What a website is for
A company website does three jobs. It proves you are real: a name, an address, a licence number, faces, photos of the work. It explains what you do in enough detail that a customer can decide to contact you. And it answers the questions customers ask, so that search engines and AI tools can send those customers to you.
Everything a site should include follows from those three jobs. Everything that does not serve them is decoration, and decoration is where budgets disappear.
The pages a small company needs
- Home. One sentence saying what you do and for whom, a WhatsApp button, and the three or four things a visitor most wants: services, location, hours, a way to contact you. Not a slideshow.
- Services or products. One section per service with what it includes, who it is for and, where possible, the price or price range. Hidden prices lose visitors who would have bought.
- About. Who runs the company, since when, where, with which licences or memberships, and real photos. This page builds trust and is read more than owners expect.
- Contact. Address with a map, hours, phone, WhatsApp, e-mail, and a short form. The WhatsApp button should be on every page, not only here.
- Answer pages. One page per question your customers really ask, with a direct answer at the top. These are the pages search engines and AI tools quote. Our article on writing a FAQ page that ChatGPT quotes shows the format.
- Privacy page. Short and honest about what the site collects.
For most small companies that is eight to ten pages. A store adds a product catalogue; a company that publishes adds a blog that can run on its own.
What it does not need
- A news section that will not be updated. An empty "latest news" from two years ago harms trust.
- Animations and videos on the home page that make the site slow on a phone.
- Stock photos of people in suits shaking hands. Use your own, even if they are modest.
- Ten paragraphs of "we are committed to excellence". One paragraph of facts.
- Features copied from a competitor's site without a reason.
What the site must do underneath
Visitors never see these, but they decide whether the site works.
- Fast on a phone. Most of your visitors are on a phone, often on a weak connection.
- Readable by search engines and AI tools. Clean titles, descriptions, structured data for your organisation, services and FAQs, a sitemap, and a plain summary file for AI crawlers.
- In every language your customers use. Arabic and English for most Gulf businesses, properly written in each, not machine-translated. Our article on choosing Arabic, English or both covers the decision.
- Secure and backed up. Updates applied, backups taken, a certificate that does not expire.
- Editable by you. You should be able to change a price or an opening hour without calling anyone.
What drives the cost
Quotes for "a website" range widely because they describe different things. These five factors explain most of the difference.
| Factor | Moves the price up when |
|---|---|
| Number of pages | More than about ten, or many product pages |
| Languages | Each language is written for its readers, not translated automatically |
| Custom features | A booking system, a client login, a price calculator, an API |
| Content | Texts and photos are produced for you rather than supplied by you |
| Maintenance | Hosting, security, backups and changes are included monthly |
When comparing quotes, ask each provider how many pages and languages are included, who writes the texts, what happens after launch, and whether you can edit the site yourself. Two quotes that look far apart often become close once those answers are on the table. Our own packages, with the pages and languages each includes, are on the services page.
How to prepare so it goes fast
Have ready: your logo and brand colours if you have them, your licence details, your services with a sentence each, real photos, the questions customers ask most, and the name of the person who approves texts. A site with these in hand at the first session launches in weeks; one without them waits on the owner.
If you want a plain opinion on what your business needs, message us on WhatsApp and tell us what you do and who your customers are.