What a small business website should have on it
3 articles on what a small business website should have on it, what it ought to cost and why the one you have isn’t bringing in work. Written by the people who build them, so it’s specific: which five pages, how many photographs, how many fields on the form.
Where a small business website usually goes wrong
Most of them fail on the same three counts. They open with a welcome instead of saying what the firm does and where it does it. They carry an inquiry form with fifteen fields that nobody finishes. And they take five seconds to draw on a phone with two bars of signal, which is where the customer is standing. None of the three is expensive to put right, and all three cost inquiries every week they’re left.
The five pages every small business website needs is the shape almost every one of them takes, and the FAQ below is the arithmetic if you’re collecting estimates. If you’d rather not do any of it yourself, we design, write and build the whole thing in seven days. Today you pay $1 for the website plus your first month of hosting. After that hosting is $8.99 a month, billed on the same date each month until you cancel, and you can cancel in any month. The same build is openly sold at $1,500, which is what a US agency charges for a small business site of this size. the websites page sets out what that includes, and the redesign page is for a site that already exists.
Where to start
- What to put on your homepage, and what to leave off Section by section, in the order it should appear, and the six things to leave off. 8 min read
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What to put on your homepage, and what to leave off
What to put on a homepage, in the order it should appear, plus the six things to leave off. A section by section plan for a small business site.
Tom Ashworth · 8 min read
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Do I need a website if I have Facebook and Instagram?
Do I need a website if I have Facebook and Instagram? When a page is enough, what it can’t do, and what running both costs.
Priya Raghavan · 8 min read
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What a website actually costs in 2026
How much does a website cost in 2026? Real price bands, what is inside an estimate, the running costs nobody mentions, and the questions to ask.
Iwan Petrescu · 8 min read
Questions
What people ask about your website
Short answers, with the long version linked. Anything not here, ask us on live chat or by email and a person answers, usually the same business day.
How many pages does a small business website need?
Five, for most trades: a home page, a services page, an about page, a contact page and one that answers the questions you get asked on every job. More pages are worth having when each one is a separate thing people search for. The five pages every small business website needs sets out what each has to answer.
Do I still need a website if I have Facebook and Instagram?
Sometimes not, and the cases where you don’t are in do I need a website if I have Facebook and Instagram. What a page can’t do is show up when someone searches for your trade and their town, take a booking at eleven at night, or survive the platform changing its mind about how many people see you.
What should a small business website cost?
Website Builder Expert puts a web designer at $1,000 to $5,000 upfront, on a page updated December 5, 2025. Elementor puts an agency build for a small business at $10,000 to $35,000, read September 3, 2026. WebFX puts what most businesses spend on the site each year after that at $501 to $5,000, read September 3, 2026. A builder you drive yourself is cheap in money and expensive in weekends. Ours is Today you pay $1 for the website plus your first month of hosting. After that hosting is $8.99 a month, billed on the same date each month until you cancel, and you can cancel in any month. The same build is openly sold at $1,500, which is what a US agency charges for a small business site of this size. The .com is included on the Complete plan at $18.99 a month. On Basic at $8.99 a month the name is registered in your own name and run for you, and the registry’s own annual fee for it, about $12 a year, is billed separately at cost.
How long should a website take to build?
Seven days here, briefed on the Monday and live on the Sunday, because the writing and the design are done by people who do only this. The part that holds most builds up elsewhere is content: photographs, prices and the answers about your own trade. The seven day build is drawn out day by day.
Do I own the website and the domain name?
Yes to both, and check that on any website you already have. The domain sits on the register in your own details, which is the arrangement argued for in the domain names page, which also covers moving one that is currently held by someone else.
How often does a website need looking at?
A full check once a year, and five minutes whenever something changes: prices, business hours, a service you no longer offer. A year of the website is the twenty things worth checking and how long each one takes.
Or skip the reading.
Everything on this page is something we do for people every week. We design the site, write it and put it online in seven days. Today you pay $1 for the website plus your first month of hosting. After that hosting is $8.99 a month, billed on the same date each month until you cancel, and you can cancel in any month. The same build is openly sold at $1,500, which is what a US agency charges for a small business site of this size. That hosting carries a mailbox, SSL and your domain run for you. The .com is included on the Complete plan at $18.99 a month. On Basic at $8.99 a month the name is registered in your own name and run for you, and the registry’s own annual fee for it, about $12 a year, is billed separately at cost. No contract, stop any month.
Prefer it delivered? There is an RSS feed, and the newsletter form at the bottom of this page sends one email a week. If you’d rather have someone do the work, the websites page is what we build, the SEO page is how we get it found, and the help center answers the practical questions.