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Website for Businesses: What It Needs and What Matters

What a website for your business needs: a goal, content, legal requirements, technology, Google and costs. The overview for small businesses, with a checklist.

By Ioan Serban10 min read

A website for your business needs a clear goal, content that answers your customers’ questions, the mandatory pages such as a legal notice (Impressum) and a privacy policy, and technology that loads fast on a phone. The first screen decides: visitors must see at once what you offer, where you work and how to reach you. On top come a complete Google Business Profile and accounts in your own name. A simple website costs a few hundred euros once, and often only the domain after that.

This overview shows what matters at each point and leads to the articles with the details. A checklist follows at the end.

A website or just a Google Business Profile?

Ideally both: the profile brings people to you, the website convinces them. The Google Business Profile shows your business in Google Maps and in the local search results. Which businesses appear there depends, according to Google, mainly on relevance, distance and prominence.

On the website you then explain calmly what you offer, for whom and at what price. You decide its content and structure yourself. How the profile and the website work together is explained in the article on local SEO.

The goal first: what should the website bring in?

First decide which inquiry the website should bring in: a call, an email, an appointment request or a visit in person. Everything else follows from that, from the structure of the pages to the label on the most important button.

The second step is your customers’ questions. Write down what people ask you on the phone again and again: what it costs, how long it takes, whether you also come to the next town. Each of these questions deserves an answer on the website. That helps your visitors, and it is exactly the content Google wants to show: its ranking systems are meant, according to Google, to give priority to helpful, reliable information made for people, not to texts written only for search engines.

What belongs on the website

A business website needs to say what you offer, where you work, roughly what it costs, who you are and how to reach you. The most important of these belong on the first screen. In the website checks I do, this is one of the most common mistakes: the home page shows a beautiful picture but does not say what the business does and where.

Typical pages are:

  • the home page with your offer, your service area and the way to an inquiry,
  • one page per service, if you offer several,
  • a page about you or your team, with real photos,
  • the contact page,
  • the legal notice and the privacy policy.

For one or two main services, a single page is often enough. When that fits is explained in the article on the one-page homepage.

Pictures alone are not enough, though. A photographer from Landsberg, for whom I built the first website, wanted large pictures and little text. After a year, the website was on page 3 at Google for “Fotograf Landsberg”, with no ads and no ongoing search engine optimisation. That is why the new version has its own page with text for every service and for places in the region.

Every business website in Germany needs a legal notice and, as soon as it collects personal data, a privacy policy. Since May 2024 the legal notice has been governed by the Digital Services Act (Digitale-Dienste-Gesetz): name and address, for legal entities such as a GmbH also the legal form and the people authorised to represent it, and further details must be easy to recognise, directly accessible and always available (§ 5 DDG). A legal notice that still refers to the old Telemedia Act (Telemediengesetz) is out of date. I see that often in website checks, together with content that nobody has updated in years.

The privacy policy fulfils a duty from the General Data Protection Regulation: anyone who collects personal data, for example through a contact form, must tell the person what happens to the data (Art. 13 GDPR).

For cookies and similar technologies: storing information on a visitor’s device or reading it from there requires their consent. The exception is what is strictly necessary for a service the visitor explicitly asked for (§ 25 TDDDG). Whether your website needs a cookie notice therefore depends on the services built into it, such as analytics tools, embedded maps or videos.

A detailed list with examples and generators for the legal texts is in the guide to building a website yourself with AI. This section is an overview, not legal advice. As of October 2026.

Accessibility: does the BFSG apply to your website?

Usually not: for websites, the law only covers offers through which consumers conclude a contract, and micro-enterprises that provide services are exempt. The German Accessibility Strengthening Act (Barrierefreiheitsstärkungsgesetz, BFSG) has applied since 28 June 2025 to certain products and services for consumers (§ 1 BFSG). For websites, these are “services in electronic commerce”: offers aimed at concluding a contract with consumers, such as an online shop (§ 2 No. 26 BFSG).

Micro-enterprises that provide services are exempt (§ 3 (3) BFSG). These are businesses with fewer than ten employees and an annual turnover or balance sheet total of no more than 2 million euros. And by the wording of the law, a website that only informs about your business, without consumers concluding a contract through it, is not covered at all. If in doubt, ask a lawyer. The Federal Accessibility Agency (Bundesfachstelle Barrierefreiheit) also advises micro-enterprises free of charge. The three questions for placing your website are in the article Does My Website Have to Be Accessible?.

