When people talk about what a small business website needs, the conversation often starts with pages.
You need a homepage. An About page. A Services page. A Contact page. Maybe a blog.
Those pages can absolutely make sense, but I think there is a better question to ask first:
What does a customer actually need to know before they can decide what to do next?
That question became even more obvious to me recently while using dozens of small business websites as a customer.
I was looking for restaurants, coffee shops, stores, wellness businesses, attractions and other places I might actually visit. Most of the time, I wasn’t thinking about page structure or design systems.
I was trying to answer basic questions.
What do you offer?
How much does it cost?
Where are you?
When are you open?
How do I book?
And sometimes, surprisingly, those answers were hard to find.
I wrote more about what happened while actually using those sites in I Used 50 Small Business Websites as a Customer. Here's What I Noticed.
That led me back to a framework I already use instinctively when organizing information: the classic who, what, where, when, why and how.
But for a website, I think there is one more question that matters.
It isn’t enough for the information to technically exist.
A customer also needs to be able to use it.
That is the idea behind what I call the 7 Customer Questions™.
What are the 7 Customer Questions™?
The framework is built around seven questions a prospective customer should be able to answer while using your website:
- Who? Who are you and who do you serve?
- What? What do you offer?
- Where? Where can someone find you or use your services?
- When? When are you available?
- Why? Why should someone choose you?
- How? How does someone take the next step?
- Can I? Can the customer actually find, understand and complete what they came here to do?
They sound simple.
That is intentional.
A small business website can become surprisingly complicated while still failing to answer something as basic as “Where are you?” or “How do I book?”
A website does not need to answer every possible question. It needs to answer the questions that matter to the people trying to use it.
1. Who? Who are you and who do you serve?
The first question is about identity.
When someone lands on your website, they should be able to figure out what business they are dealing with and whether it is relevant to them.
That sounds obvious, but this is where vague language can create problems.
A professional services company might talk extensively about innovation, strategy and solutions without clearly explaining what it actually does.
A local business may show a logo and beautiful photography but leave the visitor wondering whether they are looking at a café, bakery, restaurant or catering company.
The customer should not have to decode your business.
Depending on the company, answering “Who?” might include:
- what the business is
- who it serves
- the people behind it
- its location or service area
- its experience, qualifications or background
You do not necessarily need all of that in the first paragraph of your homepage.
But the visitor should understand who they are dealing with fairly quickly.
2. What? What do you actually offer?
This is probably one of the most important questions on the entire website.
What can someone buy, book, order, attend or hire you to do?
A simple list can be enough when the offering is straightforward. But once a product or service requires more explanation, it may deserve its own page.
This is especially true when customers are likely to have questions about:
- what is included
- who the service is for
- how it works
- pricing
- options or packages
- what happens before or after purchase
I have come across websites where the business clearly offers more than the website actually explains.
That creates a strange situation where a customer may know something exists from social media, Google or word of mouth but cannot find useful information about it on the company’s own website.
If a customer is likely to ask about it, your website should probably explain it somewhere.
If you are unsure whether a service or piece of information actually needs a dedicated page, The Page Test™ gives you four questions to use when deciding.
3. Where? Where can someone find you?
For a local business, location can be one of the most important pieces of information on the entire site.
If I am deciding between coffee shops, restaurants, stores or attractions, where the business is located can determine whether I visit at all.
Depending on the business, “Where?” might mean:
- a physical address
- a service area
- multiple locations
- online-only services
- delivery areas
- directions, parking or transit information
For restaurants, cafés and other local businesses, I particularly like having the address and hours available in the footer.
That way I do not need to return to a Contact page every time I want to check something basic.
For remote businesses, the answer may be completely different.
The point is not that every website needs a map.
The point is that the customer should understand where the business operates and whether it can actually serve them.
4. When? When are you available?
“When?” looks different depending on what the business does.
For a restaurant, it might simply mean current opening hours.
For a salon, it could mean appointment availability.
For an event or attraction, it might mean dates, seasonal hours or scheduled times.
For a service business, it could mean turnaround time, booking lead time or when someone can expect a response.
This is also where outdated information becomes particularly frustrating.
If your website says one thing and Google, social media or the business itself says another, the customer now has to figure out which source to trust.
Current information is part of usability.
A perfectly designed hours section is not particularly helpful if the hours are wrong.
Keeping that information accurate is one of the smaller but important parts of website upkeep. How Often Should You Update Your Website? looks at which parts of a site need attention more frequently than others.
5. Why? Why should someone choose you?
This is the question that moves beyond basic information and into decision-making.
If several businesses offer something similar, why should the customer choose this one?
The answer depends heavily on the type of business.
For a restaurant, strong photography, reviews and the menu might do much of the work.
For a professional services company, the customer may care more about expertise, previous work, clients, credentials or the way the service is explained.
For a store, product selection, photography, reviews and brand presentation may matter more.
There is no universal trust section that works equally well for every business.
