Here is something most web designers will not tell you: the reason your website takes three months instead of three weeks is almost never the building. It is waiting for you to send the content.
And that is not because business owners are disorganised. It is because nobody ever tells them exactly what is needed. "Send me some text about your business" is a genuinely hard brief when you have never done it before.
So here is the specific version, page by page, plus the list of things to gather before you start.
The principle that makes writing easy
Write answers to your customers' questions, not a description of yourself. Every page should help someone work out one of five things:
- Can you do the specific thing I need?
- Do you cover where I am?
- Can I trust you?
- Roughly what will it cost?
- What do I do next?
If a paragraph does not help with one of those, it is decoration. This one idea removes most of the difficulty, because you already answer these questions on the phone every week.
The home page
The first sentence should say what you do, where, and who for. "Emergency electrician covering Malaga and the Costa del Sol, 24 hours" tells a visitor everything they need in eight seconds. "Welcome to our website" tells them nothing and wastes the most valuable space you own.
Then: your main services with links, a couple of proof points (reviews, years in the trade, a photo of real work), and one obvious next step. Phone number visible without scrolling.
A page for each service
Not one page listing everything. One page per main service, because that is what people search for and what Google can rank. On each:
- What the service is, in the words customers use rather than trade jargon.
- What is included, and what is not.
- Roughly what it costs, even as a range or a starting figure.
- How long it usually takes.
- What happens when they get in touch.
- Two or three questions you get asked about that job every single time.
Those FAQ answers are the single most underrated content on a small business site. They are easy to write because you already say them out loud constantly, and they are exactly the kind of clear answer that gets picked up in search.
About
Not your life story, and not "we are passionate about delivering excellence". People read this page for one reason: to decide whether you are trustworthy. So give them the evidence. How long you have been doing this, your qualifications and insurance, who is on the team, a real photo of a real person, and the area you cover.
A photograph of you standing next to your van does more work than three paragraphs of adjectives.
Your work
Photographs of jobs you have finished, with captions saying what it was and where. Before and after pairs where the change is dramatic. For most trades this page does more selling than everything else combined, which we covered in websites for builders and renovation firms.
Contact
Make it effortless: a tappable phone number, WhatsApp, a short form with five fields at most, the towns you cover, your hours, and how quickly you reply. If you take bookings, a booking link.
The legal pages
A legal notice, a privacy policy and a cookie policy, linked in the footer. Not optional for a business website in Spain, and covered properly in what your website legally needs in Spain.
The list to gather before you start
If you send a web designer this, your project moves from months to weeks:
- Your logo, in the best quality you have. If you do not have one, say so early.
- Ten to twenty photos of your work, your premises, your van, your team. Real ones from your phone are fine and better than stock.
- A list of your services, the ones you want more of first.
- Prices or ranges, even if approximate, and a note of anything you would rather not publish.
- The towns and areas you cover.
- Opening hours, including whether you do out of hours.
- Phone, email and WhatsApp as you want them displayed.
- Two or three customer reviews you are happy to quote.
- Certifications and insurance worth mentioning.
- A paragraph about you, written badly. Genuinely: badly is fine. Any decent designer can tidy your words. Nobody can invent your twenty years.
Writing tips that make a real difference
- Short sentences and plain words. Write how you speak to a customer.
- Be specific. "Fast response" means nothing. "Usually with you within the hour" means something.
- Use numbers. Years, prices, timescales, distances. Specifics build trust; adjectives do not.
- Say what you do not do. It saves everyone time and it signals honesty.
- Read it aloud. If you would not say it to a customer's face, rewrite it.
What to leave off
- Stock photos of smiling strangers in an office you have never been in.
- "We are passionate about", "cutting-edge", "solutions", "synergy".
- Enormous blocks of text nobody reads.
- A giant image slider that pushes your phone number below the fold.
- Autoplay video with sound.
- A menu with fourteen items when you have four services.
Frequently asked questions
How many pages does my website need?
For most small businesses, five to eight: home, a page per main service, about, work, contact, plus the legal pages. More pages are worth adding when you have something specific to say, such as a town you want to rank for.
Do I write the content or does the designer?
Best results come from a mix. You supply the facts, the prices, the photos and the rough words. A good designer or writer shapes them. What never works is a designer inventing details about your business.
Should I put my prices on the site?
Some indication, yes. A starting figure or a range filters out people whose budget was never realistic and saves you time. You do not need a full price list for work that varies.
How many photos do I need?
Ten to twenty to launch, and keep adding. Take five minutes of photos at the end of every job and within a year you will have a portfolio your competitors cannot match.
What if I do not have content ready?
Start anyway with what you have and improve it. A live site with adequate content beats a perfect one that never launches because it is waiting on photos. If writing is the bottleneck, our AI content service handles the drafting from your facts.
Content is the part of a website project that clients dread and designers quietly wait for. Broken into a list, it is an afternoon of work. If you would like help turning your notes and photos into pages that actually bring in enquiries, take a look at our websites or get a free consultation.