What a small business website needs
A small business website needs to say what you do, where you do it, what it costs or how pricing works, what happens when someone gets in touch, and proof that other people were glad they did. Everything else is optional. Most sites that underperform are missing two or three of those five while doing something ambitious with animation.
Say what you do, in the words customers use
Businesses describe themselves in the language of their trade and customers search in the language of their problem. The gap between those two vocabularies is where a lot of otherwise good sites lose people. Write the first line the way a customer would explain your business to a friend.
Answer the money question
Pricing is the question every visitor has and many sites refuse to acknowledge. You do not have to publish a price list; you do have to explain how pricing works — what it depends on, a realistic range, what is included. A site that ducks it entirely selects for the customers who are least price-sensitive and loses everyone else silently.
Make the next step obvious and single
One clear action, repeated, beats four competing ones. A visitor who has to choose between ringing, emailing, booking and downloading something usually does none of them. Decide what you want them to do and make everything else secondary.
Prove it with something specific
Generic testimonials read as decoration. A short account of a real job — what the problem was, what you did, how it turned out — does more than a page of five-star quotes, because it lets the reader recognise their own situation in it.
Common questions
Do I need a blog?
Only if you will keep it up. A page dated three years ago suggests a business that may not still exist, which costs more than the page ever earned.
How many pages should it be?
As few as answer the questions well. Five good pages beat twenty thin ones, and thin pages actively dilute the ones that are good.
Does the design matter?
It matters as credibility, not as decoration. It has to look like a real business that is still trading; beyond that, clarity outperforms polish.