The five jobs your website has to do

Most people land on a small business website with one question: can this business help me? Everything on the page either answers it or gets in the way. Here are the five jobs your website has to do, in the order your visitor needs them.

1. Say what you do, and where, straight away

The first screen should tell a stranger three things: what you do, who it’s for and where you work. “Emergency plumber in Glasgow, out within the hour” does more than “Welcome to our website”.

If someone has to scroll or guess, plenty won’t bother. Put the plain version at the top, and save the story for further down.

2. Look like a business people can trust

Visitors judge quickly, and they judge on small things: photos that look like they came from a stock library, a copyright year that’s five years out of date, a page that jumps about as it loads. None of these say anything about your work, but they all make people wonder.

Real photos of you, your team and your work beat polished stock images. A clean layout, readable text and a site that loads quickly on a phone do the rest.

3. Show proof, not promises

Anyone can say they’re reliable. Your website should show it:

• Reviews from real customers, with their names where they’re happy to give them
• Examples of your work, with a line on what each customer needed
• The accreditations and memberships that matter in your trade
• How long you’ve been doing this, if it’s a while

Put the proof close to where someone decides, not on a page of its own that nobody visits.

4. Make the next step obvious

Every page should end with one clear thing to do: call, book or ask for a quote. On a phone, that means a number people can tap and a form that doesn’t ask for their life story.

Ask only for what you need to reply. Every extra field is one more reason to give up halfway.

5. Be easy to find

None of this matters if nobody sees it. The basics aren’t complicated:

• A page for each service you offer, in the words customers use when they search
• Your town or area named clearly, and a page for each place if you cover several
• A complete Google Business Profile that links to your site
• A site that loads quickly, because search engines notice slow ones too

AI search tools, such as ChatGPT and Google’s AI answers, lean on the same foundations: clear pages, plain facts and a business that’s easy to check.

Where to start

Open your website on your phone and read the first screen as if you’d never heard of your business. If it doesn’t answer what, who and where in a few seconds, start there. It’s usually the quickest win.

If you’d rather hand all five jobs to someone else, that’s what we do. See how it works.