A mini-site is a small site built to answer a handful of questions

Most small sites turn out to be one of four shapes, and which one you're building changes what the planning stage needs to cover. Get the shape wrong and you either end up with pages nobody reads, or a single page that buries one of the questions a visitor came with.

The one-pager

A single page that answers every question a visitor is likely to arrive with before they get in touch. It suits a business with one service, one area and a short decision: a sole-trader plumber whose customers mostly want to know whether he covers their postcode and what a boiler service costs. Both questions fit on one page as long as neither gets buried under the other.

The three-to-five-page brochure

Once a visitor arrives with questions that genuinely don't sit well together, one page starts working against you. A community choir might need a page for upcoming concerts, a separate page for joining and rehearsal times, and a contact page, because someone checking concert dates and someone weighing up whether to join are reading for different reasons. Splitting the content doesn't make the site bigger for its own sake; it keeps each page answering one thing clearly.

The event or launch microsite

Built around a date: a wedding, a fundraiser, a product launch. It exists to do one job for a fixed period, usually to inform and to collect a response (an RSVP, a signup, an order), and it can be smaller than a one-pager if the job is narrow enough. A campaign page with one job covers how to keep this kind of page from drifting into a general brochure.

The link page

A short list of links out to the places a visitor actually needs, useful for a group whose real presence lives elsewhere: social profiles, a booking system, a newsletter signup. It's the right answer when there's nothing to explain, only somewhere to send people.

Once you can see which of the four your situation matches, the next decision is what goes on it and in what order. That's covered in Planning a Small Site in an Afternoon, and how you'll actually build the pages is a separate question, set out in Choosing How to Build It: Criteria, Not Brands.

Counting questions is the practical way to decide how many pages a small site needs, because a page earns its place by answering something a visitor actually came to ask.

What counts as one question

A question is something a visitor could say out loud before they land on your site: are you open on Saturdays, what does a boiler service cost, where do rehearsals happen. If you can imagine a visitor typing it into a search box or asking it on the phone, it is a candidate for its own page. Vague ambitions such as tell people about the business are not questions, and building a page around one usually produces a page that answers nothing well.

When two questions can share a page

Two questions can live on one page when neither gets buried by the other and a visitor can find the one they came for within a few seconds of scrolling. A sole-trader plumber whose customers mostly ask are you in my area and what do you charge for a boiler service can usually answer both on a single page, provided each question has its own clearly headed section.

When they need separate pages

Split a question off into its own page once answering it well requires enough detail that it would crowd out the other questions on the same scroll, or once it needs its own call to action, such as a booking form or a ticket link that does not apply to the rest of the site. An event with a ticket price, a venue, and a lineup to announce is usually one distinct question on its own, even inside a site that otherwise fits comfortably on a single page.

The test is always the same: read the page as a visitor who arrived with one specific question, and check whether they would find the answer before they gave up scrolling. If the answer is buried under three other answers, the page is trying to do the work of two.