Small business website design: a site that brings you customers
Send us your current site for a free review: how fast it loads on a phone, where the call and booking buttons sit, and whether it needs fixing or replacing.
- One next step on every page, on the first screen of a phone
- A page for each service and service area, with details that match your Google Business Profile
- The domain and the site set up in your name, and kept current by the team that built them
- An honest evaluation, with no obligation to hire us
- You own every account, domain, profile and CRM
- One team since 2015, nothing subcontracted
- 4,700+ businesses served
Run a trade or a crew? See website design for contractors.
The ranking worked, the ad worked, and the visitor still left.
Search and ads get a stranger to your site. What they find in the next few seconds decides whether they call you or go back to the results and tap the next listing. It is also the step owners check least, because nobody sees their own website the way a stranger does, on a phone, in a hurry.
Six things a site has to do before it gets to look good.
Fast & mobile-first
We design for the smallest phone first and check every page on one before launch. Images are sized for a phone, and pages are built to pass Google's Core Web Vitals on real visits, not just on a desktop test.
Clear path to action
Each page asks for one thing: a call, a booking or a tap for directions. That ask sits on the first screen of a phone and stays within a thumb's reach after the visitor scrolls.
Proof next to the ask
Your review rating, your license number, photos of your own jobs instead of stock, and the towns you actually serve, placed beside the button rather than in the footer.
Search-ready
A page for each service and each main service area, titles and headings written for the searches that should land there, and business details that match your Google Business Profile word for word.
Lead capture
Forms that ask only what you need to call back, click-to-call on every phone screen, and booking that writes into your calendar and CRM, often GoHighLevel, with the page each lead came from attached.
Kept current after launch
New hours, a new service, a price change, a seasonal offer. You send the change and the same team that built the site makes it, so the site keeps matching the business you actually run.
A roofer's website and a med spa's website should not look alike.
A med spa visitor wants results, prices and a way to book a consultation. A homeowner with a roof leak wants a phone number, a service area and proof you are licensed, in that order. A restaurant guest wants the menu and tonight's hours. We plan each site around what its own customers check before they act.
Website design for contractors, in the order a homeowner checks.
Before a homeowner lets a crew into the house, they look for a license, the towns you cover and work that is plainly yours. A contractor site answers all three, then keeps the estimate request short.
A license a homeowner can check
The license number written out in full beside the call and estimate buttons, linked to the state board's lookup where your state has one, so checking you takes one tap instead of a search.
Your own job photos, by service
Roofs, kitchens and decks you actually finished, grouped under the service they show. A stock kitchen on a remodeler's site makes the real work look borrowed, so it never goes on yours.
The towns you cover, by name
A list of the towns you work in, and for the main ones a page showing jobs you finished there, so a homeowner one town over knows you come out to them before they call.
An estimate request that saves a wasted drive
The request asks for the job, the town and, if the homeowner has one, a photo, which is often enough to tell whether a site visit is worth the trip.
What each trade needs beyond the website is on its own page: roofers, HVAC companies, plumbers, electricians, kitchen and bath remodelers and general contractors. The rest are in the trade directory.
Send us your web address; the review comes back in writing.
The free website review starts with:
- Who holds your domain, DNS, hosting and analytics today, and what to ask for back
- How your pages do on Google's speed measures for real phone visits, where that data exists
- What stops a visitor from calling or booking on the first screen, and whether to fix the site or replace it
Core Web Vitals, in plain words: three numbers from real visits.
Google's Core Web Vitals measure how a page feels to the people who actually visit it, counted from their own phones and computers. Each has a line a page should stay inside, and phones and desktops are graded separately.
Largest Contentful Paint
Good: 2.5 seconds or less
How long until the biggest thing on the first screen shows, usually the top photo or the headline. A huge uncompressed photo is the usual reason it fails.
Interaction to Next Paint
Good: 200 milliseconds or less
How long the page takes to react after a tap, such as opening the menu or pressing Book. Too many scripts from other companies are the usual reason it lags.
Cumulative Layout Shift
Good: 0.1 or less
How much the page jumps while it loads, the reason people tap the wrong button. Images and embeds with no reserved space cause most of it.
What actually slows a small business site
- Tags from other companies. Analytics, a heat map, a chat bubble, a review widget: each is code a phone has to run before it answers a tap. Keep the ones somebody reads and remove the rest.
- Fonts fetched from another server. A linked Google Fonts file can hold back the first screen by close to a second. Hosting the font files with the site removes the wait.
- Animation that keeps redrawing the page. A spinning or ticking effect built in script changes the page many times a second, and a session recorder such as Clarity or Hotjar records every change. The phone pays for both.
- Photos straight off a camera. A top photo sized for a billboard, and images with no set size, slow the first screen and make it jump.
To see yours, put your address into PageSpeed Insights and read the part about real users first. "No Data" there means Chrome has too few visits to report, not that the site is fast. Google says its ranking systems use these measures but still rank the most relevant page even when page experience is poor, so fix speed for the visitor reaching for the call button, not for a ranking jump.
Accessibility: can everyone call or book?
The Department of Justice's 2022 guidance says businesses open to the public must make sure people with disabilities can use what they offer online, websites included. Its examples of barriers are everyday ones: low color contrast, color as the only signal, photos with no text alternative, videos with no captions, forms without labels and menus that only work with a mouse.
Most of these take five minutes to check yourself:
- Press Tab from the top of the page. You should see where you are at every step and reach the form and the call button.
