The seven-page site: a structure that works for almost every service business
You do not need forty pages. You need seven, in this order, each doing one job. Here is the structure we build from and the reason behind each page.
Ask a small business owner what is wrong with their website and they will usually say it needs more on it. It almost never does. The common failure is not thinness, it is that seven necessary pages are buried under thirty unnecessary ones.
Here is the structure we start from for a service business, and what each page is actually for.
1. Home
One job: tell a stranger what you do, where, and for whom, then send them to the right service page. It is a junction, not a destination. The most common mistake is trying to make it explain everything, which makes it explain nothing.
2. A page per service
Usually three to five of them, and they are the most important pages on the site. Each one covers what the job involves, what it costs as a range, how long it takes, what you need from the customer, and what happens next. These are the pages that rank, and they are the pages an undecided customer reads before calling.
3. Areas served
A single page listing your coverage honestly, linking to individual service-area pages if you have built them. This answers the question that stops more enquiries than any other: do you even come out to me?
4. Pricing or how we quote
Even if you cannot publish fixed prices, you can publish how pricing works: the call-out fee, the hourly rate, what a typical job in each category costs. Businesses that refuse to say anything about money get more enquiries and fewer customers, because they attract people who were never going to afford them.
5. About
Who you are, how long you have done this, what you are qualified for, and a photograph of an actual human being. For a trade or a clinic this page does more conversion work than owners expect, because hiring you is a trust decision.
6. Reviews and work
Proof in one place. Real reviews with names, photographs of finished jobs, and the numbers if you have them. This page exists so that the service pages can stay focused.
7. Contact
Phone, form, hours, response time. Nothing else. Do not put a map here if your business goes to the customer rather than the other way around.
What we leave out
A blog you will not write. A team page for a company of two. Testimonials scattered across ten pages instead of gathered on one. A gallery with eleven photographs of the same kitchen. Every page you add is a page you have to maintain, and every unmaintained page slowly makes the site look abandoned.
Priya Raman
Design Director
Priya leads website and brand design at Arri. She came from a print and packaging background, which is why Arri identity systems ship with a signage spec and not just a logo file.
