What every business website needs: a checklist from five live builds
Every business website needs to say what the business does in its first line, make the next step one tap, show who is behind it, print the specifics, and answer the questions people ask before they call. This checklist comes from five sites we built and launched, and each point names the one that shows it.
Part of: Launch
Most lists of website must-haves are written from the outside: speed, mobile, security, a contact form. All true, and all things a good developer handles without being asked. This list is written from the inside, from five sites we built and launched, and it is about what a visitor needs to find before they decide to call you.
Say what you do in the first line
A visitor gives your homepage a few seconds. If the first line is a slogan, they have to work out what you sell from the pictures.
Workzap's site opens with one plain sentence: "Workzap makes software for finding problems and solving them." Everything else on the page hangs off it. Dalal & Co. does the same with one line the whole site keeps returning to.
Make the next step one tap
Call, WhatsApp and booking belong at the top of every page, not at the bottom of the contact page. Most people will see your site on a phone, so test it on one: the button they need should be under their thumb.
The Psychological Help Centre's site puts call, WhatsApp and booking on every page.
Show who is behind it
People buy from people, and in some fields they choose the person before the business. A clinic that names every practitioner, with their role and a page of their own, lets a patient choose before they call. You can read more on this in what a clinic website must show.
Print the specifics
Specific facts are harder to write and much harder to fake, which is why visitors trust them. Meat The Cheese prints the weight of every steak beside it. The Psychological Help Centre states the qualification every one of its psychologists holds.
Write the number, the hours, the qualification and the date, instead of the adjective.
Answer the questions people ask before they book
Every business is asked the same few questions, again and again: what it costs, how booking works, how long it takes, where you are. Put each answer on the site, in plain words, ideally on a page of its own so it can be found and linked to.
Give every location its own page
If you have more than one branch or clinic, each one needs its own page: address, hours, directions and how to order or book. Meat The Cheese has a page for each of its two branches, each with its own menu. Do not make a visitor work out which branch a phone number belongs to.
Let people check before they talk
Some decisions are too big to start with a sales call. Atif Bin Arif's property site hands a buyer free calculators, checklists and a market report built on registered sales before it asks for anything. A visitor who has already done their own sums arrives at the first call better informed.
And for search engines and AI assistants
Everything above also helps machines read your site. Two more things help them directly: structured data that says what the business is, where it is and when it is open, and a short plain-text summary at /llms.txt for AI assistants. We explain the second in llms.txt: what it is and whether you need one.
Sources: the live sites phchelps.com, meatthecheese.pk, realestate.atifbinarif.com, dalalandco.com and workzap.ai, read on 9 October 2026, what each site shows.