If you’re a website owner or you’re planning to get a website then you must know that there essential website pages that are so important that having them can boost your brand’s trustworthiness, improve user experience or even drive increased sales in some cases but some web developers do miss out on these web pages.
Whether your web developer knows about these pages or not, it is important you know about these pages, how they can help your business and if you really need them set up on your website or not.
Also, some of these pages are not only important, they are part of the legal requirements for websites. Depending on your location as a brand, target audience and industry, you may need to have some of these pages to be compliant with specific regulations in some jurisdictions.
What Pages Should Every Website Have?
Table of Contents
Every websites needs pages that will help it build trust, generate leads, share general information and achieve other specific outcomes. Although all websites do not need the exact same types of web pages, there are specific website pages you’ll find on nearly all kinds of websites like home page, blog, contact, about etc.
It is not enough to know about these pages, understanding how to use them is equally important. Below is a summarized diagram of some of the most popular pages on most websites and where they are needed.
| Website Page | Why It’s Important | Who Needs It? |
|---|---|---|
| Homepage | Introduces your business, highlights your value proposition, and guides visitors to key sections of your website. | Every website |
| About Us | Builds trust by sharing your story, mission, experience, and what makes your business unique. | Every website |
| Services or Products | Clearly explains what you offer and helps visitors decide whether your solutions meet their needs. | Businesses selling products or services |
| Contact Us | Makes it easy for customers to reach you through phone, email, contact forms, or location details. | Every website |
| Testimonials or Reviews | Provides social proof that builds credibility and reassures potential customers. | Most business websites |
| FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) | Answers common questions, reduces customer hesitation, and can improve search visibility. | Most business websites |
As a website owner you don’t only need these pages on your website, these pages have to be able to meet the need of your audience while fulfilling the intent as expected for such pages otherwise you may not gain much from having them.
How to Structure Website Pages
It is not only important to know the essential pages you need on a website, you also have to arrange your pages properly if you want to get the best results, relevance and optimum visibility for those pages.
If you have a lot of pages or categories or where you’re selling a lot of product for instance, you don’t want to have all your pages packed on the menu individually as it might look overwhelming to users or even end up in creating a bad user experience for your website.
As a web developer, I always advice clients to use a main page and sub page structure arrangement where they have a lot of pages on their website. For example, if your website offers different digital marketing services, like SEO, Content Marketing, Email Automation etc. Instead of listing all of them on the menu, you can list each of them a sub pages under the service page.
Below is a structure I use for most of the website I work with;
Homepage
│
├── About
├── Services
│ ├── Service A
│ ├── Service B
│
├── Blog
│ ├── Category A
│ ├── Category B
│
├── Pricing
├── Contact
├── FAQ
└── Privacy Policy
This gives the website a clean design, keeping the architecture well structured and easily navigable for users.
Home Page
Your Home Page is the most important page on a website. It is the main landing page where every user gets to see, as soon as they land on your website, using your direct domain URL.
It is also where you’ll have a summarized version of what your website is all about, displayed in both images, text any other format. Check out an example of a home page here.
There are two kinds of home pages viz; dynamic and static home page.
Dynamic home pages are mostly used by blogs to display the latest blog posts, articles or content on a website. It is the default page display for all WordPress developed websites.
A static home page on the other hand is used by most websites to display a summarized version of what a website is all about. It also links to all the other pages on the website.
Do you Need a Home Page on your Website?
Despite it’s importance, some websites may decide they don’t really need a static home page. This mostly happens with blogs and other websites that upload articles and written content consistently. Especially a personal blog or journal.
If you’re running that kind of a platform, you may not need a static home page as the blog page is automatically set up as a dynamic home page to display your most recent content and other pieces of content in chronological order, in most cases.
The reason you need a dynamic home page for a blog is so that you can display your blog posts in a chronological order on the blog so visitor can easily see your most recent posts, as soon as they land on the blog.
While the static home page is most suitable for business websites to display their business, a dynamic page works best for non-business websites and other websites that don’t have a lot of other things to do, apart creating and sharing content.
While designing a home page, you want to keep it light weight. Build it in a way that a user will always want to click through relevant links to explore other pages or sections on your website after landing on the home page.
About Page
The “About Page” is another one of the most important pages on a website. And whether you’re running a blog or business website, you’ll most likely need an “About Page” as an essential page on your website.
Mostly coming immediately after the home page in the menu section, your About Page is important because it contains all the information about your website.
For most websites, About Page usually includes information you want any first time user to know about the site. For example, this could be information like; “Why your brand was started”, “Your Core values” “Vision, Mission statement” etc.
Beyond the structural design, About Page is an essential website page because it can help in establishing your expertise as a brand, showcasing your background and business. When set up correctly, it can boost your website’s EEAT, (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness), one of the key parameters used by Google in ranking websites.
So, while building your website and setting up your about page, be sure to include these details in a way that’ll capture all necessary details that will help position your website prominently in the search engine.
Do keep in mind that while the about page is an essential website page for most business websites, most NGO websites prefer to divide the page into “Who we Are”, and What we Do” etc. Some NGOs also have these as a sub page under the about page. Just be sure you choose a style that works for you, based on your website goals.
PS: Remember your About Page also has to be really captivating if you plan to convince your users to take a specific action on the website.
Services Page
Services page contains a list of all the services you offer on your website in details. It is also one of the most important pages on every website.
While your home page summarizes what you do, the Services/What we do page gives even more details about your services and business generally.
If you’re running an educational website for example, you can use this page to describe the services you provide, mentioning all the important details that will make an interested reader to want to patronize you.
While designing your services page, make it so compelling that a potential client will readily choose you over your competition, after they get to read your page.
