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My business is simple; how can I fill 5 pages?

Sometimes it can seem like over-complicating things to have lots of different pages on a simple website, but actually – they're likely to be needed. Here's what we think all websites should have on them.

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Hello everyone! Zarte here! Nope, no vaccine to eliminate me yet.

When people come to us, looking to have us quote for, or design their website, they're often surprised by the fact that we think that all websites should have a minimum of five pages. So as a result of the frequency of people saying “But my business is so simple, how on earth would I fill 5 pages?!”, I thought I'd write this article to answer it for people in the future.

Because the thing is, however simple your business model, almost everyone needs that much space to combine two things. Firstly, good aesthetics. Yes – you could slam everything about your business onto one page, however it would look a mess. And we're not in the dark ages of the Internet any more, people expect websites to look good, function well, and load quickly. Secondly, the simplicity of your business model doesn't necessarily correlate with the simplicity of explaining it to someone who doesn't have a clue about your field of work. I may understand that with a plumber, you call the plumber up, the plumber comes out, the plumber fixes the issue, you pay the plumber. But sometimes I may want to know a bit more than that when I'm taking my time to try to work out which plumber is best for a particular job.

Still not convinced? Well here are my suggestions for pages almost every business should have.

  1. Homepage - Everyone know what a homepage is, but here's our take on what it SHOULD be. A homepage should summarise the rest of the website, and leave a user in no doubt what the website is about, and its purpose just by a cursory glance. Too much text will leave people searching for information, and so a headline, a couple of brief sentences, a picture or two, and navigational tools should suffice. Don't be tempted to have just this page and throw everything at it, I really can't emphasise this enough.
  2. About Us – Whether it's relevant or not to the service that you can offer, customers often want to feel invested in the story, or the ethos of a business. Laying out where you've come from, where you're hoping to go, why you do what you do, and how you hope to do it, are all things that in the right combination can take your website from being just another company to being something that your potential consumer feels they have a grasp of and want to put their money into.
  3. Services – Break down the services you offer into their component parts. Yes you might, say “paint walls” – but there are different techniques and potential preparations and requirements for a wall painting job. Go into what you can do, if appropriate how you'll do it as well, and give customers the best guide price that you can. Allowing them to make as an informed a decision as possible can only work in your favour.
  4. Previous Work – If suitable, pictures always help to give a customer piece of mind. If you design a product, or offer a tangible service that can be demonstrated, then showing yourself doing the work, and the end result shows that you know what you're doing.
  5. Contact Page – A contact page is absolutely essential, and should have every possible way of contacting you in as small a space as possible. Your phone number, e-mail address, potentially even a contact box that will send an automatic notification to you or one of your staff could also be added, but whatever you choose, it's vital that customers are able to get hold of you quickly and without having to search around for the details.

So there you have it, 5 pages straight off the bat that a lot of websites need. And OK, perhaps you don't have a use for one of them, but this is just a demonstration of how easy it is to break down content into manageable pieces to ensure that you don't become another website that's overloading its front page with too much content.

As always, if you have any questions, queries, or even if you want to discuss getting your website sorted out, you can call us, or drop us an email.

Until next time,

Zarte