Quick answer
A small business website should include at least five pages: Home, Services (or one page per main service), About, Contact and a privacy policy, plus clear calls to action, a phone number on every page, proof such as reviews or project photos, and fast mobile performance. Most small businesses start with 5–10 pages.
Essential pages
| Page | Purpose | Must include |
|---|---|---|
| Home | Say what you do, for whom, where | Clear headline, main services, call to action, proof |
| Services | Explain each offer | One section or page per main service, pricing approach, next step |
| About | Build trust | History, team or founder story, credentials, service area |
| Contact | Make contact easy | Phone, form, address or service area, hours, map |
| Privacy policy | Explain data use | Forms, cookies, analytics |
| FAQ (recommended) | Answer common questions | Real questions from customers |
| Reviews or projects (recommended) | Show proof | Real photos, real client feedback with permission |
How many pages do you need?
Most small businesses start with 5–10 pages. Add a separate page for each main service and, if you serve several towns, for key locations, but only when each page has something useful and unique to say. Published guides describe basic sites as 5–10 pages and mid-range sites as 10–30 pages (Clique Studios).
On every page
- Phone number and a visible call to action.
- Clear navigation with no more than a handful of top-level items.
- Business name, service area and contact details in the footer.
- Fast loading on phones.
- Readable text and sufficient color contrast.
Visitors often land on an inner page from search, not on the home page. Each page should make sense on its own and show the next step without scrolling back to the top. A clear service area helps too: say which towns or neighborhoods you serve, in plain text, not only on a map image.
Technical must-haves
- Unique title and description for each page.
- Structured data for your business (LocalBusiness or Organization).
- XML sitemap and a clean robots.txt.
- HTTPS and working forms that deliver to a monitored inbox.
- Analytics that respect privacy.
- An llms.txt file that summarizes the business for AI tools.
Content to prepare before your project
- Your logo in a high-quality format.
- A short description of each service: what it is, who it is for, what happens next.
- Real photos of your team, work or location.
- Customer reviews you have permission to use.
- Service area, hours, phone, email and address.
- Licenses, certifications or memberships worth mentioning.
- Answers to the questions customers ask most often.
Having this ready is one of the easiest ways to shorten the timeline and lower the cost of a new site.
What Media Express includes
Media Express builds small business sites around these pages, with structured data, fast mobile layouts and editable content through Szef Editor.
Media Express (Website Design Chicago) offers starter business websites from $500 under the current offer. Domain, hosting and maintenance are separate, and larger projects are quoted by scope. A starter site is not the same product as the $2,500–$8,000 site many published guides describe: it has a smaller scope, uses a proven layout and is built for a fast launch. It is a good fit when you need a credible site now and plan to grow it later.
Related
Questions and answers
What should a small business website include?
Home, Services, About, Contact and a privacy policy, plus calls to action, a phone number on every page, proof such as reviews, and fast mobile performance.
How many pages should a small business website have?
Most start with 5–10 pages. Add service and location pages when each has useful, unique content.
Does a small business website need a blog?
Not necessarily. Useful FAQ and service pages often do more than an irregular blog. A blog helps when you can publish helpful content consistently.
What makes a small business website trustworthy?
Real photos, clear contact details, genuine reviews, credentials, years in business, and a fast, secure site with no broken pages.
Do I need a privacy policy on my website?
If your site has forms, analytics or cookies, a privacy policy is expected and may be legally required. Ask an attorney about your specific obligations.
Learn how our Chicago website design process works from first call to launch.
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Popular pages
Our own audience
We don’t buy traffic. We create it.
Most agencies build a website and leave you to find visitors. Media Express owns the audience. Polish Network is the largest Polish-American network of owned media in the USA: 120+ of our own websites and portals, social media channels and news portals.
We also run the world’s largest aggregator of Polish radio stations, with 300+ stations from Poland, the United States and the diaspora in one place. We are building the American edition now, and next an edition for every country.
And we run your business on Szef.AI, our own AI operating system and CRM that works with everything, everywhere. New and better AI models appear every day, and Szef.AI is already connected to them. It is a solution nobody can match.
More than 8 million Americans report Polish ancestry (U.S. Census Bureau). Through our network, millions of people can become your customers. A typical web design agency cannot offer you this.
Ready to talk about your website?
31+ years of continuous web work, same-day website design that grows from a business card site to a portal for millions of views, a media network of our own, Szef.AI, our AI operating system connected to every new model, and direct access to the people who build your site. Tell us what you have in mind; you will get a clear recommendation, scope and price before any work begins.