Websites have changed a lot over the years. But that doesn’t mean your business website needs every new feature, integration or bit of clever functionality that comes along. In fact, we’d argue the opposite.
A good business website needs to do the important things really well. It needs to help the right people find you, quickly understand what you do, trust your business and take the next step. Behind the scenes, it should also be fast, secure, accessible and easy for you to manage.
So, how does yours measure up? Here’s our practical checklist of what we consider the must-haves for a modern business website, plus a few things that are useful when they serve a genuine purpose.
The quick business website checklist
At a minimum, we think a good business website should have:
- SEO and AI search optimisation
- Clear, useful and on-brand content
- Fast loading speeds
- Good accessibility
- Appropriate website security
- SSL certification
- Spam protection on forms
- A privacy policy
- Clear trust signals, such as testimonials and relevant certifications
- Administrator-level access for the business owner
- A useful About page
- An easy-to-use Contact page
Depending on your business, we’d also strongly consider:
- A mailing list sign-up or lead magnet
- A regularly updated blog or resources section
- Terms and conditions
- Other functionality that has a clear job to do
Let’s look at why each one matters.
1. Your website needs to be optimised for SEO and AI search
For years, website optimisation has largely focused on Google. That still matters, but the way people search is changing.
Potential customers now discover businesses through traditional search engines and AI-powered search tools. Your website needs to make it easy for both people and search technologies to understand who you are, what you do, who you help and where you operate. That means getting the fundamentals right, including clear page titles and descriptions, a logical site structure, useful headings, internal links and content that properly answers the questions your customers are asking.
AI search adds another layer. Clear information about your business, services, expertise and location helps AI tools understand your business and when it may be relevant to a user’s question.
The important bit? Don’t optimise your website so heavily for search that it stops sounding like you. The best website content still needs to be useful for the humans reading it.
2. Your content needs to sound like your business
Getting somebody onto your website is only the first step. Once they’re there, can they quickly work out what you do? Does the content answer their questions? Does it sound like the business they’ll actually be dealing with?
Good website content should be:
- Clear and easy to understand.
- Written for your customers.
- Consistent with your brand and tone of voice.
- Structured so people can scan it easily.
- Useful rather than stuffed with search terms.
- Clear about what someone should do next.
This is one of those areas where SEO, AI optimisation and user experience should work together rather than compete with each other. Write useful, well-structured content that genuinely answers your customers’ questions and you’ve already got a much stronger foundation.
3. Your website needs to be fast
People don’t have much patience for slow websites.
Large images, unnecessary plugins, animations, videos and third-party scripts can all add weight to a site. Individually they might seem harmless, but together they can make a website noticeably slower.
Website performance matters for the user experience and search visibility. Google recommends good Core Web Vitals, which measure loading performance, responsiveness and visual stability. Speed also connects with something that’s particularly important to us at Two Sparrows: sustainability.
Every page loaded requires data and energy. Keeping websites lean and efficient can improve the experience for your customers while also reducing unnecessary digital bloat.
Before adding something to a website, we like asking a simple question: Does it add enough value to justify being there? If it doesn’t, you probably don’t need it.
4. Your website needs to be accessible
Accessibility isn’t an optional extra that you add once everything else is finished.
Your website should be designed and built so that as many people as possible can use it, including people with visual, hearing, motor and cognitive impairments. The internationally recognised Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) cover areas such as text alternatives for images, colour contrast, keyboard navigation and the way content is structured.
Accessibility also tends to make websites better for everyone. Clear navigation, readable text, sensible headings, properly labelled forms and straightforward content aren’t only useful for people with disabilities. They’re good design practice.
5. Your website needs proper security
Your website is a business asset, so protecting it matters. Website security isn’t one plugin that you install and forget about. There are different layers involved.
Depending on how your site is built and hosted, these can include:
- Secure, reputable hosting
- An SSL certificate so the website uses HTTPS
- Appropriate security tools or plugins
- Regular software and plugin updates
- Secure passwords and administrator accounts
- Two-factor authentication for log-ins
- Backups
Google also includes secure HTTPS connections among the things website owners should consider when assessing the overall experience their site provides. Security isn’t particularly exciting when everything is working properly. It becomes considerably more interesting when it isn’t.
6. Your contact forms need spam protection
If you’ve ever had a website form suddenly start delivering a steady stream of nonsense to your inbox, you’ll understand this one.
Contact forms should include an appropriate CAPTCHA or other spam filtering system. It’s a relatively small piece of website functionality, but it helps keep automated submissions out of your inbox while allowing genuine customers to get through.
The important part is getting the balance right. Spam protection shouldn’t make contacting you unnecessarily difficult for real people.
7. Your website needs the appropriate legal information
All New Zealand business websites should have a privacy policy explaining how personal information collected through the organisation and website is handled.
Depending on the type of business and what happens on the site, you may also need terms and conditions or other legal information. For example, an ecommerce website will have different requirements from a straightforward service business website with a contact form.
This is an area where we’d always recommend getting appropriate professional advice rather than copying a policy from another website and hoping for the best.
