12 Things Every Business Website Needs (Yes, Even Yours)

If you’ve got a website (or you’re trying to build one without burning it all down), this episode is for you. I’m breaking down the 12 must-haves every small business website should include—plus some bonus best practices to help you get more conversions and create a better experience for your people.

I’ve been building websites since the days of Yahoo Site Builder (hello, 90s soap opera fangirl life 👋), so yeah—I’ve seen it all. Whether you’re DIY-ing or working with a designer, here’s what I want you to know:

✨ The goal of your site? To be clear, welcoming, human, and effective.

💻 The reality? A lot of sites are missing the basics.

In this episode, I cover:

• The two pages every website needs
• What you absolutely should include on your About page (and the mistake I’ve seen more than once!)
• Where to put your face and your name (yep, we’re getting personal)
• The role of your email list—and why you still need one even if you’re not sending anything yet
• How to serve both the scrollers and the clickers on your homepage
• The #1 thing that builds trust with new visitors (hint: it's not your pricing)

Plus, I’m dishing out website best practices for accessibility, SEO, mobile responsiveness, and site speed—because a beautiful site that no one can find or navigate is not the vibe.

You don’t have to do it all at once. But each tweak you make moves your site from “meh” to magical. Let’s get into it.

Learn more about BizMagic or the BizMagic Podcast.

Transcript

Welcome back to another episode of the Biz Magic Podcast, your place for all things tech in your online business with solid. So General Biz Chat two. My name is Patty Meyer and I am the CEO and founder of Biz Magic, where my team and I support entrepreneurs who are overwhelmed by the backend tech of their business.

We create, implement, and teach the tweaks that help our clients make a bigger impact with less stress. Today we are diving into something I love so much, and that's website stuffs. So if you don't know by now, I design websites at Biz Magic and it's something that I really love. I started building websites back in the nineties when there was like Yahoo website builder.

And I would build these really cheesy fan girly kind of sites. I was really into a soap opera, called All My Children. My mom watched soap operas growing up, and I got into all my children and it was like a whole thing. And I would build little fan girl websites about all my children. I think I did like all, all my children recap things and then like.

Soap stars, I would do pages for them. So I've loved doing website stuff forever. So of course, naturally over time, it made sense that I eventually went into building websites myself. Now I understand that not everybody can afford. To have somebody else build their website for them, or they may not want to.

They may like doing that stuff themselves. The same as I did. I'm all self-taught as well, and you might be also. And so this episode is for you, or if you have had somebody in the past who built your website and you wanna get J it up a little bit, that's exactly what I'm here for today. So we're actually going to talk about the must-haves that.

Every website should have, and I am shoulding a bit here. But should have to be really successful and ideally get more conversion and more than anything, create a really solid experience for your clients and customers and visitors. Now, I'm just giving you a lot of information today because there's a lot of stuff that goes into building a website, and so there's a lot of things to take into consideration.

I'm gonna spend more time talking about the what's with just a little touch of the why for each what, right? Okay. So let's dive in. So number one. In the 12 must-haves in your website, a contact page and an about page, people need to know how to reach you and why they should care. Your contact page should make it really easy for people to get in touch with you, and I highly recommend using a contact form.

Ideally, if it has a spam filter on it as well, like a recapture, because if you put your email address. On the website, it's easier for people to grab your email address and add it to lists and spam you, and it's a little harder for them to fill out the form to get it into your email. So I would recommend on your about page making a form that's nice and clean and easy.

The about page is your time to have people really. Connect to you and learn about you and who you serve and what lights you up and why you're doing the work that you're doing. Number two, your why. This is the heartbeat of your business, right? When somebody lands on your site, they should be able to really get a feel for.

Why you do what you do. And I'm not talking about just a, I love helping people kind of statement. Like really dig in. What's your story? Why do you do the work that you're doing and why are you doing this work now? Really talk about yourself. And number three, put pictures of your beautiful smiling face on your website.

If you can only handle putting it on your about page, that's fine, but especially if you are a B2C business to customer or client. But even if you're B2B, um, humans wanna connect with humans and most people who are in my audience are definitely more. Of human connectors. So they're going to have people choose them, choose to work with them because of who they are, because of their ability to connect with them.

And so. I, that is one of the first things I do when I go to websites is I look for a picture of the person because suddenly I'm now able to see their face and make up a voice for them, and it just gives me a feel for them. So I highly recommend putting at least one picture of you on your website, um, and put your name on your website somewhere if your, if your business name.

It isn't a part of your own name. Make sure you say who you are. I actually was working with a client at one time and we were doing a bunch of stuff on her website, and suddenly I realized, I'm like, wait, we don't have your name anywhere on your website. So that's also, it seems like a small thing, but I highly recommend you take a moment and make sure you have it.

