What pages does a business website actually need?
Most business websites need six kinds of page: home, one per service, about, contact, proof and legal. Which to add, which to skip, and what each must do.
By Sohail Hussain29 October 20266 min read
A business website needs six kinds of page: a homepage, one page per service (or one services page if you offer only one thing), an About page, a contact page, some form of proof (portfolio, case studies or testimonials), and the legal pages (privacy policy and terms). Everything else, including a blog, FAQ page, careers page and pricing page, depends on the business. This post goes through each, says what it is for, and names the pages that are usually not worth building.
Which pages does every business website need?
| Page | What it must do | Usual length |
|---|---|---|
| Home | Say what you do, for whom, and where to go next | 300 to 600 words |
| Services (one per service) | Answer "do they do what I need, and how?" | 400 to 900 words each |
| About | Show who is behind the company and how you work | 300 to 600 words |
| Contact | Get the enquiry with the least friction | Under 150 words plus the form |
| Proof (portfolio, case studies or testimonials) | Show you have done this before, for companies like theirs | Varies |
| Privacy policy and terms | Meet legal expectations and reassure | As long as needed |
Home. The homepage is a routing page. Its first screen says what you do and for whom, its body points to the services and the proof, and it ends with a call to action. It is not the place to explain everything. Our post on homepage structure covers what goes above the fold.
Service pages. On the company websites we build, these are the pages that rank and the pages that convince. A buyer searching "warehouse racking installation Pune" should land on a page about exactly that, not on a homepage that mentions it in a list. One page per service, if you can write something specific about each; our post on service page structure covers when to split and when to combine.
About. Often one of the most visited pages on a company site after the homepage; check your own analytics. Buyers read it to decide whether you are real and whether they would like dealing with you. Names, faces and specifics; our guide to writing an About page explains what to include.
Contact. A short form, a direct channel (phone, email, WhatsApp), and a line saying what happens next. See how to design a contact page.
Proof. A portfolio page for businesses whose work can be shown; case studies or a testimonials page for businesses whose work cannot. Proof can also live inside the service pages rather than on its own page, which is often better: the testimonial about your fit-out work belongs on the fit-out page.
Legal pages. A privacy policy if you collect any personal data, which includes a contact form and analytics. Terms of service if you sell or take bookings online. A cookie notice where the law in your customers' countries requires one. What exactly you need depends on where you and your customers are; check with your lawyer. We include these pages in every company website we build, because leaving them out looks careless to the buyers who notice.
Which pages depend on the business?
Pricing. Show prices if they are fixed and competitive; a pricing page converts well because it answers the question buyers most want answered. If every job is quoted, show starting prices or ranges instead of nothing. "Contact us for a quote" with no numbers at all pushes price-conscious buyers to the competitor who publishes.
FAQ. Worth a page only if you get the same ten questions and the answers are short. Otherwise put two or three questions at the bottom of the relevant service page, where the visitor is when the question arises.
Careers. Needed if you hire regularly. A single page with open roles and a line on how you work is enough; a careers "hub" is not.
Blog. Only if someone will write it. Four posts from 2023 and nothing since does more harm than no blog. Do you need a blog? covers the decision.
Locations. A page per office if you have offices customers visit. Not a page per city you are willing to travel to; Google treats pages that differ only by city name as spam, covered below.
Industries. A page per industry served, if you serve several and can say something different about each. If the content would be the same with the industry name swapped, skip it.
Which pages are usually not worth building?
Thin location pages. "Web design in Pune", "Web design in Mumbai", "Web design in Nashik", identical except for the city. Google's spam policies call these doorway pages and can act against the whole site, not just those pages.
A "Why choose us" page. The reasons belong on the homepage and the service pages, where the visitor is deciding. On their own page they read as a list of adjectives.
A mission, vision and values page. Nobody outside the company reads it. If the values are real, they show in the About page and in how you describe your work.
A news page with no news. Same problem as the dead blog.
A sitemap page for humans. The footer does this job.
A gallery with no captions. Forty photos and no explanation of what the reader is looking at. Put the photos in the portfolio with a line each.
How many pages is enough?
Six to twelve for most businesses. Page count does not help rankings; Google ranks pages, not sites, and a site with eight strong pages beats one with forty thin ones. Add a page when a visitor would search for it or needs it before enquiring. Remove a page when you cannot say what someone would do after reading it.
A one-page site is a legitimate choice for a sole trader or a business that lives on referrals. It is a poor choice if you want to be found in search for more than your company name, because one page can only rank for one topic.
How do you decide what goes on each page?
For each page, write three lines before anyone designs anything:
- Who lands here, and from where (search, a link from the homepage, a referral).
- The question they arrive with.
- What they should do next, and the link or button that lets them.
A page that fails line 3 is either a section of another page or not needed. This exercise, done for all pages at once, is most of a website plan; our step-by-step guide to planning a website covers the rest.
Decide URLs at the same time. Short, lowercase, hyphenated, containing the page's main words: /services/office-fit-out, /about, /contact. Our URL slug generator turns a title into a clean slug. Changing a URL after launch means a redirect and a wait for Google to re-index, so settle them now.
Each page also needs a title tag and meta description written for it, not generated from the first paragraph. The meta length checker keeps both inside what Google displays. Six pages, each with a clear job, a settled URL and its own title, is a better starting point than any template with thirty.
Was this guide useful?