What should a service business website have? The checklist

How a customer reads your site

Think about who is looking. Someone has a problem: a leak, a dirty house, hair that needs cutting before Saturday. They search on their phone, open two or three sites, and give each one a few seconds. They are asking the same questions every time, in roughly the same order.

1. Do you do the thing I need?
2. Do you work where I live?
3. Can I trust you?
4. What will it cost?
5. How do I get you?

A good service business website answers those five without making anyone hunt. The checklist below is simply those answers, written out.

The checklist

1. A headline that says what you do and where

"Emergency plumber in Leeds" beats "Welcome to our website" every time. Name the trade and the town in the biggest words on the page. It tells the visitor they are in the right place, and it tells Google the same thing.

2. A call button that dials

Put your phone number in the header, where it stays in view, and make it a button that starts a call on a phone. Somebody with water coming through the ceiling is not going to fill in a form.

3. Your services, one line each

List what you do in the words customers use. "Blocked drains", not "drainage solutions". One clear line for each service is enough: what it is, and who it is for.

4. A price, or a "from" price

People want to know roughly what they are in for before they call. A "from" price, a range, or an instant quote calculator answers the question and saves you calls from people who were never going to pay your rates.

5. A booking form or quote request on the page

A phone number alone loses everyone who is browsing at 10 pm. Let people book a time or ask for a quote right on the page, and you wake up to enquiries.

6. Real photos

Your work, your van, your team, your shop. Real photos, even slightly imperfect ones from a phone, tell people there is an actual business behind the page. Stock photos of smiling models tell them nothing.

7. Reviews from real customers

A few reviews with names, or a link to your Google reviews. Never invent them: fake reviews break the FTC's rules, and customers can usually tell.

8. Licences, insurance and guarantees

If you are licensed and insured, say so plainly, with the licence number if your trade has one. If you guarantee your work, say for how long. Only state what is true; customers will hold you to it.

9. Your service area

Name the towns, neighbourhoods or postcodes you cover. It stops calls from two counties away, and it helps you show up when someone searches for your trade in those places.

10. Opening hours

Say when you answer the phone and when you work. If you take emergency call-outs at night or at weekends, put that near the top, because it is often the reason someone picks you.

11. An about section

Two or three sentences: who you are, how long you have been doing this, and what you care about. People hire people. A name and a face do more than a paragraph about "our mission".

12. Answers to common questions

Write down what customers ask you on the phone, then answer each one on the page: prices, how soon you can come, how they pay, whether you clear up afterwards. It saves you time, and search engines and AI assistants often quote these answers.

The checklist at a glance

A first screen, written out

Here is how the first screen of a made-up electrician might read. Everything a customer needs in order to decide is there before they scroll.

It is not clever, and that is the point. A customer who lands here knows what the business does, where, how to book and why to trust it, in about five seconds. Write your own with your real details, and state only what is true.

What to leave out

What you remove matters as much as what you add. These are the things that most often get in a customer's way.

• Stock photos of people in suits shaking hands. Nobody believes them.
• A slider that swaps your main message every few seconds.
• Pop-ups before the visitor has read anything.
• A contact form with ten required fields. Name, phone and the job are enough.
• Walls of text about your company history.
• Music or video that plays by itself.
• Promises you cannot keep, such as "24/7" if you do not answer at 3 am.

How many pages do you need?

Fewer than you think. One strong home page with everything on the checklist is enough to start, and it is easier for a customer on a phone than a menu of six pages.

More pages earn their place later, when you want to rank separately for each service ("boiler repair") or each town you cover. Add them when the first page is already bringing in work, not before.

Red flags that put customers off

• No phone number, or one that is hard to find.
• No address or service area anywhere on the site.
• A copyright date from years ago in the footer.
• Text that is too small to read on a phone.
• A page that takes a long time to load.
• Reviews with no names that all sound the same.
• A browser warning that the site is "not secure", which means it has no SSL certificate.

For Google and AI assistants

The same things that help a customer help a search engine. Name your trade and town in your page title and first heading. List your address and phone the same way everywhere, on your site and on your Google Business Profile. Answer the questions customers ask in plain sentences.

AI assistants such as ChatGPT quote pages that state facts clearly. "We are a licensed electrician in Austin, Texas" is something an assistant can repeat. "Powering your tomorrow" is not. There is more on this in how to show up in ChatGPT.

The basics people skip

• A privacy notice saying what your forms collect and what you do with it.
• Descriptions on your photos, so screen readers and search engines know what they show.
• Text large and dark enough to read outdoors on a phone.
• A secure connection. The padlock in the browser should be there on every page.
• Your real business name and contact details in the footer.
• The same name, address and phone as on your Google Business Profile.

None of these wins a customer by itself. Each one missing gives a careful customer a reason to hesitate.

Keep it current

A website is not finished on the day it goes live. Put a reminder in your calendar once a month and check four things: are the hours right, are the prices right, is there a newer photo you could add, and has a customer said something kind you could ask to quote. Ten minutes a month keeps the site looking like a business that is open.

A five-minute test

Open your site on your phone and hand it to a friend who does not know your business. Ask them to tell you, within ten seconds, what you do, where, and how to book you. If they cannot, the page needs work. If they can, you are ahead of most of your competitors.