Regardless of the law, I build every website by proven accessibility basics: good contrast, keyboard use, descriptions for images and a clear order of headings. That helps every visitor, on a phone too.

Technology: what the website needs to go online

You need a domain, your address on the web, hosting where the website lives, and an encrypted connection, recognisable by the “https” in the address. The website must work as well on a phone as on a computer, because Google uses the mobile version of a page for indexing and ranking. How loading time and clean technology play their part is explained in the article on technical SEO.

Often overlooked: the domain, hosting and all accounts should be in your name. With me, you create the accounts yourself and give me access, which you can withdraw at any time. You also get the code in an account of your own. That way the website stays in your hands, even if you change providers later.

Whether a website builder is enough for you is covered in the article building your website yourself with AI or a builder.

Being found: profile and website together

For customers to find you, you need a fully completed Google Business Profile with a link to your website, and a website that names your services and your location clearly: in the page titles, in the headings and, with several services, on pages of their own. Google Search Console shows you free of charge which searches your website appears for.

Nobody can honestly promise you a place on page 1. What influences visibility is explained in the articles SEO factors and local SEO.

What a website costs

The one-off price depends mainly on the number of pages and on the features. If you have me build your business website, the price starts at €400 for one page, plus the contact page, legal notice and privacy policy, and each extra page costs €150. A website with an extra feature such as a price calculator or an appointment request starts at €1,200, a web application with online booking or a customer area at €2,000. You know the fixed price before the work starts.

Ongoing costs come from other providers, whose prices I cannot influence. With a static website, made of finished pages without a database, that is often mainly the domain: a .de domain at IONOS costs €1.30 a month at the regular price, less in the first year. Hosting for static pages is offered free by Cloudflare, for example. An email mailbox costs extra, depending on the provider. These prices are as of October 2026; the providers can change them at any time. There is no monthly fee to me for the website. All running items with prices are shown in the article What Does a Website Cost per Month?

Which features are worth it for your business is shown in the overview Which Features Does My Website Need?

How much time to plan for

Usually just a few hours, spread over the project. You know your business best, and I ask the questions that good texts need. For that I use an online questionnaire that you fill in calmly, whenever it suits you. Afterwards you check the texts and approve them.

Also plan time for photos if you have none yet: nothing replaces real pictures of you, your team and your work. How quickly the website goes online depends in the end on good cooperation: the faster questions are answered and texts approved, the sooner it is ready.

After launch

A website has to stay up to date: services, prices, opening hours and the legal notice. Whether it does its job you measure by the inquiries, not by the clicks. In my experience, Search Console and the statistics in the Business Profile are enough for a small business; you do not need a tracking tool with a cookie notice for that.

Checklist: what your website needs

  • A goal: which inquiry should the website bring in?
  • On the first screen: what you offer, where, and how to reach you.
  • Answers to the questions customers ask you most often.
  • Prices or a price range.
  • One page per service, if you offer several.
  • Real photos of you and your work.
  • A legal notice under § 5 DDG and a privacy policy.
  • A cookie consent only where it is needed.
  • A good display on phones and short loading times.
  • Domain, hosting and all accounts in your name.
  • A complete Google Business Profile with a link to the website.
  • Up-to-date content, and success measured by inquiries.

Frequently asked questions

How many pages does a business website need?

For one or two main services, often just one. If you offer several services or work in several places, one page per service pays off, plus the contact page, legal notice and privacy policy.

Does my website have to be accessible?

Under the BFSG only if consumers can conclude a contract through the website, for example in an online shop, and your business is not a micro-enterprise providing services. The details are in the accessibility section above.

What does a website cost per month?

With a static website often only the domain, about €16 a year at IONOS at the regular price (as of October 2026), plus an email mailbox. Hosting for static pages is free at providers such as Cloudflare. There is no monthly fee to me for the website.

Conclusion

A good website for your business does not start with the design, but with the goal and your customers’ questions. If you settle those, keep the mandatory pages up to date and keep the accounts in your own hands, you have got the most important things right.

Already have a website? In the free website check I review it and send you the result by email within three to seven days.