3 Pages Your Website Absolutely Needs
Your website is the hub of your work, showcasing stories about you, your accolades, and an opportunity to work with you. That’s why the pages of your website need to reflect who you are and how accessible you can be to your audience.
Normally, people will tell you that there are certain pages your website needs. While there are certain pages that your website certainly needs in order to be whole, the pages also depend on your stage of business.
Brand New Business
A brand new business needs fewer pages than a business that has been thriving for several years. Your website should show what you do, who you are, and how people can work with you. Adding more pages may be distracting or unnecessary.
For a new business, you’ll benefit from the following pages:
Homepage - The homepage serves as a welcome mat, greeting your audience and giving them a taste of what to expect on your website. You should highlight the audience that you work with, who you are, and what type of service or product you offer. You don’t have to include everything about yourself on the homepage. See it as an appetizer to the rest of your website.
Service Page - The service page is an in-depth landing page for what you have to offer your potential client. On this page, write about who you work with, what the service is, and exactly what they will get while working with you. You should include your testimonials, rates, and the process of what it looks like to work with you.
Contact Page - A contact page allows people to keep in touch with you. You can include your social media accounts, your email address, and a form so people can message you directly from your website.
At the bare minimum, these are the pages you need when you are starting a brand new business.
1 Year into Business
When your business starts gaining traction, you might decide that it’s time to upgrade the pages that you need for your business.
I recommend keeping your homepage and your service page, though your contact page is arguably optional. Some businesses like to keep a contact page, but if you don’t want to have too many tabs on your navigation, you can put the contact page on your about page.
Your business would benefit from:
About Page - Talk about who you are, your accolades, your experience, and what you do. You can combine your old contact page into a more fleshed out about page. Be sure to include a photograph of yourself (without the SnapChat filters) because people like to see a visual of who they’re working with.
Blog - For SEO and to build your authority in your niche, consider starting a blog. A blog can increase your traffic from search engines and it can also build trust with your readers. Having a blog is a great way to grow your audience and build your email list. If you don’t have time to blog or blogging is out of your skillset, you can always hire a ghostwriter to do this for you.
Lead magnet opt-in page - You should have some sort of lead magnet by now because you should be building your email list. An opt-in page is a page solely devoted to your signature lead magnet. This page can be plugged into your social media or your blog posts to capture more emails.
Seasoned Business Owner
Your website will look wildly different from when you first started your business, now that you’re a seasoned business owner. You’d still benefit from having an about page, blog, and the lead magnet opt-in, though there are several other pages your website will need:
Start Here Page - A seasoned business owner has lots of content, whether on the blog, YouTube, podcasts, social media, or other venues where you have been featured. A start here page keeps people from becoming overwhelmed when they first learn about you. Put your most popular content from your website and other businesses who have featured you as a guest. You can also put your signature lead magnet here and include a snippet about who you are.
Media Page - Having a media page is helpful when you’re a seasoned business owner because if you’re being featured on other mediums, people will often ask you the same questions. They’ll want a paragraph about who you are, links to your social media pages, and means of contacting you. A media page should house all of that information so if someone’s PR team is trying to reach out to you, they have somewhere to pull the information from.
Partnership Page - The more popular you become, the more people will want to partner with you. They’ll ask if they can guest post on your blog or if they can pay you to feature something on your website. Have a partnership page to prevent people from emailing you questions about how to partner with you. This way, people can see your requirements for partnerships and save you the time of having to repeat yourself over and over.
As your business evolves and grows, so will the pages that you will have on your website. These are the three types of pages that I believe businesses need depending on the stages of their business.
What stage of business are you currently in? Let me know in the comments below.