The first thing a lot of people send us is a list.

Home, About, Services, Team, Testimonials, Blog, FAQ, Resources, Portfolio, Pricing, Process, Contact, Privacy Policy, and something called “Coming Soon.” Fourteen pages, written at midnight, and every one of them feels non-negotiable because a competitor has it.

Then we ask one question: which of these do you actually want someone to read before they contact you?

Usually the list drops to five. Sometimes four. And the relief on the other end of that call is the best part of our job.

Why the long list happens.

It isn’t overthinking. It’s a reasonable response to a bad assumption, which is that a website’s job is to be complete.

It isn’t. A website’s job is to get one specific person from “who is this” to “I’ll reach out” without losing them along the way. Every extra page is another place to lose them. Fourteen pages means fourteen chances for someone to wander into your Resources section and never come back.

More pages also means more writing, and unwritten pages are where projects go to die. We’ve had a build sit at 95% done for weeks, not because of anything technical, but because the About page was still an empty doc and nobody had the energy to fill it. The design was ready. The words weren’t. The site everyone can finish beats the site nobody can.

The five that do the work.

1. Home. Not a welcome mat. Within about five seconds it has to answer what you do, who it’s for, and what to do next. That’s it. Most homepages fail because they open with something poetic instead of something clear. Clear first. Personality right after.

2. About. The page people actually read, and almost nobody writes well. It isn’t your resume. It’s where a stranger decides whether they’d enjoy emailing you. Say why you do this, who you’re good for, and who you’re not. “Not for everyone” is a feature.

3. Services. What you sell, what it costs or roughly what it costs, and what happens after someone says yes. Vagueness here reads as expensive. If you can’t publish exact numbers, publish a range and the reason it varies. People will forgive a range. They won’t forgive a maze.

4. Proof. Testimonials, results, before-and-afters, a small portfolio. Whatever you actually have. This is the page that converts, and it’s the one people skip because they feel like they don’t have enough yet. Three honest sentences from one real client outperform a page of adjectives about yourself.

And if you don’t have clients yet, you still have proof, it just doesn’t look like a testimonial. A project you did for free. Work you made for your own business. A before-and-after of something you fixed. A short, specific note from someone who has watched you work. Even a plain walkthrough of how you do the thing counts, because it shows a stranger what working with you feels like. Proof isn’t a client count. It’s evidence that you’re real and you finish what you start.

5. Contact or booking. One clear way to reach you. A form or a calendar, not both, and not a phone number you don’t answer. Ask for the fewest fields you can live with, because every extra field costs you inquiries.

That’s the whole thing. Five pages, and it can grow later.

The two everybody builds and then abandons.

A blog you’re not going to write. A blog is a commitment, not a page. An empty one, or one whose last post is from two years ago, actively hurts you: it tells visitors the business might be dead. If you want to write, great, start it when you’re actually writing. Until then, leave it off. Nobody has ever noticed a missing blog.

An FAQ nobody clicks. FAQs are usually a place to hide answers that belong on the pages themselves. If people keep asking what it costs, that answer goes on Services, not into a collapsible box three clicks away. The exception is genuinely repetitive practical questions, like turnaround or what’s included. Then it earns its spot.

Neither of these is a rule against blogs or FAQs. It’s a rule about sequence. Build the five that work, launch, then add.

“But I’ll want more later.”

You probably will. That’s fine, and it’s the whole point of building something small properly.

A site built on five solid pages has room to grow. A site built on fourteen half-finished ones has to be rebuilt, because the structure was never designed around what you actually do. It was designed to look thorough. Adding a page to a good site takes an afternoon. Untangling a sprawling one takes weeks.

Start with what you can fill and defend. Add the rest when you have a reason.

Not sure which five are yours?

That’s genuinely the conversation, not something you have to work out before the conversation.

We’ll ask what you sell, who buys it, and what you want someone to do when they land on your site. The page list falls out of those three answers almost every time, and it’s usually shorter than what you walked in with.

Fifteen minutes, no pitch.