8. Your website needs proof that customers can trust you
You know you’re good at what you do. A potential customer visiting your website for the first time doesn’t.
Give them reasons to trust you.
That might include:
- Customer testimonials
- Reviews
- Relevant industry memberships
- Professional certifications
- Accreditations
- Case studies
- Examples of your work
You don’t need to cram every credential you’ve ever earned onto your home page. Choose the proof that’s relevant to the decision your customer is trying to make, and the ones that you’re most proud of, and put it where it will be useful.
9. You need administrator access to your own website
This one is particularly important to us. Straight-up, you need to have administrator-level access to your business website.
Your website is one of your digital business assets. You shouldn’t be locked out of it, dependent on one provider to make every small change or discover that you can’t access your website if you decide to work with somebody else.
At Two Sparrows, we believe our clients should have control over their digital assets. That doesn’t mean you have to manage the technical side yourself. It simply means the choice is yours.
10. Your ‘About’ page needs to be worth reading
The About page often gets treated as the place to write a company history and upload a photo of the team.
It can do much more than that.
People visit your ‘About’ page because they want to know who they’re considering doing business with. Use it to explain what matters to you, how you work, why you do things the way you do and what makes your business a good fit for the customer.
Yes, it’s about you. But it should still be useful to them.
11. Your ‘Contact’ page needs to make the next step easy
Someone has read your website, decided they like what they see and wants to talk to you. Don’t make them hunt for a way to do it.
A good ‘Contact’ page clearly explains how to get in touch and what happens next. Depending on your business, that could include a contact form, phone number, email address, location, opening hours or booking link. And please test the form occasionally.
A beautiful ‘Contact’ page isn’t much help if enquiries are disappearing into nowhere.
What about a mailing list and lead magnet?
For many businesses, we’d put an email sign-up fairly high on the list.
Not everyone who visits your website will be ready to contact you today. An email list gives interested people another way to stay connected with your business.
Simply saying “sign up for our newsletter” may not give them much reason to hand over their email address, though. A useful lead magnet can work a lot better. That could be a checklist, guide, template, calculator or another genuinely helpful resource that’s relevant to the problems your customers are trying to solve. The key word is ‘useful’.
Don’t create a download simply because somebody told you every website needs a lead magnet.
Does every business website need a blog?
Not necessarily. But for many businesses, a good blog is well worth having.
Useful blog content allows you to answer questions that don’t fit naturally onto your core service pages. It can demonstrate your knowledge, support SEO and give search engines and AI tools more useful information about the subjects your business knows well.
A neglected blog full of outdated, generic articles isn’t particularly helpful. If you’re going to have one, have a reason for it and publish content that’s genuinely useful to the people you want to reach.
Website features that are nice to have… or unnecessary website bloat?
This is where we’d encourage you to be a little ruthless.
Your website doesn’t automatically need:
- An AI chatbot
- Complex animations
- Video backgrounds
- Pop-ups everywhere
- Multiple sliders
- Social media feeds
- A dozen different integrations
- Fancy functionality nobody actually uses
There may be a perfectly good reason to use any of them. The question isn’t “Can we add this?” It’s “What will this do for the customer or the business?”
If a feature makes your website easier to use, helps customers make a decision or improves an important business process, great. If it’s there because it’s fashionable, looks clever or came bundled with a plugin, we’d think twice.
Every extra feature can add complexity, increase page weight, require maintenance and potentially create another accessibility, security or performance consideration. A simpler website that does its job really well will usually beat a complicated one that’s trying to do everything.
Is your business website up to scratch?
A good website doesn’t need to be the fanciest website in your industry. It does need to work.
It should be easy to find, easy to use, fast, secure, accessible and genuinely useful. It should sound like your business, give customers confidence and make the next step obvious. And importantly, it should belong to you.
If you’ve worked through this checklist and spotted a few areas that aren’t quite up to scratch, get in touch with Two Sparrows. We can help you work out what’s worth fixing, what can stay exactly as it is and where your website could be working harder for your business.
Frequently asked questions
How often should I review my business website?
A full website redesign shouldn’t be necessary every year, but it’s worth reviewing your website regularly. Check that contact details, services, staff information, links and legal information are current, and keep an eye on security updates, website performance and forms throughout the year. Our journey to update the TwoSparrows website might inspire you.
How do I know if my website needs a redesign or just an update?
Start with the underlying problems. If the site still represents your brand, works well technically and has a sound structure, targeted updates to content, design or functionality may be enough. If there are problems with usability, accessibility, performance, structure or the underlying technology, a larger redesign may make more sense.
Should I add new website features because my competitors have them?
Not automatically. A competitor having a chatbot, animation, booking system or other feature doesn’t mean your customers need one. Look at the job the feature is doing and whether it would genuinely improve your own customer’s experience before adding it.
Can too many plugins and features slow down a website?
They can. Plugins, scripts, fonts, images, video and third-party integrations can all affect website performance depending on how they’re implemented. Rather than setting an arbitrary limit, review what each element contributes and remove functionality that isn’t earning its place.