” or “Services”, wasting the most visible line in search results.
Huge photos straight from a phone or camera, making pages slow on mobile data.
A cookie banner with no reject option, or analytics loading before anyone agrees.
No price information at all, where a “from” price or an explanation of how you price would filter out poor-fit enquiries.
The domain and site accounts in the designer’s name. If you are getting quotes, our guide to business website costs covers what to ask.

Deciding who builds the site? Our comparison of website builders and web designers sets out when each makes sense.

Small business website checklist: frequently asked questions

How many pages should a small business website have?

As many as you need to explain each main service properly, plus about, contact and privacy pages. For a small service business that is often somewhere between five and fifteen pages. A few useful pages beat many thin ones.

Is a one-page website enough?

For a very simple business with one service, it can be. The limit is that a single page can only be about one thing in search results, so a business with several services, or serving several towns, usually does better with separate pages.

Should I put prices on my website?

Where you can, yes, even as “from” prices or examples. Prices help customers decide and reduce enquiries from people outside your budget. If every job is quoted individually, explain what affects the price and how quoting works.

Do I need a privacy policy if my site only has a contact form?

A contact form collects personal data such as names and email addresses, so you should tell people what you do with it. A short, plain-language privacy notice covering the form, your email and any analytics is usually what a small site needs.

Should my website show my home address?

Not if customers don’t visit you there. List the areas you serve instead. If you are a limited company, check which company details you are required to show on the site, and which address is your registered office.

Where to go next

Compare business website options
Builders, freelancers, agencies and ecommerce platforms side by side.
How much does a business website cost in Ireland?
Turn this checklist into a scope and compare quotes on it.
Website builder vs web designer
Decide who should build the site you have planned.

Official sources

General information, not legal advice. Data protection and consumer law obligations depend on your business; read the DPC and CCPC guidance and take advice for your own circumstances. Business names in examples are invented. Official pages were checked on 29 September 2026.

What Should a Small Business Website Include?