What Pages Should a Website Have to Get Started?
There is no exact rule that states exactly what pages should a website have. Certainly not one that works for every business. Some websites need just a handful of pages. Others need many more. What matters most is having the right pages for your goals for the website and your business.
We rarely find a one-page website to be the best option for a small business. There is usually too much important information to fit well on one page. At the same time, there is no reason to build a 150-page website just so you can say you have a big website.
The right number of pages depends on what your business does, what your customers need to know, what you want visitors to do, and what SEO opportunities may be available.
For a lot of small business websites, we have often found that four to seven core pages is a common starting point. With those pages, most small businesses can get their website up and running while still providing great content to their customers.
Essential Pages
There are a few pages we include on just about every website we build. Rarely have we built a website that did not include each of these pages in some form.
These pages help showcase your business and offerings. Questions about what you do and how you can help your clients are all answered on these pages.
Homepage
Your homepage is the starting point of your website. Almost like the lead singer of the rock band. The homepage should clearly explain who you are, what you do, who you help, and where you work if location matters to your business.
It should also help users find the other main parts of your site.
One mistake we see is trying to put everything on the homepage. The homepage should not explain every little detail about your business. It needs to introduce the important parts of your business and guide users to more pages where they can learn more.
About Page
Your About page gives your company some personality.
On this page you can talk about your story and your team. You can go into your experience, mission as a company, and why you do what you do. Some businesses think no one cares about this page, but people often want to know who they may be hiring or buying from.
An About page can help build trust without turning into a hard sales pitch.
Products or Services Page
For most service businesses, we recommend having one main Services page that gives a good overview of everything the company does.
From there, we usually recommend adding a separate landing page for each major service.
Think about a plumbing company. They may have one Services page that lists all of their work. Then they could have separate pages for water heater services, drain cleaning, sump pumps, and other major services.
Those pages let you explain each service in much greater detail.
They also help with SEO. Instead of trying to make one Services page rank for ten different ideas, each landing page can focus on its own keyword. That is pretty much SEO 101.
When deciding what pages should a website have, the different services you offer are one of the first places we look.
Contact Page
This is another nearly mandatory page on your site. Users are almost always looking for it.
The Contact page is the obvious place for users to go when they are ready to reach out.
Common information on this page is:
- Contact form
- Phone number
- Email address
- Business hours
- Address or map
Potential clients should never have to search through your website just to figure out how to contact you. For many visitors, the Contact page is the main conversion point.
Many users are also often expecting this page to be the very last link on the far right of your navigation.
Helpful Pages to Add to Your Website
These pages are not included on every website, but often at least one of them will be part of a site we build.
They give you more room to share useful content and more proof that your company knows what it is doing.
These are also some of the pages where you get to prove your greatness a little more. You are not just telling people you do great work. You can actually show them.
Portfolio or Case Studies
A portfolio or case study section lets you show work you have already completed.
That could mean photos, project details, problems you solved, or results you helped create. Case studies can be especially helpful because you have room to tell the whole story instead of just showing one finished photo.
They can also work well for SEO. A detailed case study may give you a chance to focus on a long-tail keyword tied to a service, location, product, industry, or problem.
Blog
Your blog is your chance to answer questions and keep adding great quality content to your site.
Blogs are at their best when they answer questions people are already searching for. Your blog articles are great for long-tail SEO to help bring in more users.
A blog also keeps your website from becoming something that was built five years ago and never touched again.
FAQ Page
An FAQ page is a good place to answer questions customers ask all the time.
It can save your customers some time and may save your team some time as well. It can also answer concerns someone may have before they call.
Not every FAQ has to live on one big FAQ page either. Sometimes a question makes more sense right on the service page where the topic is already being discussed.
Portfolio pieces, case studies, blog posts, and FAQs should also continue to grow. As you finish new work and hear new questions from customers, you have more useful content you can add.
Legal and Other Important Pages
These may not be the most exciting pages on your website. Some of them may be pages that only an attorney ever gets excited about reading.
They can still be important pages to have.
We are not attorneys, so we do not give legal advice about what your website needs to say. Some of our clients have had their attorneys prepare this content for them.
Privacy Policy
The website Privacy Policy explains how information is collected through your website and how it is handled.
This is an important page to have if your website uses forms, analytics, cookies, or other tools that collect information. If you are using WordPress for your website, there is a default Privacy Policy page included in the initial install.
Privacy Policy pages are often linked in the footer instead of the main navigation.
Terms of Service
The Terms of Service page often covers the general rules, terms, disclaimers, and other legal information that applies to the website or business.
If specific legal wording is needed, this page is possibly something to have an attorney write.
You can also include information such as photo credits for images used. We have done this on some sites if we use images from directories like Pexels or Unsplash.
404/Error Page
A 404 page is a little different.
It is the page someone sees if they follow a bad or broken link. Hopefully it is one of the least viewed pages on your website. But it should still be there when somebody needs it.
The 404 page can give the visitor links to the homepage or other useful parts of your site. The page they were looking for might not be there anymore, but that doesn’t mean we don’t want to have a great page to still help that user.
Do You Need All of These Pages?
No.
This is a common starting point, not a checklist that every business must follow.
A contractor, nonprofit, online store, manufacturer, and law firm may all need very different websites. Some businesses may also need pages for locations, industries served, careers, staff, events, resources, product categories, or other advanced features.
What pages should a website have depends on what your customers need to know and what you want the website to accomplish.
Your website should also be built in a way that lets it grow. You may start with six pages today and have 30 useful pages a few years from now.
That is perfectly fine.
The goal should be adding useful content because it helps your customers and your business, not because someone decided that a bigger website must be a better website.
If you are planning a new website and are not sure what pages you need, Full Scope Creative can help map that out. We can also help if your current website feels a little thin or if some of your main services do not have their own pages yet.
We look at what your customers need, what your business wants to promote, and what SEO opportunities are available. From there, we can build a website that works now and has room to grow later.
We’d be happy to chat about what your website needs.