Website structure: how many pages and in what order

Almost every website project starts with the pretty part and gets stuck on the same question: how many pages do we need and what do we call them. Website structure is not a technical subject: it is deciding what you sell and in what order you explain it, and you know that better than anyone.

The menu is the index of your business

The first thing anyone landing on your site looks at is the top row. Within two seconds they decide whether you sell what they are after. If it reads «Home · About · Services · Contact», they have learned nothing about you: that menu fits an accountant and a garage equally well.

Changing it costs little and shows immediately. «Shutter repairs» says more than «Services», and it is also what people type into Google.

How many pages a small website needs

Fewer than people think. A local business works with five or six good ones, and what is left over is nearly always filler nobody opens.

The five almost nobody should skip

1. Home. What you do, where, and how to reach you.
2. One page per main service. Two or three, not ten.
3. About us. With faces and with the actual premises.
4. Contact. With phone, opening hours and how to find you.
5. The legal pages. In the footer, not the menu.

That is already a complete website. Everything else —blog, prices, case studies, FAQs— gets added when there is something real to say.

One page per service, and why

It is the decision that changes results most. A single page with six services jumbled together is not found by anyone searching for one of them, and whoever does land on it has to read the lot to see whether it applies.

Split up, each one carries its own title, its own explanation, its own photos and its own price or range. And each one competes for its own search.

What does not belong in the menu

• The legal pages. They go in the footer, where everyone looks for them.
• Social media. They take people off your site just when you had them on it.
• Half-finished pages. If it is empty, better that it does not exist yet.
• Internal things. «Client area» or «Intranet» have no business up there.

And one that starts arguments: prices. If you publish them, it makes sense for them to be in the menu; if not, an empty «ask us» page helps nobody. Both sides are in should you show prices on your website.

Seven items at most

Beyond that the menu stops being read and starts being skimmed. The Nielsen Norman Group, who have spent thirty years measuring how websites get used, collect the guidance in their menu design checklist, and nearly all of it points the same way: few options, plain names and no three-level dropdowns.

If you end up with eleven items, the problem is not the menu: it is that you have not decided what your main line of work is.

The order matters more than it looks

From a row of options, people remember the first and the last. So the service you most want to sell goes first, and contact goes last, usually styled as a button.

What does not work is alphabetical order, or the order things occurred to you in.

What the pages are called

In your customer's words, not your industry's. «Bathroom refits» rather than «Integrated interior solutions». «Prices» rather than «Rates and conditions».

A good name is understood without context, fits in two words and matches what people type to find it. How those pages get written inside is in website copy: what to write.

The home page is not an index

Plenty of home pages just repeat the menu with icons. A waste: it is the page that gets the most visits and the only one where you can order the message however you like.

What the home page has to do in five seconds

• Say what you do in a sentence that would not fit another business.
• Say where you are and how far you travel.
• Give a way to get in touch visible without scrolling.
• Lead to the two or three services you actually want to sell.

Internal links are the map Google reads

Here is the part almost nobody works on. Links going from one of your pages to another tell the search engine which ones matter and what they are about. Google covers it in its link best practices, and the rule that counts most is simple: the link text should say where it leads. «Shutter repairs» works; «click here» says nothing.

Links coming from outside are a different story and we cover them in how to get backlinks for your website. These, the internal ones, are free and depend entirely on you.

The three-click rule does not exist, but something does

The old idea that everything must be within three clicks does not survive serious measurement: people keep clicking as long as they feel they are on the right track. What does hurt is not knowing where you are or what comes next.

So every page needs a clear way onward, not a dead end whose only option is the back button.

Breadcrumbs, so people know where they are

That small line reading «Home / Services / Shutter repairs» near the top. On a five-page site you do not need it; once there are categories it helps a lot, and it sometimes shows up in Google results too.

Technically it sits inside the page's navigation element, the nav element documented by MDN, and that is exactly what lets a screen reader jump straight to the menu. Which is what web accessibility is about.

The menu on a phone

Three visits in four arrive from a phone, so the menu that really matters is the small-screen one. And the rules change there: less fits, and it is tapped with a thumb.

What should not happen when the menu opens

• That it covers the whole screen and there is no visible way to close it.
• That the links sit so close together you tap the wrong one.
• That the phone number is not in there, one tap away.
• That picking an option opens another submenu, and then another.

The footer is navigation too

Anyone who reaches the bottom of a page is interested. The footer is where everything that does not fit at the top belongs: address, opening hours, phone, email, legal pages and, if needed, links to the secondary pages.

What to do with pages you no longer use

Two options, and neither is leaving them there. If the content moved, redirect it to the new page; if nothing similar exists any more, take it down and accept the error. What you do not do is delete it and leave a broken link in the menu.

How to do that without losing rankings is in migrating your website without losing rankings.

How the structure grows without falling apart

Most websites are not born messy: they get messy. A service is added, then a promotion, then a page for a trade fair, and three years later there are eighteen pages and nobody knows which ones get visited.

The way to avoid it is a written rule: every new service, one page; every promotion, a temporary page with an expiry date; and one review a year to remove whatever nobody visited. What it all gets built with is compared in WordPress or a custom website.

How to check whether your website structure works

No tools, and it takes a short while.

The sheet-of-paper test

Write down the names of all your pages on paper, without looking at the site. Then open it and compare. If you missed some, they were not needed. If you wrote one that does not exist, there is the page you are missing.

Then ask somebody from outside to find one specific thing —the price of a service, the opening hours— and time them without helping. If it takes more than thirty seconds, the problem is the menu. And if Google cannot find one of the pages, that is covered in why your website does not appear on Google.

What a well-structured website costs

The same as a badly structured one, because the deciding work happens either way. In our prices, the number of pages is exactly what separates one plan from the next.

Website structure: what each plan includes

• Tu Landing, 100 € a month: one single page, properly built. Enough if you sell one thing and sell it clearly.
• Tu Web, 200 € a month: up to ten subpages, plenty for the five essentials plus one per service.
• The presence plans, at 400, 750 and 1,500 € a month, add three, five or seven articles a month, which are pages too and part of the structure.

All plus VAT and with no lock-in, with the domain, hosting, email and maintenance included. If what you want is to understand the market before asking for quotes, there is the rundown in how much a website costs.

From Sant Antoni de Calonge, with businesses across Girona and Barcelona

If you have a fifteen-page website and the feeling that nobody finds anything on it, send us the address through the contact form or by WhatsApp. We will send back a map of what is there and what is surplus, with no obligation.