How Many Pages Do You Really Need on Your Website?

One of the most common questions I get from business owners is surprisingly simple. 

“How many pages should my website have?” 

And usually that question comes with a little bit of stress behind it. 

Should it have five pages? 
Ten pages? 
Twenty pages? 

Do you need a blog? 
A resources section? 
Landing pages? 

Or maybe you are wondering if your website is too small or too big. 

The good news is there is no magic number. 

But there is a simple way to figure out exactly how many pages your website actually needs. 

And today I will walk you through it. 

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Transcript

The Real Question About Page Count

Carrie Saunders 0:00

One of the most common questions I get from business owners is surprisingly simple. How many pages do my website have? And usually that question is with a little bit of stress behind their voice. Should I have five pages? 10, 20, do I need a blog? A resource section? Landing pages? Or maybe you're wondering if your website's too big or too small. The good news is there is no magic number, but there is a simple way to figure out exactly how many pages your website actually needs. And today I'll walk you through it. Let's dive in. Struggling to turn website traffic into real sales, you're not alone and you don't have to figure it out all yourself. Welcome to Smarter Online Business, the podcast for course creators, coaches, and e-commerce entrepreneurs who want their websites to convert visitors into buyers without the tech overwhelm. I'm your host, Carrie Saunders, a website strategist and conversion expert with over 20 years of experience. Each episode delivers simple, proven strategies to help you generate more revenue and make your website your smartest sales tool. Welcome back to the show. We are talking about how many pages does our website actually need. Doesn't matter whether you're selling services, products, etc., how many pages do we need? A lot of business owners assume a bigger website is a better website. And it's not necessarily true because more pages means more credibility, right? Not really. In fact, one of the biggest problems I see is websites that are too complicated. There's actually one client that just popped in my head. I'm like, they really need to take down a lot of their pages, and they haven't, they haven't done it yet. And they ended up basically going out of business and only sell on eBay now. You know, too many pages are are not good, too many menu options, especially that, too many directions for visitors to go. What happens is visitors get overwhelmed and leave. Your website should guide people and not confuse them. So instead of asking, how many pages should I have? A better question is what pages will help visitors understand what you do and take the next step. Let me say that again. What pages help visitors understand what you do and take the next step? So there are some core pages most businesses, almost every website, need. They do not need 50, just five. Five is a generally a good number to start with. If you're starting out, five pages is usually the great foundation. So page number one would be your homepage. It is the front door of your business. Its job is not to explain everything, its job is to quickly help visitors answer three questions. Is this for me? Can this person help me? And what should I do next? Your homepage should guide visitors to the most important areas of your website. Think of it as the map of the experience, not the entire experience itself. I see a lot of people trying to cram everything into that home page. And it's really the guide, it's the trust starting building factor and the guide to what's next. Now, the about page, that's another one that's very, very important. It's almost always one of the most visited pages on a website. People want to know who they're working with. So this is a very important website to concentrate on. The biggest mistake I see on about pages is that they start reading like a resume. So we don't want them to read like a resume. It should connect your story to why you care about helping your audience. So it should help people trust you. It should be a bit more about them than it is about you. And this is kind of a nuanced thing that's a little harder to get down until you really get it. But it should be that story behind why are you doing what you're doing? Most business owners I run into sell the products or the services that they do because it's their passion about it in some form and some reason behind it. So bring that passion through there. Tell them why you're doing what you're doing. That will help build trust if you've got a little bit of vulnerability in there. And then the third page would be products or services. Now, if you're e-commerce, yes, you're gonna have a product page per product. So just keep that in mind. But we're gonna kind of lump those together. And then if you're a service provider, we're gonna want to have at least just one page at start back with your main service that you have. So this is where you explain what you offer. For your service business, it might be like your services, your packages, how you work with clients. Uh, for product-based businesses, it might be a list of your categories with featured products potentially, or a link, or your shop. Maybe it shows your shop there. And the key here is clarity. So visitors should quickly understand what you offer, who it's for, and how to get started with either the product or the service and purchasing it. And then the fourth page is a contact page. This one I stress a lot on the podcast, too. It is so important. It needs to be incredibly easy for someone to reach out and get a hold of you. So that might be a contact form, a booking calendar, your email, or even directions to your physical location if you have one. So don't make people hunt for how to contact you. And it's