A website for a small business or tradesperson: what you need and what you don't

Published on 4 November 2026by Tauro Lab9 min read

In short A tradesperson or small business needs only a few pages: home, services, finished jobs, who you are, contact. On a phone, someone must grasp within thirty seconds what you do, where, and how to call, with a number that starts the call on tap. Real photos, reviews asked for without incentives and plain wording count for more than effects and blogs. In Italy, the VAT number on the home page and a privacy notice are mandatory.

If you are a plumber, a joiner, an electrician or a hairdresser, a five-page website is enough, as long as someone on a phone can tell within thirty seconds what you do, where you work and how to call you. You have probably been offered everything: an online shop, a blog, an app, videos. For most small businesses the job is simpler and more precise. Here is how many pages you need and what they must say, a test to do standing up with your phone, what Italian law says about VAT numbers and reviews, and what you can leave out without regret.

Do you really need a website? Start with how people find you

If all your work comes by word of mouth and you have more requests than you can handle, a website will not change your life. But word of mouth goes through the phone too: someone who gets your name from a friend looks you up on Google before calling. If they find a listing with opening hours, photos and a number, they call. If they find nothing, or an old site with the wrong number, they move on to the next name.

Try it now: search for your trade with the name of your town, then for your business name. What comes up? Your Google listing, a website, or other people's pages with your details wrong? For many businesses a well-kept Google listing and a site of one to five pages are the right starting point.

How many pages a tradesperson or small business needs

Fewer than you think. A small, clear site works better than a big, empty one. For each page, what it must say and what is not needed:

Page	What it must say	What is not needed
Home	who you are, what you do, where you work, the number to tap: all without scrolling	slogans, background video, photo carousel
Services	one page per main service: what you do, for whom, how the job goes, what you ask the customer beforehand	lists of ten services in one line
Finished jobs	a few real photos with two lines each: where, what, what the problem was	galleries of fifty photos with no captions
About you	your face, your story in a few lines, qualifications and registrations if they matter in your trade	the sentence about passion and quality
Contact	phone, WhatsApp if you answer there, email, address, opening hours, the area you cover	a form with ten fields

A page per service makes sense when the services are different and people search for them separately: a plumber who also fits boilers and air conditioning. A page per town makes sense only if you have something different to say about that town, otherwise they are copied pages and Google recognises them. An invented case: an electrician with one assistant working in and around Turin. A home page with number and area, a page for domestic wiring, one for consumer units, one with six photographed jobs, About, Contact with WhatsApp. Six pages, and anyone looking finds everything. If you are starting from scratch, the steps in order are in how to start a professional website.

The thirty-second test

People looking for a tradesperson do it on a phone, often standing up and with a problem on their hands. Do this: open your site on your phone on mobile data, not wifi, and count. Within thirty seconds you must have understood what you do and where you work, and tapped the number so that the call starts. If you cannot manage it, and you know the site, nobody can. Then check these points:

the phone number at the top of every page, set up so one tap starts the call, not a number to copy;
a WhatsApp button only if you really do answer there, and with a note on how quickly;
the hours when you answer and what happens outside them, for example "if I am on a job I will ring you back in the evening";
a short form: name, phone, what work is needed, in which town. The rest you ask by phone;
the area you cover, written clearly, so you do not get calls from sixty kilometres away.

Google indexes starting from the mobile version: the version you see on the phone is the one that counts for Google too, not only for customers.

Photos, reviews and wording: what to include and what not

Real photos of your work

Stock photos of smiling workers convince nobody. Real photos are better, even taken on a phone, of finished jobs and, if you can, before and after. Natural light, a steady frame, one subject per shot. If the customer's home or people are visible, ask permission and keep it in writing.

Reviews: how to ask without getting hurt

Reviews on your Google listing carry more weight than anything you write yourself. Ask every customer at the end of the job, with a message containing the direct link. Three things not to do, because they cost dearly. Do not offer discounts or gifts in return: Google's content policies prohibit paid or incentivised reviews, prohibit asking only happy customers and discouraging negative reviews, and remove reviews written by people with a conflict of interest, such as employees and collaborators. Do not write them yourself and do not buy them: the Italian Consumer Code, in article 23, treats sending or commissioning fake reviews, and claiming reviews come from real customers without checking, as unfair commercial practices. And reply to all of them, including the bad ones, calmly: future customers read the reply.

Wording

Write the way you talk to customers. "I replace boilers and taps in the towns south of Turin" works better than "we offer solutions for every need". Put in your trade, your area and what you actually do: those are the words people search with. Add the questions you always get and the answers: they cost little and are the most-read pages.

Google listing and website: the same information

For local searches Google lists three factors: relevance, distance and prominence. You can work on relevance (category, description, services) and prominence (reviews, presence on the web); you cannot work on distance. Google also states there is no way to request or pay for a better local ranking: if someone sells you that, they cannot deliver it. In the meantime, make sure listing and site say the same things: same name, same address, same number, same hours. How this ties in with social media is in local SEO and social media.

What Italian law requires even of a five-page site

Three things free website builders do not tell you. If you have an Italian VAT number and a website, even a purely promotional one, the VAT number goes on the home page: article 35 of Presidential Decree 633/1972, in force until 31 December 2026 and then replaced by the new consolidated VAT code, so ask your accountant for the updated reference. If there is a contact form you collect personal data, so you need the privacy notice required by Regulation (EU) 2016/679. If you use analytics or advertising with cookies, you need a banner built to the Italian data protection authority's rules. If you are a limited company, the companies register details go on the site too; a sole trader does not need them. This is not legal advice: have the texts checked by your accountant or an adviser.

What you can leave out, for now

a blog: only worth it if you want to write about the things customers ask you, and a blog untouched for years looks worse than no blog;
an online shop, if you sell work and not products;
animations, background videos and effects: they slow the site down on a phone and do not bring calls;
empty sections such as "news" or "coming soon".

And do not expect calls the next day: in its SEO guide Google says some changes take months to show in the results. In the meantime, word of mouth, your Google listing and the number on the van are what count.

Your home page fits on one sheet of paper

Take a sheet of paper and write your trade, the three jobs you want more of, the area you work in and the number you answer. That is already the text of your home page. Then take six real photos of finished jobs and send the review link to your last three customers. To see what the price depends on, there is how much does a website cost; to choose who should build it, web agency or freelancer.

Our websites page shows what we do. You can also write to us describing your business to work out how many pages you need: sometimes one is enough.

Frequently asked questions

Is a website better than just Facebook and Instagram?

Social media is fine for showing your work, but you do not control it and not everyone has an account. A website gives you an address of your own, for the van and the business card, and your Google listing gets you found by people searching for your trade in your town. If you have to start with one thing, start with the listing and a site of a few pages.

Can I build it myself with a free website builder?

You can, and for a simple page it is sometimes enough. The limits are little freedom, an address carrying the builder's name and the time it takes you. If you do it, use a domain in your own name, put your VAT number on the home page, publish a privacy notice if there is a form and check that the number is tappable on a phone.

Can I ask customers for reviews?

Yes, and it pays to ask everyone, at the end of the job, with the direct link to your listing. What you cannot do is offer something in return, ask only those you know are happy, have employees or relatives write them, or buy them: Google removes them, and under Italian law it is an unfair commercial practice.

Do I have to write the text myself?

It is best to start with you: you explain your work better than anyone. Notes or a voice message are enough, and whoever builds the site puts them in order. Generic text copied from other sites will not do: customers notice, and so does Google.

Sources

Written by the Tauro Lab team, a web agency and software house in Turin. About us