How Do You Decide What a Small Business Website Actually Needs in 2026?

A client emailed me last month with a list of nine pages she wanted on her new site: Home, About, Services, Team, Testimonials, Blog, FAQ, Resources, Contact. When I asked why she needed a Resources page, she paused and admitted she'd seen one on a competitor's site and figured she should have one too.

That conversation, in my experience, is often where planning truly starts, way before anyone opens a template or settles on colors. The real challenge is sorting out which pages actually serve your business and which are probably just there, usually because someone else had them.

What I Try to Understand Before Anything Gets Designed

Before I open a design tool, I want to know who actually contacts this business and why.

A roofing contractor and a corporate law firm might both call themselves "service businesses," but the way people find them, decide on them, and reach out to them are completely different.

I usually ask a client to walk me through their last five or six enquiries.

Examples: where did those people come from? What did they ask about first? Did they call, fill out a form, or show up after a referral?

One issue I run into often is that business owners describe their services as equally important when their own inquiry history says otherwise.

A contractor might list six services on his old site, but when I look at his call log, three of those services rarely come up.

That gap matters more than anything in a mood board, because it tells me what the homepage should actually be doing.

Professional firms serving both individuals and businesses run into a related problem. An accountant might get calls from individuals filing personal tax returns and, separately, from small businesses needing ongoing bookkeeping. Those two audiences have almost nothing in common beyond the accountant's name on the door. Treating them as one audience on the homepage usually means neither group gets a clear next step, which is why splitting that page into two obvious paths near the top often solves more than any amount of copywriting would.

Deciding Which Pages the Site Actually Needs

Once I understand how people reach the business, I can start deciding on the page count, and it's rarely nine. A consultant selling one core service might need four pages: home, about, that one service explained in depth, and contact. A restaurant needs a menu people can find in two taps and a way to book a table. Event space, private dining, and gift cards are all real parts of the business, but they can live one click deeper without hurting anyone who just wants to check tonight's hours. A retailer running an online store needs product pages and category structure that a service business would never touch.

The mistake I see most often is building the site around internal categories instead of visitor questions. A law firm might organize its services into Litigation, Corporate, and Estate Planning because that's how the partners think about their own practice. A visitor searching for help with a will doesn't care about that structure. He wants to land somewhere that speaks directly to his situation, which sometimes means restructuring the whole navigation around outcomes instead of departments.

Planning the Homepage

This is usually where clients want to talk about design before the plan is settled, and I try to slow that down first. Figuring out what should be on a small business homepage starts with one question: if a visitor only reads this page and leaves, what does the business need them to understand?

For a business with one clear service and one clear customer, that answer is short. State what the business does, show who it's for, and give a single obvious way to take the next step. A consultant selling one service doesn't need three competing buttons pulling visitors in different directions.

It gets more complicated when a business serves several kinds of customers. A general contractor I worked with served homeowners, commercial property managers, and other contractors looking for subcontracted work. Those three groups needed almost nothing in common. Instead of forcing all three into one generic homepage, we built three distinct entry points near the top of the page, each pointing to a section built for that visitor. The rest of the homepage stayed simple, because a page trying to speak to everyone usually ends up saying very little to anyone.

Deciding What Belongs Together

Six services listed with equal visual weight on a homepage usually make the page harder to scan than it needs to be. In that situation, I'd rather identify the two or three services that generate the most relevant inquiries and give those priority, while keeping the rest available through a dedicated services page. That's a different decision than simply hiding services. It comes from inquiry data, and treating every service as equally important on a homepage usually reflects how the owner sees the business rather than how customers actually approach it.

Separate service pages become useful once a service needs enough explanation that cramming it into a shared page would bury the details a serious visitor is looking for.

Estate planning pages can go into far more depth about wills, trusts, and probate than a homepage ever should, because someone reading them is already evaluating that specific service.

The homepage doesn't need that depth. It needs enough to get the right visitor to click through.

Building Navigation Around What Customers Need

Navigation tends to get crowded when every internal preference becomes a customer-facing link. I've seen menus with a "Careers" link sitting next to "Request a Quote," both given equal prominence, because someone at the company felt every department deserved a spot. A visitor looking for pricing information doesn't benefit from that clutter, and burying the request-a-quote link among six other items makes the one action that matters harder to find.

My starting point for navigation is usually the visitor's side of things. What is someone trying to accomplish when they land here, and what sequence of clicks gets them there fastest? Secondary items, like a careers page or a blog, can move into a footer or a simplified secondary menu once the primary path is protected.

What Gets Visual Priority

Once the structure is settled, the layout decisions get easier, because I already know what matters most on each page. Headlines, imagery, and calls to action should follow that priority instead of competing with it.

·         A homepage photo of a smiling team can look pleasant while telling a visitor almost nothing about what the business actually does, which is a problem I run into with stock photography more than anything else.

