What Pages Does Your Website Really Need?

Creating a brand-new website for your small business or service can be thrilling, nerve-wracking, tedious, and a lot of work. When you take a look at many large business’ websites, you may be impressed, wowed, or simply overwhelmed by the sheer number of pages and amount of content they publish. But fear not; here is a list of the most essential pages your small business must have – it’s a short list. Anything above and beyond that is icing on the cake, and I’ve broken the options out into “must have” and “nice to have” to make it ultra clear.

Pages Your Website MUST Have

1. Home. This is the foundation of your entire site. It’s the page people will see when they type in your url. The home page features your company’s name and logo, a brief description of your baseline products or services, and should have a navigation bar or tabs that allow users to move easily around the site to access the information they need. Those tabs will take users to the other pages in your site.
2. About. The about page is where you describe your company, yourself, and your mission. Discuss what you do, how you do it, and why. You can list top staff members and their bios. You can include photos or graphics to help users get a better understanding or gain familiarity with you. You can also list your business hours if you have a brick and mortar store, or best times to get someone on the phone if you work remotely.
3. Products/Services. This page is where you showcase all that great stuff you make or do. A brief description of each item is all you need because you can go into more detail with clients when they contact you. You can list prices here as well.
4. Testimonials. Get clients to say wonderful things about your company and post those quotes here. This is also a good place to have before/after photos that accompany each testimonial, if possible. This is essentially free advertising, so don’t fail to put up this page the moment you have some testimonials!
5. Contact. List any and every way you want clients to contact you: mailing address, email address, phone and/or fax numbers. You can also provide links to your accounts on social media platforms like Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc.

Pages That Are Nice to Have on Your Website

1. Site Map. This is a simple navigational tool that helps users get around and find the information they’re seeking quickly and easily.
2. Blog. You can post articles or information that is relevant to your business, your industry and your customers. Keep the length of posts to less than 1000 words or you risk losing readers. Make sure you offer a variety of ways for people to follow your blog too, such as via an RSS feed or email subscription – this is a great way to collect email addresses for lead generation, by the way! For me, my blog page is my home page because it’s what I want people to see first – it’s where they’ll get instant information for their small business marketing and content questions.
3. FAQ. If you find that your customers tend to ask you a lot of the same questions, save your time and theirs by providing answers to those questions right on your site.
4. Events Calendar. If your business hosts events, post a calendar a few months ahead of time that allows customers to find the events most interesting to them. Make sure you include information on how to register for and get to these events.

If Your Website is an Online Store

You’ll need a few more special pages:

1. Shopping cart. So people can purchase more than one item at a time.
2. Trust seals. Let customers know that you’re not going to steal their credit card information!
3. Return policy. Clearly note the terms of returning an item so there is no confusion.
4. Privacy policy. Assure customers that you are worthy of their trust when giving you their personal information. Let them know what you’ll do with that information.

About these ads