No matter the product or services you’re selling on your website, you need to describe it in a very persuasive way that will give you an edge over your competition.
Contact Page
Like the pages we mentioned previously, your “Contact Page is another one of the most important pages on a website. It is where your potential clients or visitors will get your contact information to reach out to you after coming across your website.
A number of brands do prefer to have a single contact form on this page but that doesn’t have to be all there is to it. A contact page should include details of how your website users can contact you effortlessly.
To give people options, you might want to add contact details like office address, phone numbers, emails, social media handles and any other contact information you’d want to add. This increases your chances of getting inquiries.
Again, to further simplify how people get to access you, you might want to include forms like contact forms, quotation at your contact page and then link everything to your central email address.
If you’re running a small business website, an NGO website, ecommerce website etc., a contact page is an essential website page that will make it easy for users to reach your business. It will also be useful as a part of your NAP, making it easy for search engines and AI tools to index your business properly.
Product Page
A product page is another essential website pages for businesses and e-commerce websites. It is only necessary for you to add this page, if you’re selling a product on your website.
Although it is recommended you make your products very visible on your website’s home page… It is still important to have a separate products page where you can feature each product on the website.
While creating your products page, be sure to describe and display each product in details, including other things like specifications, pricing etc.
Also, instead of calling it a product page, you can decide to make it like a gallery page where you display your products based on their categories.
If you’re not selling products on your website, this page is not necessary.
FAQ. Page
Recently Frequently Asked Questions AKA FAQ has evolved to become one of the most essential pages on websites.
Over time, it has been used by website owners in answering some common questions usually asked by website visitors.
Recently, with the on set of AI Chatbots and artificial intelligence powered search platforms, the FAQ pages have become an important requirements for websites that plan to get cited on the AI platforms, making it a one of the must have pages for a website.
Usually, instead of waiting for a user or prospect to ask you questions about your website directly, the FAQ page allows you to bring together all the popular questions, that’s likely to be asked, their answers and any other information users would like to know; answer and update them on the FAQ page.
With this done, a user with questions can quickly find answers to their questions right on the website, without having to contact you personally.
Additionally, a well structured FAQ page makes it easy to be cited in AI search because its question and answer format makes it easy for AI models to understand and index the page.
Testimonial Page
Although testimonials can be displayed on your home page, having a testimonial page on your website helps you display a much more detailed review and testimonials from your clients thus giving you a further social boost especially for your human users.
Your testimonial page shows your users what other people are saying based on their experience with your business. It is also one of the most important pages on a website.
It could be about your product, services or even the use of your website… Having a testimonial page shows some authenticity and a proof that you’re what you claim to be. It also shows up on AI search, including Google overviews, lending some credibility to your brand.
In addition to making your testimonial page stand out with the nice things people say about you may also want to add details about the people giving these testimonials as it will boost authenticity.
This details could include thing like their names, portfolio etc. of the people giving testimonials or just their names, depending on what you and the people giving the testimonial are comfortable with.
Blog/Resources or Insights
A blog technically is a collection of content or posts shared on your website. It can also be a section of the website. And sometimes a whole website could be a blog. It can be called different names but you’ll most likely see names like blog, resources, insights etc.
Although it is one of the most essential pages on most websites, it is not a must have page for all websites.
Where your website is set to display your latest blog posts on the home page, you don’t need to have a separate blog page. This is exactly what you’ll notice on most news platforms like Forbes, BBC, CNN etc. Instead of a home page and a separate blog, you’ll see a blog like front page, displaying their content in categories.
Now, if you are running a business website has a home page displaying other contents of the site, you’ll need a blog page to display your posts on the website.
Basically, your blog page should be able to display all your posts on the website, including press release etc., chronologically.
So, with a blog page set on your website, you don’t need to set up any other page for other posts formats. Instead, putting the posts on the right category can help you get it displayed appropriately.
Privacy Policy, Terms & Conditions
Recently, Privacy Policy and Terms & Conditions Pages are becoming very crucial for website both for transparency and as a legal requirements, especially with countries under the General Data Protection Law.
A Privacy Policy Page is now a specific requirement intended to show how user data are collected, processed and protected. And in most jurisdiction websites must have these pages to comply with the GDPR or other local data protection laws.
A Terms and Conditions Page on the other hand establishes the rules and guidelines for using a website, including user responsibilities and liabilities.
While it is not mandatory in all industries, having this page shows transparency as it allows a user to understand your website usage policy and their potential liabilities if any. This is an important page for a business website, especially for some specific industries.
In any case, since the emergence of the GDPR Law in 2016, most websites are increasingly including Privacy Page, Cookies and Terms and Conditions as part of the must have pages on their websites.
So you’ll not want to be left out or bear the risk of non compliance with the GDPR Law.
Final Words
Now, while these are not the only web pages you need on a website, depending on what you want to achieve with your website, you can have more or even a lesser number of pages, than the ones I mentioned here.
One thing you must always consider while setting up your website is that there are must have pages on every website. And if you really want to create a great user experience for your users while making the most of your website, you must have these pages in place.
So, now that you have learned about the most important pages you need on your website, do you have these pages set up on your website already?
Hire our team to create a professional website and build these pages for you without any hassle. Reach out to us here.
Now it’s over to you. How many of these web pages do you have on your website, based on your own specific needs? Drop your comments below.
2 Responses
Great blog explaining the importance of pages on a website. How does it affect if few pages are not there?
Hey Jitin,
It all depends on the kind of website you have. Apart from some of the very fundamental pages like; Home, About, Contact, Blog etc., you really don’t need all these pages on your website.
You’ll have to choose your pages based on the nature of your website and what’s applicable to it.