·         Typography and spacing matter too, mostly in how they support scanning. A visitor deciding whether to keep reading usually skims headers and bold text before committing to full paragraphs.

If the important information only lives in dense body copy, a lot of visitors will miss it entirely.

One landscaping client wanted a full-width video header showing finished yards. It looked impressive in the design file, but on most phones it pushed the actual service list and phone number below the fold, which meant the page led with production value nobody had asked for instead of the information visitors came to find.

We replaced it with a still image and moved the phone number and service area into the first screen anyone would see. The video looked nice in a portfolio. It just wasn't doing the homepage's job.

What Changes Once Real Content Goes In

The plan always shifts once actual photos, copy, and pricing details get dropped into the pages. A layout that looked balanced with placeholder text can suddenly feel cramped once real service descriptions run longer than expected. I plan for this by reviewing the site with final content in place, not just wireframes, because that's when problems like awkward line breaks or missing information actually show up.

Checking the Site Before It Goes Live

Before launch, I go through the site the way an actual visitor would, on a phone first, since that's how most people are going to see it. Forms get tested with real submissions, not just visually reviewed. Every link gets clicked, including the ones buried in the footer that are easy to forget. Page speed gets checked, particularly on image-heavy pages, since a slow-loading homepage can undo a lot of the planning work that came before it. I also check whether contact forms are asking for information the business doesn't actually need, since a five-field form can quietly cost inquiries that a two-field form wouldn't have lost.

Accessibility gets checked at this stage too, and it's usually faster to fix now than after launch. That means alt text on meaningful images, enough color contrast on buttons and links to actually read them in bright light, and confirming the site can be navigated with a keyboard alone. None of this is difficult work. It's just easy to skip when a launch date is close, which is exactly why I build it into the checklist instead of trusting myself to remember it under deadline pressure.

What Actually Needs to Be Settled Before Launch

By the time a site is ready to launch, the questions that should be settled are simple ones. Does the homepage make it obvious what the business does? Is the path to contact short? Does the navigation match how visitors actually think about the business, rather than how the business thinks about itself? Getting those three things right usually matters more than any single layout decision made along the way.

The client with the nine-page list ended up launching with five. The Resources page didn't survive, since nothing in her business was actually generating content for it yet. That's usually how it goes. A site gets smaller and more specific as the reasoning behind it gets clearer, and it's rarely the other way around.A client emailed me last month with a list of nine pages she wanted on her new site: Home, About, Services, Team, Testimonials, Blog, FAQ, Resources, Contact. When I asked why she needed a Resources page, she paused and admitted she'd seen one on a competitor's site and figured she should have one too.

That conversation, in my experience, is often where planning truly starts, way before anyone opens a template or settles on colors. The real challenge is sorting out which pages actually serve your business and which are probably just there, usually because someone else had them.

What I Try to Understand Before Anything Gets Designed

Before I open a design tool, I want to know who actually contacts this business and why. 

A roofing contractor and a corporate law firm might both call themselves "service businesses," but the way people find them, decide on them, and reach out to them are completely different. 

I usually ask a client to walk me through their last five or six enquiries. 

Examples: where did those people come from? What did they ask about first? Did they call, fill out a form, or show up after a referral?

One issue I run into often is that business owners describe their services as equally important when their own inquiry history says otherwise.

 A contractor might list six services on his old site, but when I look at his call log, three of those services rarely come up. 

That gap matters more than anything in a mood board, because it tells me what the homepage should actually be doing.

Professional firms serving both individuals and businesses run into a related problem. An accountant might get calls from individuals filing personal tax returns and, separately, from small businesses needing ongoing bookkeeping. Those two audiences have almost nothing in common beyond the accountant's name on the door. Treating them as one audience on the homepage usually means neither group gets a clear next step, which is why splitting that page into two obvious paths near the top often solves more than any amount of copywriting would.

Deciding Which Pages the Site Actually Needs

Once I understand how people reach the business, I can start deciding on the page count, and it's rarely nine. A consultant selling one core service might need four pages: home, about, that one service explained in depth, and contact. A restaurant needs a menu people can find in two taps and a way to book a table. Event space, private dining, and gift cards are all real parts of the business, but they can live one click deeper without hurting anyone who just wants to check tonight's hours. A retailer running an online store needs product pages and category structure that a service business would never touch.

The mistake I see most often is building the site around internal categories instead of visitor questions. A law firm might organize its services into Litigation, Corporate, and Estate Planning because that's how the partners think about their own practice. A visitor searching for help with a will doesn't care about that structure. He wants to land somewhere that speaks directly to his situation, which sometimes means restructuring the whole navigation around outcomes instead of departments.

