We are often asked the question ‘how many pages should I have on my website? In addition, we are often told by prospective clients that they only need 2 or 3 pages for their site. What pages should a business have? The answer in most cases is, it depends. It depends on multiple factors, such as business type, range of services/products, competition, and of course budget. The majority of websites we have completed, range from 3 to 22 pages. This is for business websites and e-commerce sites could potentially have significantly more depending on the product type.
It is worth pointing out at this stage that it is more important to think about the business goals and having good quality content that works for your business, rather than the actual number of pages. A website should be customer focussed and be able to ‘convert’ visitors into becoming future customers. This is a subject in its own right and will be the subject of a future article. However, as a general guideline, we recommend the pages shown below as a minimum for a business website.
It can be tough for new businesses in the early stages when finances can be very tight. In these circumstances, we often recommend beginning with a 3-page website (homepage, services, contact us) and then growing the website as the business expands.
Homepage
The core of any web site and the normal entry point for the majority of your visitors. Your homepage should be very clear on who you are and what you do but also it should identify who the website is for and what you want a visitor to do (call to action). It should highlight the website content and make it easy for any visitor to find the information they want.
About Us
This provides an opportunity to highlight your passion about what you do. The web is very impersonal so making your site warm, friendly and interesting is important. Including pictures of the people behind the business certainly helps and it helps to shows it’s a real business.
Our Services
This is an important page to define what you offer and how this will benefit the customer. There could be several pages to cover this and also sub pages to cover the information in more detail.
Testimonials
Key page to really sell yourself through others comments. This is your social proof of how good you are and it is very common for people to study reviews before making a purchasing decision. With a new business, this could be a future page.
FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions)
This can be helpful as it saves you time having to keep answering the same things and it can be a useful resource for your visitors. It can be used to inform visitors about your services or products, help to build trust and encourage them to want to find out more.
Blog
This is a very good way to keep the website current and by regularly updaying it with quality content it will satisfy the need of both visitors and the search engines. The key is to have useful and interesting content. The idea is to give away sufficient information such that you become a useful reference and one that people trust. A good starting point would be to think about the questions customers ask about your services or products and decide whether this could be turned into an article where you simultaneously answer the question, educate the visitor, and build trust.
Contact Us
It is important to show that there is a way by which you can be contacted. The more information you have here on how you can be contacted the better. A site without a contact us page or very limited information is likely to be treated with suspicion. If a visitor is not happy with what they see, they will very quickly leave your site.
Please get in touch if you would like a free consultation to discover what works best for your business.
