A website for a small business: what you really need (and what they try to sell you)

If you run a small business and have asked for website quotes, you'll have noticed every provider sells you something different: one a CRM, another a funnel, another "AI positioning", another an app. This is the short, honest list of what a small-business website needs in 2026, what can wait, and what you almost never need to pay for. No hype, and with a price.

What it needs, non-negotiable

The six essentials of a small-business website

1. Load in a couple of seconds on a phone. Measured, not promised. Google uses it to rank you and your customer uses it to stay or leave.

2. Your business details, done properly. Address, hours, phone and what you do, visible to people and marked up for Google and AIs with structured data.

3. One page per thing you sell. Each main service or product with its own page, its questions and its call to action. That's what people search for.

4. Domain and site in your name. If the provider disappears or you stop paying, the site is still yours.

5. The ability to edit it yourself. Change a price, a schedule or a photo without paying anyone.

6. A fixed price, in writing. What it costs, before you start, with no mandatory fee afterwards.

What can wait (and gets added when it's time)

• Online shop. If you sell in-store and want to test online, start with one product page and a payment button; the full shop comes later if it works.
• Bookings or appointments. Very useful for restaurants, clinics and workshops. It's integrated once the site is live and you know how your customers book.
• Blog. It helps rankings, but only if you'll actually write. A blog with two posts from 2021 does more harm than good.
• Several languages. Essential in tourist areas like the Costa del Sol; elsewhere, only if your customers speak them.

What they try to sell you and you almost never need

• A CRM with funnels for a business that handles customers on WhatsApp and by phone. You'll pay for it monthly and never open it.
• A free "strategy session" that's really a sales meeting to price you after they've heard you out.
• A mobile app. Your website, if it's fast, already looks perfect on a phone.
• "Guaranteed rankings" on Google or in AI. Nobody can guarantee it; whoever promises it is selling hype. What can be done is to make the site technically sound and citable, and we explain that in AEO and GEO without the hype.
• Monthly maintenance to update plugins that shouldn't exist. A site with no plugins doesn't need it.

What the essentials cost

Everything in the box above, with us, starts at €600 on the Express plan and is delivered in 48 hours; the other plans are on the pricing page with what each includes. No mandatory fee, domain and code in your name, and speed figures on delivery. For the exact price of your case without talking to anyone, the configurator gives it to you in a minute.

No fluff: a website won't bring you customers on its own. It brings the ones who were already looking for you and stops you losing them to slowness, a phone number they can't find, or a site they don't trust. For a small business, that's most of a website's value. The rest is your job: reviews, word of mouth and doing what you do well.

If you already have a site and want to know whether it ticks the six boxes, first check whether it's slow in is your website slow? and, if it's a WordPress, what it really costs you each year in the full bill.

Paste your address into the free check and in five seconds you'll know what your site is built with and how an AI would read it. If you'd rather talk it through, the audit is free and we reply with figures, not a sales meeting.