Website design for small business: what actually matters

It should say what you do, for whom, and where, in the first screen. A visitor who has to scroll or guess leaves. Most small business sites open with a slogan, a stock photo and a menu, and none of those answer the question the visitor arrived with.

Compare two openings for the same Auckland business:

• Weak: "Quality you can trust. Service you deserve."
• Strong: "Heat pump installs for Auckland homes. Free quote in 24 hours."

The second names the service, the place and the next step. Anyone can check it is true, and nobody has to decode it. Write this line before you brief a designer. If you cannot write it, the site will not fix that for you.

Because a page that asks for five things gets none of them. Pick the one action that makes you money, usually a phone call, a quote request or a booking, and make it the most obvious thing on every page.

That means one button style, repeated, with the same wording. It also means a phone number a mobile visitor can tap. Menus, social icons and "learn more" links all compete with it, so keep them quiet.

We cover how well a page converts in our guide to what a good conversion rate is. The short version: measure enquiries per visit, not visits.

Yes, and it is the cheapest win. In the accounts we run, most visitors to a local service site arrive on a phone, often from an ad or a Google search, and they will not wait for a slow page. Google publishes its own targets for loading speed, called Core Web Vitals, and you can test any page free with PageSpeed Insights.

Design for the phone first. Large text, big buttons, short forms, and photos compressed before upload. Check the site on your own phone, on mobile data, before you approve it. If it feels slow to you, it is slow to them.

Speed is mostly a weight problem. Oversized photos, auto-playing video and stacked plugins are the usual causes, and all three are choices, not requirements. Ask your designer what each element on the page costs in load time, and cut the ones that do not help someone enquire.

Real reviews, real jobs and real people. A small business has a trust problem that a big brand does not: the visitor has never heard of you. Proof closes that gap faster than any design choice.

• Reviews, word for word, with the reviewer's name and where they were posted.
• Photos of your own work, not stock. A phone photo of a finished job beats a polished image of a stranger.
• Your face and your name. A small business is a person. Say so.
• Results you can back up. If you quote a number, say where it came from.

Never invent proof. A thin but honest page beats a padded one. For how we handle this on our own pages, see the results section.

Fewer than you think. For most local businesses the list is a home page, one page for each main service, an about page and a contact page. Each page answers one question a customer asks before they call.

A service page should name the job, the area you cover, what the customer gets and what happens after they enquire. Put the price range or the way you quote near the top if you can, because a visitor who is worried about cost leaves without asking. Then add two or three real reviews and the main action again at the bottom.

Write these pages in the words your customers use, not the words your trade uses. If customers say "heat pump install", do not write "HVAC system commissioning". Plain wording also helps Google match the page to what people type. Ranking takes time either way, so if you need enquiries now, pair the site with ads while it builds.

Who writes the words matters more than who picks the fonts. A designer who asks about your best jobs and your worst customers will write a better page than one who asks for a logo file. Expect to be interviewed, and expect to approve the wording, because you are the only one who knows what a good job looks like.

Several things owners spend on first are the ones that matter least.

• Animated intros, sliders and parallax. They slow the page and hide the offer.
• A big page count. Five pages that each answer one question beat twenty that repeat each other.
• A custom logo refresh before launch. Use what you have and fix the site first.
• A blog you will not write. An abandoned blog tells visitors the business is too.

A website builder is fine if you only need a simple brochure site. We set out where that line sits in website builder or web designer, and what the work costs in what a website costs in NZ.

Ask to click through a working version early, not a picture of one. A mockup tells you about colours. A live page on a link tells you about speed, wording and whether the button is where a thumb expects it.

Then run three checks:

1. The five-second test. Show the first screen to someone outside your business for five seconds. Ask what you do and what you would click. If they cannot say, rewrite it.
2. The phone test. Can you make the main action happen with one thumb?
3. The ownership test. Is the domain registered in your name, and do you hold the logins?

If you already run ads to the site, a second opinion on the page and the account is free with our ads audit.