Planning Your Website
What a brochure website is, the pages it needs, who it suits, and when you need a shop, bookings or a custom build instead. Plain advice from real projects.
Most small businesses that ask us for a website need less than they think. They arrive expecting a big build, and leave the first call with a brochure website: a small, well made site that explains what they do and gets the phone ringing. This guide covers what brochure website design involves, when it is enough, when it is not, and how to tell which side of the line you are on before you spend anything.
A brochure website is a small website, usually five to ten pages, that explains who you are, what you do, where you work and how to get in touch. Visitors read it and then call, message or fill in a form. Nobody pays, books or logs in on the site itself. Its one job is to turn a visitor into an enquiry.
The page list is short, and most sites share the same core:
As a real example, the site we built for a double glazing company in Thanet is five pages. It uses the owner’s own job photos, has a contact form that goes to his inbox, and puts click to call and WhatsApp on every page. That is a complete brochure website.
It suits any business where the sale happens in a conversation. If a customer needs a quote, a site visit, a consultation or a chat before they buy, then the website’s job ends at the enquiry, and a brochure site does that job in full.
That covers most of the businesses we speak to: trades, installers, fabricators, consultants, tutors, accountants, clinics, importers selling to other businesses, and most local services. If you are still deciding whether you need a site at all, start with do I need a website. If you are starting from nothing, see how to set up a website for a small business.
It is enough when you can answer yes to these:
Price alone does not push you into a shop. One of our clients sells awnings and verandas, with orders running into thousands of pounds. He asked whether customers should be able to buy through the site. We advised against it. It is a lot of money to spend without speaking to a person, the customer will have questions and an install date to agree, and card payments at that size bring processing fees and chargeback risk. He took the advice and kept an enquiry led site.
The same thinking applied to a vintage watch dealer who came to us wanting to show his stock online. He planned to start with a catalogue and send buyers to his existing marketplace listings to pay. We told him that was “exactly the right call”. A catalogue that sends people elsewhere to buy is still a brochure website.
It stops being enough when the site has to do something, not just say something. Four cases come up most often.
Sometimes a client works this out during scoping. A translator in Ashford came to us for a new site to replace one she had built herself. As we talked through how she wins and handles work, it became clear a set of pages would not fix her real problem. She agreed, in her words, that the project “moves beyond a brochure website”, and chose to invest in a full working system. That was the right upgrade, agreed before any work started.
Here is how the three compare. Timelines are ours.
| Brochure website | Ecommerce site | Custom build | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Main job | Win enquiries | Take orders and payment | Run part of the business |
| What the visitor does | Reads, then calls, messages or fills in a form | Browses, adds to basket, pays | Logs in, books, uploads, manages an account |
| Typical size | Five to ten pages | Core pages plus every product and category | Depends on what it has to do |
| What you manage | Wording, photos, the odd new page | Products, stock, prices, orders, delivery | Users, bookings or records, as well as content |
| Build time with us | Seven days for a starter site, two to three weeks for most | Four to six weeks | Agreed at scoping |
| Best suited to | Services sold through a quote or a conversation | Products people can buy without talking to you | Memberships, booking systems, portals |
Cost follows the same order. We set out typical UK figures in how much a website costs.
A small site can still fail. Five things separate the ones that bring work in from the ones that sit there.
More than half of UK web traffic comes from mobile, according to StatCounter. Google also uses the mobile version of a site for indexing and ranking, which it calls mobile-first indexing. A cramped or slow phone version is the one both customers and Google judge.
Put the phone number, a form and a messaging option on every page, then test them. When we audited one live site this summer, the email address in the footer was wired up as a phone link, and the phone link had two numbers in it, so it dialled neither.
The same business had happy customers and a good rating on a review site, and not one review or testimonial on its own website. We named that as the biggest thing holding back its enquiries. Nielsen Norman Group’s research on About Us pages found that visitors expect a company to be clear and open about who it is, and respond well to contact details that are easy to find.
We put an FAQ page on every site. People type questions into Google, and a page that answers them plainly has a chance of being the one they land on. Google’s own guidance on helpful content asks whether a page shows first-hand expertise, so write the answers you actually give customers. Our guide on how to write website content shows how.
A headline that is only your business name tells a visitor and Google nothing. Say the service and the area in plain words at the top of the page.
Yes, and it should be built so it can. The usual path is more service pages, pages for the areas you cover, a blog or project gallery, and then functions such as payments or bookings once the business needs them. We tell clients on first calls that payments can be added at a later date, so nobody has to buy a shop on day one in case they want one in year two.
For the membership client above, we scoped French, German and Dutch versions as a later phase instead of adding them mid build. The one thing to get right from the start is the foundation: a site you own, on a platform that can take a shop or a booking system later. We build on WordPress for that reason.
The first conversation is about how customers buy from you, not about pages. From that we recommend the smallest site that does the job, and we say so when a brochure site is all you need.
Then it is one fixed price agreed in writing before work starts, and you own the site and the domain. We design the homepage first, with two rounds of changes, and write the content from your notes. The steps are the same every time: plan and design, build and test, your preview, final checks, launch and support. The double glazing site above went from first message to live in ten days. For a fuller picture of timings, see how long it takes to build a website.
This guide is based on the scoping conversations we have with business owners every week, and on real projects from this year. The examples are real and anonymised. We are an agency, so we have an interest in what you buy, which is why the examples include the times we recommended the smaller build. Facts about mobile use, search and visitor behaviour are linked to their sources below.
If customers need to talk to you before they buy, a brochure website is very likely enough, as long as it is quick on a phone, easy to contact you from, and backed by proof. If they need to pay, book or log in, you need more, and it is cheaper to know that before the build than after. Not sure which you are? Tell us how your customers buy and we will tell you plainly what size of site fits.
A brochure website is a small website, usually five to ten pages, that explains who you are, what you do, where you work and how to get in touch. Visitors read it and then call, message or fill in a form. Nobody pays, books or logs in on the site itself.
Most have a home page, a services page or a page per service, an about page, proof such as reviews or finished jobs, FAQs and a contact page, plus a privacy policy and terms. Five pages can be a complete site. Add more only when a service or an area genuinely needs its own page.
It is enough if customers contact you before they buy, your prices depend on the job, and nobody needs to pay, book or log in on the site. That describes most trades, installers, consultants and local services. A high price tag alone is not a reason to add a checkout.
A brochure website wins enquiries: the visitor reads, then gets in touch. An ecommerce website takes orders and payment on the site, so it needs a basket, a checkout, stock, delivery options and order emails. That makes it a bigger build with more to manage day to day.
You need more when the site has to do something rather than just explain something. The common cases are selling products online, taking bookings without a phone call, running member logins, or publishing hundreds of products, listings or articles. It is cheaper to settle this before the build than after.
Yes. The usual path is more service pages, area pages, a blog or gallery, and then payments or bookings once the business needs them. The important part is the foundation: a site you own, built on a platform such as WordPress that can take those features later.
With us it is seven days for a starter site and two to three weeks for most. Something with payments or bookings in it takes four to six weeks. The timing depends mostly on how quickly content and feedback come back.
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