The small business website checklist: what a Denver site actually needs

Short answer: A small business website needs a headline that says what you do and where, a tap-to-call phone number at the top of every page, one page per service, fast loading on phones, proof such as reviews and real photos, a short contact form, a name, address and phone that match your Google Business Profile, basic structured data, and tracking for calls and forms.

I've looked at a lot of small business websites. The ones that bring in work rarely have anything clever on them. They just get the basics right, all of them, and the basics turn out to be rarer than you'd think.

Open your own site on your phone, then work through the list. Tick what's true today, not what you mean to fix.

The checklist

Nothing here is saved anywhere but this page, so print it if you want a copy.

Get chosen: the first eight

The first group is about the moment someone lands on the page. They're comparing you with two or three other tabs, usually on a phone, usually in a hurry. The questions in their head are simple: do they do what I need, do they work where I am, can I trust them, and how do I reach them?

A headline like "Welcome to our website" answers none of those. "Water heater repair in Denver, same-day appointments" answers three. Put the phone number where a thumb can find it without scrolling, and keep the form short. Every extra field is a reason to give up.

Published prices scare a lot of owners. They shouldn't. A price range filters out people who were never going to buy and reassures the ones who were. We publish ours on our web design pricing page for exactly that reason.

Get found: the search basics

Google needs to understand who you are, what you offer and where. The single most common problem I see on local sites is a mismatch: a different phone number on the website than on the Google Business Profile, or a service listed on one and missing from the other. Each mismatch makes Google a little less sure.

One page per service matters for the same reason. A single "Services" page with a bulleted list can't rank for six different things. Six focused pages can. If you want to go further, our page on SEO web design covers how we build search into the structure from day one.

Stay fast: the phone test

Most local searches happen on phones, often on a weak signal. A page that takes eight seconds to appear loses people before they see your headline. The fixes are usually unglamorous: smaller images, fewer plugins, no autoplaying sliders. Our guide to responsive web design has a 60-second test you can run right now.

Stay measurable: the part everyone skips

If you can't see which pages lead to calls, every decision about your website is a guess. Call tracking and form tracking are cheap to set up and they change the conversation from "I think the site is working" to "the water heater page brought in eleven calls last month."

And check your forms. Submit one yourself every month. Forms break quietly, and the business owner is usually the last to know.

What you can safely skip

• Homepage sliders. Most visitors never see slide two.
• A chat widget nobody answers. An unanswered chat is worse than no chat.
• A blog you won't keep up. Three useful articles beat thirty thin ones.
• Stock photos of handshakes. Real, slightly imperfect photos build more trust.

If your score was low

Under about fifteen usually means the site is costing you work. Sometimes a few targeted fixes are enough; sometimes the structure underneath makes every fix expensive, and a rebuild is cheaper. Our small business web design page explains how we approach both, and there's no minimum project size.