What makes a good website for a small business?

What matters most on a small business website?

After building websites for businesses across the North of England, here's what we've learned actually makes a difference:

1. Speed

If your website takes more than 3 seconds to load on a phone, you've lost half your visitors before they see anything. Google knows this. It measures your page speed and uses it as a ranking factor.

Most slow websites are slow because they're built on bloated platforms, use oversized images, or load dozens of unnecessary scripts. A clean, custom-coded website loads in under a second. A typical WordPress site with a premium theme and six plugins loads in 4-8 seconds.

Speed isn't a nice-to-have. It directly affects how many people stay on your site, how Google ranks you, and whether AI systems can efficiently crawl your content.

2. Clarity

A visitor should understand what you do, where you're based, and how to contact you within 5 seconds of landing on your homepage. That means:

• A clear headline that states what you do and where
• No jargon, no marketing waffle, no "welcome to our website"
• Your location visible without scrolling
• A phone number or contact button that's always accessible

A solicitor's homepage should say "Family law solicitors in Manchester" above the fold. Not "Empowering your legal journey through innovative solutions." Nobody searches for that. Nobody knows what it means.

3. Mobile-first design

Over 60% of website visits in the UK come from phones. Google uses mobile-first indexing, meaning it ranks your site based on how it performs on mobile, not desktop.

A good mobile experience means:

• Text is readable without zooming
• Buttons are large enough to tap with a thumb
• Nothing overlaps or breaks on smaller screens
• Forms are short and easy to fill in on a phone
• The phone number is clickable (tap to call)

Test your own site right now. Open it on your phone. If you have to pinch and zoom, your site needs rebuilding.

What pages does a small business actually need?

Forget the 50-page sitemap. Most small businesses need these:

• Homepage — what you do, where, and why someone should choose you. Clear call to action.
• Services/what we do — one page per core service. A restaurant needs a menu page. An accountant needs separate pages for bookkeeping, tax returns, and payroll. Each page is a separate opportunity to rank on Google.
• About — who you are, your experience, your approach. People buy from people, especially locally.
• Contact — address, phone, email, contact form, map. Make it dead simple.
• Reviews/testimonials — social proof. If you have Google reviews, feature them. If past clients have given you quotes, use them.

That's 5-8 pages for most businesses. A cafe in Bury doesn't need 20 pages. It needs a menu, a location, opening hours, and a reason to visit.

What about SEO — should it be built in from the start?

Absolutely. SEO shouldn't be something you think about after the website is built. It should be part of the foundation.

Every page needs:

• A unique title tag that matches what people search ("self-assessment accountant Bolton")
• A meta description that gives people a reason to click
• Proper heading structure (H1, H2, H3 in logical order)
• Clean, readable URLs
• Schema markup so Google and AI tools understand your content
• Alt text on images

None of this is visible to visitors. But it's the difference between a website that ranks and one that doesn't. If your web designer doesn't mention SEO during the build, find a different designer.

What doesn't matter as much as you think?

Business owners often worry about things that make very little difference:

• Animations and effects — they slow your site down and distract from your message. Subtle is fine. Flashy hurts performance.
• Stock photos of people in suits shaking hands — everyone's seen them. They make your site look generic. Real photos of your team, your premises, or your work are ten times more effective.
• A blog you never update — an empty blog with one post from 2023 looks worse than no blog at all. Only add a blog if you'll actually write for it.
• Social media feeds embedded on your homepage — they slow your page down and pull attention away from your actual content. Link to your socials instead.
• A carousel/slider on the homepage — studies consistently show that almost nobody interacts with slides past the first one. Use a clear, single message instead.

How do I know if my current website is any good?

Run through this quick checklist:

• Open your site on your phone. Does it load in under 3 seconds? Is it easy to use?
• Can a stranger tell what you do and where within 5 seconds?
• Search Google for your service + your location. Are you on page one?
• Check your page speed at pagespeed.web.dev. Is your mobile score above 80?
• Does your site have HTTPS (padlock in the browser bar)?
• When did you last update the content?

If you answered "no" to more than two of those, your website is costing you customers. Not because it looks bad, but because it's not doing its job.