What should a local business website include?

Because it’s often the next place customers go after reading your reviews. 97% of consumers read reviews for local businesses, and 54% check the business’s website after reading positive reviews, up from 32% in 2019 (BrightLocal, Local Consumer Review Survey 2026 (opens in a new tab)).

People also trust a business’s own site. It was the third most trusted place to research a local business (36%), after Google (66%) and Google Maps (45%) (BrightLocal, Local Business Discovery & Trust Report 2023 (opens in a new tab)).

Many businesses still don’t have one. Only 40% of the 778 US small and medium businesses BrightLocal surveyed said they have a dedicated website (BrightLocal, SMB Marketing Report 2025 (opens in a new tab)).

The first screen is the part of the page a visitor sees before scrolling. On a phone it’s small, so keep it to four things:

• What you do, in plain words. “Roof repair and replacement”, not “Quality solutions for your home”.
• Where you work. Your town or service area, so visitors know you cover them.
• One clear next step. A call button on phones, plus one other way to get in touch, such as a message or an email.
• One reason to trust you. A line from a real review, or your rating as it appears on your Google listing.

Leave out generic welcome text. A line like “Welcome to our website. We are a family business offering quality service at fair prices” tells a visitor nothing they can check.

Use your real reviews, word for word, and say where they come from. Your best review often makes a stronger headline than anything you could write about yourself, because it’s a customer describing the result in their own words. Don’t edit reviews to sound better, and never write your own.

Use real photos of your work, your team and your premises instead of stock images. A stock photo of a smiling stranger tells a visitor nothing about your business. A photo of a finished job shows them what they’ll get.

Put your phone number, your service area or address, your hours and a way to send a message where they’re easy to find, ideally in the header or footer of every page. 85% of consumers consider contact information and opening hours an important factor when researching local businesses (BrightLocal, Consumer Search Behavior 2025 (opens in a new tab)).

Keep these details identical to your Google Business Profile and your other listings. 62% of consumers would avoid using a business if they found incorrect information online (BrightLocal, 2023 (opens in a new tab)). When your hours or phone number change, update the website and every listing on the same day.

Fast enough that someone on a phone isn’t left waiting. 53% of visits are abandoned if a mobile site takes more than three seconds to load, according to Google data from 2016 (opens in a new tab). You can test any page for free in PageSpeed Insights (opens in a new tab). Our guide How fast should a small business website load? explains what the results mean and what usually slows a small site down.

There’s no fixed number. A single, well-built page can be enough for a business with one main service. Add pages once you have enough to say to fill them:

• Home: the four first-screen essentials, your reviews, a short list of your services and your contact details.
• One page per main service: what it includes, who it’s for and the questions customers ask about it.
• About: who runs the business and how you work.
• Contact: every way to reach you, your hours and your service area. On a one-page site this can be a section.
• Privacy policy: what you collect through forms or tools, and what you do with it.

A short FAQ helps too. Answer the questions you hear on the phone every week, such as how pricing works, which areas you cover and how soon you can start.

• Rotating image sliders. Anything after the first slide is easy to miss, so put your main message in one fixed spot.
• Stock photos, and paragraphs that could describe any business.
• Pop-ups that cover the page before the visitor has read anything.
• Autoplay video and large animations that slow the page down on a phone.