Planning the Homepage

This is usually where clients want to talk about design before the plan is settled, and I try to slow that down first. Figuring out what should be on a small business homepage starts with one question: if a visitor only reads this page and leaves, what does the business need them to understand?

For a business with one clear service and one clear customer, that answer is short. State what the business does, show who it's for, and give a single obvious way to take the next step. A consultant selling one service doesn't need three competing buttons pulling visitors in different directions.

It gets more complicated when a business serves several kinds of customers. A general contractor I worked with served homeowners, commercial property managers, and other contractors looking for subcontracted work. Those three groups needed almost nothing in common. Instead of forcing all three into one generic homepage, we built three distinct entry points near the top of the page, each pointing to a section built for that visitor. The rest of the homepage stayed simple, because a page trying to speak to everyone usually ends up saying very little to anyone.

Deciding What Belongs Together

Six services listed with equal visual weight on a homepage usually make the page harder to scan than it needs to be. In that situation, I'd rather identify the two or three services that generate the most relevant inquiries and give those priority, while keeping the rest available through a dedicated services page. That's a different decision than simply hiding services. It comes from inquiry data, and treating every service as equally important on a homepage usually reflects how the owner sees the business rather than how customers actually approach it.

Separate service pages become useful once a service needs enough explanation that cramming it into a shared page would bury the details a serious visitor is looking for. 

Estate planning pages can go into far more depth about wills, trusts, and probate than a homepage ever should, because someone reading them is already evaluating that specific service. 

The homepage doesn't need that depth. It needs enough to get the right visitor to click through.

Building Navigation Around What Customers Need

Navigation tends to get crowded when every internal preference becomes a customer-facing link. I've seen menus with a "Careers" link sitting next to "Request a Quote," both given equal prominence, because someone at the company felt every department deserved a spot. A visitor looking for pricing information doesn't benefit from that clutter, and burying the request-a-quote link among six other items makes the one action that matters harder to find.

My starting point for navigation is usually the visitor's side of things. What is someone trying to accomplish when they land here, and what sequence of clicks gets them there fastest? Secondary items, like a careers page or a blog, can move into a footer or a simplified secondary menu once the primary path is protected.

What Gets Visual Priority

Once the structure is settled, the layout decisions get easier, because I already know what matters most on each page. Headlines, imagery, and calls to action should follow that priority instead of competing with it. 

• A homepage photo of a smiling team can look pleasant while telling a visitor almost nothing about what the business actually does, which is a problem I run into with stock photography more than anything else.

• Typography and spacing matter too, mostly in how they support scanning. A visitor deciding whether to keep reading usually skims headers and bold text before committing to full paragraphs. 

If the important information only lives in dense body copy, a lot of visitors will miss it entirely.

One landscaping client wanted a full-width video header showing finished yards. It looked impressive in the design file, but on most phones it pushed the actual service list and phone number below the fold, which meant the page led with production value nobody had asked for instead of the information visitors came to find. 

We replaced it with a still image and moved the phone number and service area into the first screen anyone would see. The video looked nice in a portfolio. It just wasn't doing the homepage's job.

What Changes Once Real Content Goes In

The plan always shifts once actual photos, copy, and pricing details get dropped into the pages. A layout that looked balanced with placeholder text can suddenly feel cramped once real service descriptions run longer than expected. I plan for this by reviewing the site with final content in place, not just wireframes, because that's when problems like awkward line breaks or missing information actually show up.

Checking the Site Before It Goes Live

Before launch, I go through the site the way an actual visitor would, on a phone first, since that's how most people are going to see it. Forms get tested with real submissions, not just visually reviewed. Every link gets clicked, including the ones buried in the footer that are easy to forget. Page speed gets checked, particularly on image-heavy pages, since a slow-loading homepage can undo a lot of the planning work that came before it. I also check whether contact forms are asking for information the business doesn't actually need, since a five-field form can quietly cost inquiries that a two-field form wouldn't have lost.

Accessibility gets checked at this stage too, and it's usually faster to fix now than after launch. That means alt text on meaningful images, enough color contrast on buttons and links to actually read them in bright light, and confirming the site can be navigated with a keyboard alone. None of this is difficult work. It's just easy to skip when a launch date is close, which is exactly why I build it into the checklist instead of trusting myself to remember it under deadline pressure.

What Actually Needs to Be Settled Before Launch

By the time a site is ready to launch, the questions that should be settled are simple ones. Does the homepage make it obvious what the business does? Is the path to contact short? Does the navigation match how visitors actually think about the business, rather than how the business thinks about itself? Getting those three things right usually matters more than any single layout decision made along the way.

The client with the nine-page list ended up launching with five. The Resources page didn't survive, since nothing in her business was actually generating content for it yet. That's usually how it goes. A site gets smaller and more specific as the reasoning behind it gets clearer, and it's rarely the other way around.