- Zoom the page to 200 percent. WCAG, the standard most accessibility work follows, expects text to stay readable with nothing cut off.
- Read the grey text outdoors. WCAG asks for a contrast ratio of at least 4.5 to 1 for normal body text.
- Turn on your phone's screen reader and land on the phone icon. It should say Call, not Button or a file name.
We build these into the pages themselves rather than adding a widget on top, because the barriers live in the page and that is where they get fixed.
This is not legal advice; confirm with counsel what applies to your business.
The ownership checklist: what should be in your name, and how to check.
The registrant on a domain is the only party who can approve its transfer, and under ICANN's Transfer Policy the registrant of a .com gets the transfer code within five calendar days of a verified request. A designer listed as registrant can simply say no. When we build a site, the domain and the site are set up in your name from day one. Check the rest yourself with the list below.
| What | What you should hold | How to check without asking anyone |
|---|---|---|
| Domain registration | Your business is the registrant: the person or company the domain is registered to, and the only one who can approve a transfer. | Look the domain up at ICANN Lookup. It names the registrar and the expiry date. Privacy often hides the registrant, so then sign in at the registrar and read the contact on the domain. |
| Registrar login | An account at the registrar that signs in with an email at your business, with the renewal card in your name. | Sign in yourself. If only your designer can, the domain renews or lapses on their schedule, not yours. |
| DNS | The account the name servers belong to: usually the registrar, the host or Cloudflare. Whoever controls it decides where your site and your email go. | ICANN Lookup lists the name servers. Work out which company runs them, then confirm you can sign in there too. |
| Hosting or site builder | The hosting or builder account in your business name, and an administrator login of your own for the site itself. | Sign in and find your name on the billing. A WordPress site can be copied whole to another host; a Wix or HighLevel site can only change accounts on the same platform. |
| Google Analytics | You as an Administrator on the property, the role that can add and remove other people (Google's help). | Open Admin, then Property access management, and find your own email on the list with that role. |
| Search Console | You as a verified owner, so you can remove a designer who was added as a user (Google's help). | Open Settings, then Users and permissions, and look for Owner beside your email. |
If a row comes back in someone else's name, start with how to get your website and domain back: it covers what to send first, the 60-day transfer locks and what to do when the designer is the registrant. The free account ownership check covers the same ground plus your Google Business Profile and ad accounts, runs in your browser and sends nothing to us.
What a website costs to keep running each year, line by line.
The build is one bill. These are the ones that keep coming, and most owners only find out which they pay when a card expires and something goes dark. We list the lines, not the prices: vendors change them often, and every quote you get should name each one.
| Line item | What it pays for | Ask before you sign |
|---|---|---|
| Domain renewal | Keeping the name. Paid to the registrar every year, or every few years if you prepay. | Is it on auto-renew, and whose card is on file? |
| Hosting or website platform | The server or the builder subscription the site runs on. | Does the renewal price differ from the first year? |
| Security certificate | The padlock and the https in the address bar. | Included with the hosting, or billed on its own? |
| Business email on your domain | Mailboxes such as you@yourbusiness.com, usually charged per person. | Who is the admin of the email account? |
| Theme and plugin licenses | On WordPress, the paid add-ons that need a yearly renewal to keep getting security updates. | Which ones are paid, and whose account holds the licenses? |
| Booking, forms, chat and CRM | The software the site sends leads into, such as a calendar or GoHighLevel. | Which of these would the site stop working without? |
| Call tracking numbers | Numbers that show which page or ad a call came from. | Can the numbers move to you if you leave? |
| Backups and security monitoring | A copy to restore from, and someone watching for a hacked or broken site. | Where are the backups kept, and has anyone ever restored one? |
| Changes and upkeep | New hours, a new service page, software updates, a fix when something breaks. | Is upkeep a monthly fee, billed by the hour, or nobody's job? |
| Photos of your own work | A photographer, or time spent shooting finished jobs on your phone. | Who keeps the original files? |
| Google Analytics and Search Console | Visits, searches and the speed report from real visitors. | The standard versions cost nothing; check only that you have access. |
Score your website in five questions
Answer yes or no. Nothing you pick leaves this page.
Answer all five to see where you stand. Your answers stay on this page.
The team that builds the site also sends it traffic.
The people who build your pages also run the search and ad campaigns pointed at them, so they see which page each lead came from and fix the pages that lose visitors. The domain and the site are set up in your name from the start, so they stay yours if you ever move on. If your last designer registered the domain or kept the only login, read how to get your website and domain back before you email them.
Sources
9 cited
- web.dev, Web Vitals (thresholds and the 75th percentile)
- Google Search Central, understanding page experience in Google Search results
- PageSpeed Insights
- U.S. Department of Justice, Guidance on Web Accessibility and the ADA (March 2022)
- W3C, Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.2
- ICANN Lookup (registration data search)
- ICANN, Transfer Policy
- Google Analytics Help, add, edit and delete users and user groups
- Search Console Help, manage owners, users and permissions
Find out where your website loses the call.
Send us your current site and the job you most want more of. We will check its speed on a phone, where the call and booking buttons sit and what the first screen says, then tell you whether it needs fixing or replacing.
- A free consult. A real conversation about your business, your area and what is not working yet.
- An honest evaluation. Where you stand in search, ads and follow-up next to the businesses you lose customers to.
- A plan you keep. What we would fix first and why. It is yours whether or not you work with us.
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