usually a good idea to give them at least two to three options, whether that's a form and email, or a form and phone number, or a form in a chat box or something like that. Give them a couple options too. That's going to build a little more trust. And then page number five, and this can be added as you grow, especially if you're brand new building your website. You know, this one you might want to, you know, leave this one for a little bit later or like at the end, because this one's a little bit more involved, but it would be a resource or content page. And if you're established a business, I highly recommend you have this for sure. So this is where your expertise can shine. So for some businesses, this is a blog that you regularly update, like we talk on the podcast. Once a month minimum is what I recommend. For others, it could be a podcast. Again, that should still be a regular piece of content, a regular piece of content that works for you too. You might have videos here, you might have guides, you might have some case studies or FAQs. So content helps build trust and can bring people to your website through search and discovery, which is why I encourage this. But not necessarily if you're just starting your website now, I don't want you to get overwhelmed. Add this in when you got everything else nailed down. But remember, something like a massive blog library or podcast is not for every business. Although it does give some content for search engines to find you and for AI to find you, it's not something you must do right away. It's something I want you to add on when you have capacity. Now I know some of you out there might need more than five pages, and that's honestly completely fine. These are the basic five pages I feel like everybody should need. And if you need more pages beyond that, they should exist for a clear reason. Just don't have a page to have a page. So what could some of those other pages be? For example, if you offer multiple distinct services, you may want a page per service. If you have several product categories, you definitely want the many different pages. You know, e-commerce is going to break this rule for sure on the five pages. If you create lots of content that's super valuable to your audience, for sure have more pages. And if you have landing pages for specific offers, sure, yes, have those pages. Usually the landing pages, though, are direct traffic to it, not necessarily linked. And I don't know if you can hear the cat rustling around, but he is deciding to get in my office drawer right now. So I want you to ask yourself when you think about these extra pages. Does this page help someone understand what you do or take the next step? If the answer is no, the page might not be necessary. If it's yes, do it. Do that web, do that page. So then what about the people out there listening who have had a website for a long time? I'm gonna raise my hand over here. I've had a website for over, well, as long as the business has been around. Um, and so sometimes businesses grow over time without much strategy. A new page gets added here, another page gets added there. It might have had a great purpose at the time. Eventually you end up with navigation menu that looks like a restaurant menu or a really confusing restaurant menu, and visitors don't know where to start or where to go next. Your website navigation should feel simple and intentional. And sometimes fewer pages actually lead to more conversions. And not necessarily, maybe you do need more pages, but maybe the navigation is simpler. So for us, sometimes I'll go back to our website and review our old pages and be like, oh, wow, I really need to revamp that. So it's another thing that you should do once you have an established business. Make sure you're regularly reviewing your older pages and make sure they're still relevant now. So then I want you to practice this um test on your website after you get done listening to this. I want you to look at your website menu and ask yourself, if someone visited my website for the first time, would they know what I do, who I help, where to learn more, and how to take that next step? So if the answer is yes, your structure is probably working for your menu. I get menu questions all the time. If not, it might be time to simplify the menu up there. So let's say that you are an e-commerce store and we're an established store like us where you have lots of pages, lots of history, lots of blogs, products. You can still keep your menu simple and still have those pages accessible. So for a blog, for example, there should be a link to the blog at the top. And then on that page, then there's subsequent links that can get you into like the archives of older blog articles or a search bar there. So there's ways to get to that meet that's still down under there without having it clog up your menu at the top. So then let's recap real quick. Most businesses can start with about five core pages. And remember, I said start as you grow, you might need more pages. And those five are a home page, an about page, a services or products page, a contact page, and a content or resource page. Um, that can help, you know, that's the last one you want to do. And from there you can grow intentionally as your business grows. And remember, a website should guide the visitors. We're always wanting to guide the visitors. More pages does not necessarily make it better unless it has a really good purpose for your visitors. We want to make sure those pages are very, very clear. That's all we have for this week's episode of the Smarter Online Business Podcast. We hope you thoroughly enjoyed this tip on how to make your website better and what five pages are the core pages for a website. And we would love it if you would rate or reviews on your favorite podcast player so that we can reach other business owners just like you, have a smarter and more effective website. See you next week.