What pages a small business website needs
Three, and then one that depends on what you sell. That is what came out when we counted the 115 templates we have designed across 11 trades.
These are figures about our own template library, not a survey of real businesses' live sites. That makes them good evidence of what a small business site tends to need, since each template was drawn for a specific trade, and no evidence at all about what the average plumber's current website contains. The denominator is the reason the numbers are worth quoting, so it is printed on every one of them.
- Templates counted
- 115
- Pages between them
- 502
- Pages per site
- 4.4
- Sections per page
- 5.4
Three pages are the same everywhere
Of 115 templates, this many carry each page. One measure, one bar each, and the count printed beside it.
After About, it falls off a cliff. 72 different page names appear across the 502 pages, and the most common of them reaches about a quarter of the templates. That is the finding: the fourth page belongs to the business rather than to a convention.
The fourth page is the business
Set the universal three aside and here is what each trade reaches for instead. The number is how many templates in that trade carry it.
Food Drink
- Menu 13
- Book 2
- Services 1
Retail
- Shop 11
- Products 1
- Inventory 1
Hospitality
- Fleet 9
- Manage reservation 9
- Manage booking 3
Business
- Services 6
- Insights 1
- Spaces 1
Health Medical
- Services 6
- Programs 1
Home Services
- Services 5
- Projects 2
- Recent work 1
Nonprofit
- Donate 5
- Programs 2
- Ministries 1
Professional
- Services 4
- Projects 2
- Studio 2
Technology
- Services 2
- Courses 1
- Features 1
Creative
- Portfolio 2
- Classes 2
- Services 1
Beauty Wellness
- Classes 2
- Book 2
- Menu 1
A restaurant puts a menu there, a shop puts its products, a hire business puts the fleet, a charity puts the donate button. If you are deciding what your fourth page should be, find where your money changes hands and build that.
What goes inside the pages
94 different section types appear across the library, and most of them are plumbing. Every site has a header and a footer, and whether a block puts its picture on the left or the right is a layout question. Below are the ones you actually choose.
The row worth arguing with is opening hours, on 44% of templates. For a business people walk into, when you are open is one of the first things a visitor wants and one of the easiest to leave sitting on a social profile. If you run a shop, a salon or a kitchen, add it even where your template started without one - and these are our templates, so that number is a note to ourselves as much as to you.
The three pages, opened up
Set side by side, the three near-universal pages share almost nothing. Each percentage is of that page type - 72% means 72% of the contact pages, not 72% of the library.
Home
- What makes you different 37%
- How your service works 19%
- A photo gallery 18%
- The services you offer 17%
- Online booking 16%
Contact
- A contact form 100%
- A map of where you are 72%
- Answers to common questions 48%
- Opening hours 44%
About
- Who you are 78%
- The story behind the business 26%
The contact page is the most predictable page on a small business website and the home page is the least, which is the right way round: a contact page has one job, and a home page has to stand for the whole business. Worth noticing where two of those rows landed. The questions people ask and the hours you are open are on the contact page, not the home page - which is where most owners assume they belong.
Questions this page answers
- How many pages should a small business website have?
- Across the 115 templates counted here the average is 4.4, and none has fewer than 3 or more than 6. That range is worth more than the average: a small business site that does its job is a handful of pages, and the pressure to add more usually comes from wanting to look bigger rather than from a visitor needing somewhere to go.
- Which pages does every small business website need?
- Home, contact and about. Home is on all 115, contact on 114 and about on 110. Nothing else comes close - after those three the most common page is on about a quarter of the library, because the fourth page is whatever the business actually sells.
- What should the fourth page be?
- Whatever a visitor has to reach before you get paid. In this library that is a menu for food and drink, a shop for retail, a fleet for hire businesses, and a donate page for charities. The trades differ so much that 72 distinct page names appear across only 502 pages, which is why "the standard fourth page" does not exist.
- What should be on a contact page?
- More than a form. Across the contact pages counted here the form is on all of them, a map of where you are on about seven in ten, the questions people ask on about half and the opening hours on a little under half. The last two are the surprise: owners tend to assume an FAQ and the opening hours belong on the home page, and in this library they sit with the contact details instead, next to everything else a visitor needs when they have decided to get in touch.
- Where do these numbers come from?
- They are counted at page load from the 115 website templates in this product, across 502 pages and 94 section types. They describe a design library, not a survey of real businesses' live websites - good evidence of what a small business site tends to need, since each template was drawn for a specific trade, and no evidence of what any particular existing website contains.
Start from one that already has the right pages
Every template counted on this page is one you can open and edit. Pick the one drawn for your trade and the fourth page is already there, with the sections that go in it.
Want this for your trade rather than the average? The planner splits all of it by trade - a restaurant's list is not a salon's.