What should a small business website include? About a dozen things, and most of them fit on a single long page: your name and what you do in the first screen, phone, WhatsApp and directions buttons that work with one tap, your hours including bank holidays, prices or “from” prices, photos of your own work, a short page for each service, a few real reviews, a line about who owns the place, a way to book or enquire, your Eircode with a map, and a privacy page. Behind the scenes it needs structured data for Google and AI search, and it needs to load quickly on a phone on mobile data. Everything else is decoration.
The list below is the one we check every site against before it goes live. Each item is there for a reason a customer would recognise.
The first screen has to answer three questions
Someone lands on your site from Google, usually on a phone and in a hurry. Before they scroll, they need to know what you do, where you are, and how to get hold of you. A plumber’s first screen should say plumber, the area covered, and a number to ring.
Most sites fail this test with a big photo and a slogan. “Quality you can trust” tells nobody anything. “Electrician, Dublin 15, same-day call-outs” tells them everything.
The checklist, and why each item is on it
| Include | Why it matters | Where it usually goes wrong |
|---|---|---|
| Name and trade in the first screen | People decide in seconds whether they are in the right place | A slogan where the trade should be |
| Call, WhatsApp and directions buttons | On a phone, a button is one tap; a typed number is a copy and paste | Phone number as an image, or buried in the footer |
| Hours, including bank holidays | “Are they open now?” is what most people want to know first | Hours on Google that disagree with the site |
| Prices or “from” prices | People who cannot find a price assume it is high | “Contact us for a quote” on everything |
| Photos of real work | Proof you exist and do what you say | Stock photos of models in a salon you do not own |
| A page per service | Google matches pages to searches, not whole sites | One “Services” page listing everything in a paragraph |
| Reviews | The reassurance a stranger needs before ringing | Reviews that are three years old, or none at all |
| About the owner | People buy from people, especially trades coming into the home | An “About us” page with no name and no face |
| Questions and answers | Answers what people type into Google and ask ChatGPT | None, or a list of made-up marketing questions |
| Booking or enquiry | The reason the site exists | A form that goes to an inbox nobody checks |
| Privacy page | Required under GDPR once you collect a name or an email | Copied from a UK template with the wrong regulator |
| Eircode and map | Directions that actually arrive, especially outside towns | An address with no Eircode and a map pin in the wrong place |
| Structured data | Tells Google and AI tools your hours, address and services in a form they can read | Missing, or wrong, which is worse |
| Fast on a phone | Slow pages lose people on 4G before they see anything | Full-size photos straight off the camera |
Hours, and the Irish bank holidays
Opening hours are probably the most looked-up fact about any local business, and in our experience the most often wrong. Put them on the site and on your Google Business Profile, and make them agree. Then deal with the days that catch everyone out: St Brigid’s Day in February, St Patrick’s Day, Easter Monday, the May, June, August and October bank holidays, Christmas and St Stephen’s Day. If you close for a fortnight in August, say so on the site a month ahead, not on a sign in the window.
The fix is a way to change hours yourself from your phone. If it means emailing someone, it will not get done.
Prices, photos and the page per service
A price list is a filter that works in your favour: people who are happy with your prices ring you, and people who are not go elsewhere without wasting your time. Trades who cannot give a fixed price can give a call-out charge and a “from” figure for the common jobs. Salons should list the whole menu, and cafes should put theirs on the page as text rather than a PDF.
Photos of your own work, taken on a phone in daylight, beat anything from a stock library. A before and after of a real bathroom, the shop front, the team at the counter, the plate as it actually arrives.
One page per service matters because of how search works. Someone types “boiler service Tallaght” or “balayage Ranelagh”, and Google looks for a page about that thing in that place. A single page that lists fourteen services in one paragraph competes with nobody for anything.
Reviews, the owner, and a way to get in touch
Real Google reviews, shown on the site and kept fresh, do more for a stranger’s confidence than any paragraph you could write. If you have few, the fix is a direct review link sent after each visit, which we cover in how to get more Google reviews. Never buy or write reviews; it is against Google’s rules and, as we understand it, against Irish consumer law since 2022.
The about section needs your name and your face. For a trade going into someone’s home, or a therapist someone is about to trust, this is the page that decides it.
Then, a way to act. For a trade, that is an enquiry form that lands in your email and your WhatsApp. For an appointment business, it is a booking button, and we have written up the choices in how to take online bookings.
The legal and location bits
Once your site has a contact form, it collects personal data, and you need a privacy notice. The Irish regulator is the Data Protection Commission, and the notice can be short and plain. You only need a cookie banner if you set cookies that are not essential, which a simple site need not do. The details are in GDPR and cookies for small business websites in Ireland.
If you trade as a limited company, as we understand it the Companies Act requires the company name, registered number, place of registration and registered office address to appear on the website. Most people put them in the footer.
Put your Eircode on the contact page and in the footer, beside the address. Google Maps understands it, and anywhere outside a town it is the difference between a customer arriving and a customer ringing you from the wrong boreen. Embed a map and check the pin from a different phone.
The bits nobody sees
Structured data is a block of code that tells Google and the AI search tools, in a form they can read without guessing, that you are a local business at this address with these hours, this phone number and these services. It is also what lets a question and answer page be understood as questions and answers. A short llms.txt file does a similar job for AI assistants. We explain the approach on the AI search services page.
Speed is the other invisible item. Test the site on your own phone, on mobile data, outside the shop rather than on the Wi-Fi. If the first screen takes more than a couple of seconds, the usual culprit is photos uploaded at full size.
What to leave out
- Sliders. Nobody waits for slide three, and the one thing that mattered ends up on slide three.
- Stock photos. The handshake, the smiling headset woman, the salon that is not yours.
- Music or autoplaying video. Closes the tab in any quiet office.
- Pop-ups. A newsletter box before anyone has read a word, covering the whole screen on a phone.
- “Welcome to our website.” They know. Start with what you do.
- A “coming soon” page. Worse than nothing, because it gets found.
- PDF menus and price lists. Unreadable on a phone and invisible to search.
What we do for clients
The checklist above is built into the templates we start from, so a client does not have to remember it. We need about ten minutes of their time, their hours, their prices and whatever photos they have, and the first screen, the buttons, the service pages, the Eircode and map, the privacy page and the structured data are in place before the site goes live. Most sites are live within a few days of the first chat.
Every client gets a private page, opened from a link in an email with no password to lose, where they change hours, prices, photos and announcements themselves. That is how the bank holiday problem gets solved: they change it from the sofa the night before.
All of this is in Essentials at €499 to set up and €50 a month. Bookings, payments, review requests after each visit and a chat assistant come with Complete. The full comparison is on the pricing page.