Useful forms of proof might include:
- reviews and testimonials
- case studies
- portfolio or project examples
- photography
- qualifications or certifications
- brands, clients or organizations you work with
- clear explanations of your process
- useful information that demonstrates expertise
The right answer to “Why?” depends on what the customer needs to feel confident making a decision.
6. How? How does someone take the next step?
Once someone understands the business and decides they are interested, the website needs to help them act.
How do they:
- book an appointment?
- buy the product?
- make a reservation?
- request a quote?
- call the business?
- visit the location?
- sign up?
- contact someone?
This is where good calls to action and clear pathways matter.
The customer should not reach the point where they are interested and then have to hunt around for what to do next.
In some cases, giving people more than one reasonable option is helpful.
A wellness business might allow someone to book online or call.
A contractor might provide a quote form and a phone number.
That does not mean every page needs six competing buttons.
It means the path forward should match how customers reasonably expect to interact with the business.
7. Can I? Can the customer actually do it?
This is the question that turns the first six from a content checklist into a user experience framework.
Your website might technically contain all the right information.
But can the customer actually find it?
Can they understand it?
Can they use it comfortably on their phone?
Can they complete the booking, purchase, form or next step without becoming confused?
Can they tell when the process is finished?
This matters because information existing somewhere on a website is not the same as that information being usable.
The first six questions ask whether the website provides the right information. “Can I?” asks whether the customer can actually use it.
I recently saw this with an online voting process.
Someone could submit their name and phone number, receive a verification code and then enter that code to complete the vote.
The process technically worked.
But some people did not realize they still needed to enter the verification code.
If the user does not understand that there is another step, the functionality existing is not enough.
The same thing can happen with booking systems, forms, checkout flows, navigation and even basic content.
“Can I?” is where we ask whether the website actually helps the customer finish what they started.
Navigation plays a particularly important role here because even useful information becomes difficult to use when people cannot figure out where it lives. I explore that further in Why Website Navigation Matters More Than You Think.
The questions do not each need their own page
One of the reasons I like this framework is that it separates information from page count.
You do not need seven pages because there are seven questions.
A very small business may answer most of them effectively on one page.
A larger service business may need individual pages for each service, a detailed About page, case studies, FAQs, locations and several different ways to contact the company.
Sometimes you discover that another page is needed as you organize the content.
That is normal.
I generally think content deserves its own page when customers are likely to be curious about it or when the subject needs enough explanation that squeezing it into another page would make the information harder to use.
Do not decide how many pages your website needs first. Decide what your customers need to know first.
Once you know the information the website needs to communicate, you can start deciding how many pages should actually hold it. What Pages Should a Small Business Website Have? takes that next step.
A five-page website can still be a very good starting point
There is a reason the classic five-page small business website is so common.
A structure such as Home, About, Services, Contact and one additional page can cover a surprising amount of information for a straightforward business.
Five pages are not a rule, but they can be a useful starting point.
A restaurant may need fewer traditional pages and place more importance on a strong menu, location information and current hours.
A service company may need considerably more because each service deserves its own explanation.
An ecommerce business may need dozens or hundreds of product pages.
The page count should come from what the business and its customers actually need.
The homepage should answer several questions at once
I think the homepage should give someone a useful overview of the business without requiring them to immediately start clicking around.
A customer should be able to understand what the company does from the homepage.
For a product or service-based business, I generally want the main offering to be clear by around the middle of the page, if not earlier.
Depending on the business, a homepage might include:
- a clear hero section
- an overview of products or services
- calls to action
- location information
- reviews or testimonials
- a short About section
- a newsletter signup when it actually makes sense
The homepage does not need every detail.
Its job is to give the customer enough context to understand the business and find the right path deeper into the website.
Use the 7 Customer Questions™ as a website check
One simple way to use the framework is to open your own website and try to look at it without relying on what you already know about your business.
Can you easily answer:
- Who? Who is this business and who does it serve?
- What? What can I buy, book or hire them for?
- Where? Where are they or where do they operate?
- When? When are they available?
- Why? Why would I choose them?
- How? How do I take the next step?
- Can I? Can I actually accomplish what I came here to do?
If one of those answers is difficult to find, that does not automatically mean you need an entirely new website.
Sometimes the solution is as small as adding missing information, moving something to a more logical place or making the next action clearer.
Other times, answering the questions properly exposes larger structural problems.
Either way, it gives you a much more useful place to start than simply asking whether your website looks modern enough.
If you know something is not working but are not yet sure whether the problem is content, structure, navigation or the experience itself, a UI/UX Audit can help identify and prioritize those issues.
A good website should make the business easier to understand
The 7 Customer Questions™ are intentionally basic because the customer's needs are often basic too.
They want to know what you do, whether it is relevant to them, whether they trust you and what they should do next.
Good design, strong branding, thoughtful content and solid development should make those answers easier to find and understand.
They should not become obstacles to them.
A useful small business website answers the customer's questions and gives them a clear path to act on the answers.
Before asking whether you need five pages, ten pages or twenty, start there.