Speed and technical foundations
- Loads in under 2.5 seconds on 4G. Largest Contentful Paint is a ranking signal and a conversion killer. Test on a mid-range Android, not your laptop.
- No layout shift. Reserve space for images and embeds. Nothing loses a tap like a button that moves.
- Images compressed and modern format. Most slow small business sites are slow because of one 4MB hero photo straight off a phone.
- HTTPS everywhere, no mixed content. Non-negotiable, and trivially fixable.
- One H1 per page that contains the actual service and place. Not your company name.
- Unique title and meta description per page. Duplicated metadata across pages is one of the most common and most damaging small-site errors.
- XML sitemap and robots.txt, submitted to Search Console. If Google cannot find your pages, nothing else on this list matters.
- Structured data for your business type. LocalBusiness, Service and FAQ schema help search engines and AI assistants understand and cite you.
Mobile
- Designed on a phone first. Over 60% of small business traffic is mobile and usually the majority of enquiries.
- Tap-to-call in the header, always visible. Your phone number should never be an image.
- Thumb-reachable enquiry action at every scroll position. A sticky bar is not ugly, it is profitable.
- Readable type without zooming. 16px minimum body text.
- Forms that work with one hand. Correct input types, minimal fields, no fiddly date pickers.
Conversion
- What you do, where you do it, in the first screenful. Not a mission statement and not a stock photo of a handshake.
- Proof above the fold. Review count, years trading, accreditations, guarantee.
- Pricing guidance, even if it is ranges. No prices at all is the most common reason visitors leave a service site.
- Coverage area stated explicitly. Most enquiries begin with "do you even come here".
- One primary action per page. Book, call or enquire — pick one and make it obvious.
- Real photographs of real work. Stock imagery actively reduces trust in trades and local services.
Local SEO
- Google Business Profile claimed, complete and posting. For local service businesses this frequently drives more enquiries than the website itself.
- Consistent name, address and phone everywhere. Mismatches across directories dilute local ranking.
- A page per core service, not one "Services" list. Pages rank; bullet points do not.
- A page per key area you serve, with genuine local content. Not thirty identical pages with the town name swapped — that is a penalty risk, not a strategy.
- A steady flow of Google reviews. Recency and volume both matter. Automate the request on job completion.
The thing most sites get wrong
Nearly every failing small business website fails the same way: it is a brochure about the company rather than an answer to the visitor's question.
The visitor arrives with a specific problem, a postcode and a rough deadline. The site talks about the company's values and history. Everything on this checklist is downstream of fixing that one mismatch.
Where Swift Solution fits
We build and manage the whole system for UK small businesses — website, AI chatbot, AI voice receptionist, lead pipeline and process automation — for a monthly fee with no long contract: from £297 for the website, chatbot and follow-up, or from £497 with the AI receptionist. If you would rather not assemble it yourself, book a free consultation and we will tell you honestly whether it is worth doing for your business.