Number four, your mission, vision, and core values. If this is something that matters to you, if it's not, that is okay. No judgment. But for me, this is super important. I really wanna work with people who are, are aligned with me, and so I. Um, I put my mission, vision, and core values on my website. They have their own page that you can find on the navigation menu, and this is really helpful for me because it attracts like-minded people and anybody who shows up that's not quite the right fit, they'll know right away and they'll be able to select self-select out.

So I think that. This is something that's important to you and it's important who you work with. I would highly recommend you put something about your mission, vision, and values. Number five, an email signup. Bonus points if this comes with a lead magnet, your email list. Is direct access to your potential clients, right?

We've talked about this before in other podcasts. I've talked about it on my social media in newsletters, directly connecting with your audience via email is the best way over social media or anything else. And so making sure that you have a place for them to sign up to hear from you. Even if you're not sending emails right now, there's thunder in the background, but I'm gonna keep going.

It's, you might hear rain too. I don't know what, what all is picking up, but I'm going for it. So even if you're not sending emails right away, I still recommend that. You put a place for them to sign up for an email list so that if at one point you send an email out, you have people who are interested in hearing from you, you have a warm audience waiting to hear from you when you're ready, or if you're already doing it, then you get people on your list, which is great, and again.

Better yet is if you can give people a reason to join by giving them a free resource, a checklist, a mini training, something like that, which is a lead magnet. If you wanna know more about a lead magnet, I do have a blog post on that, so you can find that. And, uh, it gives you a little bit more information about kind of best practices or what to create as far as a lead magnet goes.

Number six, testimonials or social proof. Don't be shy. Don't be afraid to share people's experiences with you. Don't be afraid to brag on yourself. Show the receipts and add real client quotes before and afters, screenshots, case studies, whatever makes sense for you and your business. This builds trust and it lets new visitors see that yes, you actually do what you say you do and people like working with you.

The other plus side to this is that. If you have a little bit of information about the person who left a testimonial for you, someone who's looking at your website might resonate with that person or that business who has worked with you in the past and feel a little more inclined to wanna work with you because they can see themselves a little bit in the people who have given you testimonials.

Number seven a Clear Services or Work with Me page. This is not the place to be vague. You wanna spell out what you offer, who it's for, what's included, how much it costs, even if it's a price start at and how to get started. When somebody's ready to hire you. You don't want to make them. Struggle to find out how to work with you.

You want it to be really clean and easy for them to say, cool, I'm ready. I've read enough. I've heard enough. I wanna, I want it. Right. So you wanna make it really easy for somebody to see exactly what you offer and how they can work with you. Which leads to number eight, which is clear calls to action on every page, which are buttons or links or anything like that that says, schedule a call now.

Purchase this product now. Buy this service, request a quote, whatever the case may be. Make it really clear and give multiple places on your pages throughout your website. That again, once they hit that moment where they're like, cool, I don't need to read anymore. I'm sold. Make sure there's a button right there so that it takes them to whatever you want the next step to be.

You wanna make sure the next step is clear and you wanna have that available throughout the website. Number nine, you homepage. You wanna make sure that it serves both scrollers and clickers? There are two types of people. I mean, there are lots of types of people, but there I find there are two types of people that go to websites.

One type of person lands on a homepage and they just start scrolling. They start looking at whatever you have on the homepage. Another person won't scroll at all and they'll immediately go to the navigation and start clicking around. You want to be able to serve. Both of those people. So you wanna make sure that your navigation menu is really clean and is able to take them wherever they wanna go and show them everything that you have to offer that is most important for them to see from that page.

That point you then wanna make sure that you are supporting the scrollers. So for people who are gonna start scrolling, make sure you talk a little bit about yourself on your homepage. Make sure you talk about your services a little bit on the homepage, or at least a link to them. Okay. Make sure you talk about any blog posts or anything else.

Just whatever it is that you want. Testimonials on the homepage are also really great. Anything that can grab somebody's attention, who's not clicking out right away, but they're actually gonna scroll is really helpful on that homepage. Number 10, your privacy policy and legal footer basics. It's not one of the most glamorous things on a website, but if you're collecting emails or using tracking tools, then you need one.

You also should throw in terms and conditions and copyright info in your footer. It shows a little bit of credibility, but it also makes people clear where they're at. Number 11, a custom 4 0 4 page. So. When somebody puts in the wrong URL to go to your website, or if somebody clicks a link that somehow got disabled in some way or is going to the wrong place, they land on a 4 0 4 page.

That's what they're called. When you go to a page that says, oops, nothing's here. Now, there is an opportunity there to actually say something customized like, oops, looks like you lost. Here are some of the places on my website that people tend to go. Check out one of these or show a funny video or image or something, but also reroute them back to where they might wanna go.

