The one-pager
A single page answering every question a visitor arrives with, right for a plumber or a small trade with one clear offer.
Read the guide →A small website goes wrong at the planning table.
A one-pager, a brochure site, an event microsite or a link page: each is a small project with a handful of decisions that are hard to undo once the site is live. This guide goes through them in order, from what shape your site should take to what it must legally show.
Plan your site in an afternoonFour shapes a small site can take
Most small sites are one of four shapes. Knowing which one yours is settles the page count before you plan a single page.
The brochure site
A handful of pages, each answering one distinct question a visitor brings, useful once a business has more than one thing to say.
Plan the pages →The event microsite
A page built to do one job for a fixed period, a wedding, a launch, a fundraiser, then taken down once it has done it.
See the campaign page →The link page
A single scrolling list of links, right for a musician or small charity pointing people at profiles, tickets or a donation page elsewhere.
Check which shape fits →Where to start with a project this size
A site with one to ten pages does not need a project team, but it does have a handful of decisions that are hard to undo once the pages are live: what shape the site takes, who holds the domain name, where the files sit, and what the law requires you to show. Most of what goes wrong with a small site is settled before anyone opens a website builder, at the planning stage.
A small site usually turns out to be one of four things: a one-pager that answers a single question, a brochure of a few pages covering what you do and how to reach you, an event microsite built to run for a season and then come down, or a link page that sends visitors on to a booking system or social profiles. Working out which of these yours is settles most of what follows, including how many pages you actually need and what belongs on each one.
What the rest of this guide covers
- Planning what the site needs to do before choosing how to build it
- Domains, DNS, the system that points a domain name at your website, and hosting, and how the three fit together
- What a UK website must show by law, and how to check it against named regulations
- Choosing a way to build the site against criteria
- Collecting enquiries and visitor data without falling foul of UK GDPR or PECR
- Making the site fast enough and accessible enough to meet the WCAG standard
- Launching it, and keeping it alive once the novelty wears off
If you already have a rough idea of what you want, start with Planning a Small Site in an Afternoon. If the legal side is the part on your mind, the UK Website Legal Essentials Checker works through the requirements from named regulations and shows its working beneath the result, though it does not replace professional advice for anything that turns out to be complicated.
What's covered here, and what you'll be able to do afterwards
Each section stands on its own, so you can start wherever your project actually is.
Where the planning happens first
Most small websites go wrong at the planning stage. The planning guide sets out the handful of decisions about page count, audience and structure that are hard to undo once the site is live.
The four shapes a small site takes
A one-pager, a brochure site, an event microsite and a link page answer different kinds of visitor questions, and knowing which one you need decides almost everything that follows. The guide on what a mini-site is walks through each shape and how to tell which one fits your case.
A project
A small site is a small project with a handful of decisions that matter: what to call the domain, where to host the files, what the law requires you to show, and how visitors will get in touch. Each of those has its own guide, worked through in the order you would actually meet them.
Two places to begin
Start with the planning guide if you haven't yet decided what the site needs to do, or go straight to the legal essentials checker if the build is already underway and you need to know what your pages must show. Either is a reasonable starting point, depending on how far along you are.
Where to go from here
If you have not settled the shape of your site yet, start with the planning guide. If you already know what you are building and want to check the legal basics, go straight to the checker.