It's just an opportunity for another. Custom experience to happen than like a sad screen of doom, right? So custom 4 0 4 page is also really great. And then finally, number 12, a thank you page for signups or forms. When somebody fills out a form or joins your list, send them to a custom thank you page instead of just receiving a little piece of text that says, great, you're signed up.

It sets expectations. Check your email. We'll be in touch soon. Here's what to expect. You can deliver your lead magnet from there as well as in the email that they receive, and it suggests the next step if you have one of them, like following you on Instagram or checking out your blog. Okay, that's it.

That's all 12 of the must haves on your website. But I do wanna throw in a couple of other things, and that is website best practices. Number one, accessibility isn't optional. Make your website usable for everyone. This means high contrast text, no BEI on tan nonsense, alt text on all images. Describe what's actually there.

Keyboard friendly navigation, descriptive links. No more, just click here. Make it descriptive. Number two. SEO search engine optimization is how Google and other search engines figure out what your site is about. You don't need to be like an SEO expert in order to make a difference on your website. So here's some basics.

Use clear relevant page titles and meta descriptions. Add keyword, rich, alt text to your images. And structure content with headings, which leads me to number three. Use headings like H one, H two, et cetera. It's not just because it makes text bigger and stands out and you know it's not just for looks. So headings can help structure your content so people can skim through really easily and search engines can understand.

Stand it. And so you always wanna use them in order. So you always want heading one. I recommend only having one heading one on a page. And that's at the very top, usually. Right? And that's gonna be really descriptive about basically what is this page about? Then you'll have subheadings throughout the page.

So heading two will be kind of breaking it down into sections. And then within those sections you're gonna use heading three, which will give little headers four. Those sections within a section, right? So you wanna think about it in that perspective and structure. Number four, break up the text. Nobody wants to read a wall of copy.

Use short paragraphs, use images. Use visual elements like boxes, little quote boxes, bold, italics, emojis or icons, if that fits your brand. These are all things that can help break things up a bit. Give your your content like space to breathe. Number five, make sure it is mobile responsive. So that means that if somebody is looking at your page or your website from their phone.

That it doesn't look all wonky as hell like that. There aren't weird gaps that pictures aren't in bizarre places. That text isn't in weird ways. You wanna really make sure that. It looks great. People are on their phones more than they're on the computer a lot of the times nowadays. So your site needs to look good and work well on mobile.

No tiny fonts. No broken menus, no cutoff images. Test it on your phone and somebody else's because it looks different on different people's phones. Number six, fast loading speed. If your site takes more than a few seconds to load, people will leave. We have zero attention span nowadays, so you gotta be aware of that.

Make sure your images are compressed. Don't use a ton of plugins if you're using something like WordPress. Use a tool like Google Page Speed Insights to see where you can improve on your page speed. Don't have videos auto play when you go to a page. That also helps. Okay, and last but not, not least, number seven, consistent branding.

Your font, logo, color, vibe. Try to keep it as cohesive as possible. Don't make your site feel like it was designed by multiple different people across multiple different decades. Make sure it's clean, make sure it all comes together and people know that when they go to a different page, they're on the same website and that's it.

Just remember that your website is basically your digital storefront, right? If somebody walked into a physical store that you owned and it was hard to navigate, it didn't have any personality, nobody welcomed them or told them what to do next, how do they check out? They're walking out of that store and they're not buying anything.

They're not booking anything done, right? So we wanna make your site easy, welcoming human. And effective, and that's it. That is everything that you need to know to or build your website. All the things to have into consideration. I know this feels overwhelming. It's a lot. Designing a website is a lot of work.

That's why it's as expensive as it is, but. It's worth it when you have a website that you love, that feels like you, that people love, that people understand what to do with. That converts. It's so worth it. So take the time to put these into play or hire somebody to do it for you. I'm available. Website design is one of my very favorite things that I do.

So if you are interested in talking with me about doing your website for you, whether that's building one from scratch or zing up what you have, or rebuilding a new one for you. Feel free to reach out to me, patty@bizmagic.co. You can check out the website, biz magic.co/website design for examples of websites I've done.

And of course, you can always hang out with me on Instagram at Biz Magic Co. And feel free to comment or send me a message even if you just wanna share what you've learned from this episode or if there's anything I missed. Um. There's so much that goes into websites, but take it one step at a time. Don't get overwhelmed every little bit that you do to make your website better matters so you don't have to do it all at once, um, and do what makes sense for you.

That's it for now. Thank you for listening to another episode of the Biz Magic Podcast. Like most small businesses and podcasts. We rely heavily on word of mouth. So if you like what you heard today or in any episode, please share with your friends and colleagues and rate, subscribe, and comment on your favorite podcast platform.

Till next time, cheers to your magical biz success.