How to Tell If a Brochure Website Is Enough for Your Business

A brochure website is a small site of three to eight pages that presents a business: what you do, for whom, with what proof and how to reach you. It does not sell online, it does not open customer accounts and it has no catalogue. It exists so that people find you, understand you and call you.

One clarification before anything else, because the search results mix them up: this is about a website, not about designing a printed brochure. If you came looking for a print layout tool, this is the wrong page.

The guide is written for the person who commissions the site rather than the person who builds it, and it answers the four questions buyers actually ask: what it is, who it is enough for, what it costs, and how it differs from a shop.

A brochure website runs to three to eight pages: home, services, about, work or references, contact, and the legal pages. It reads in a few minutes and gets updated a few times a year. Its job is to turn a search or a recommendation into a phone call, a filled form or a visit.

What it is not: an online shop, because it takes no payment; a portal, because it has no logins; and a landing page, because it keeps navigation and more than one useful ending rather than serving a single campaign.

The name comes from print for a reason. Like a paper brochure, it shows what you do without the transaction happening inside it. A tradesperson, a solicitor, an accountancy practice, a restaurant or a charity all fit that shape, and paying for more than that shape is the most common way small companies overspend on a website. Our guide to small business web design covers what those five pages cost and what moves the price.

The rule fits in one sentence: a brochure website is enough while your offer can be described without variants and the sale closes off the site. A plumber, a physiotherapist, an accountant, a restaurant, a local charity. In each case the site exists to reassure and to give the number, not to process an order.

It stops being enough at three specific signs. First, you have more than two genuinely different services with different customers, and they are competing on the same page. Second, you are hiring and candidates find nothing. Third, you publish regularly and there is nowhere to put it.

The fourth sign is quieter and more expensive: sales starts attaching PDFs to emails because there is no page to link to. When that happens you no longer need a brochure site, you need a full corporate website with a real page structure.

Five pages cover the vast majority of cases, and each answers a question a visitor genuinely asks. Adding more is justified only when someone can name the visitor who needs it; otherwise the page dilutes everything around it.

Home. What you do, for whom, in what area, and a way to contact you visible without scrolling.

Services. One page if the offer is single, one page per service when they address different customers. This is the page that ranks.

About. Who you are, since when, with what qualifications. In both B2B and consumer work this is the page people check before calling.

Work or reviews. Photos of real jobs, before and after, named testimonials where the client agrees. Proof does more than adjectives.

Contact. Form, phone number that is tappable on a mobile, address, opening hours, and a map if people visit you.

Legal pages. Legal notice, privacy notice and cookie consent. These do not depend on page count: the duties come from the E-Commerce Directive and the GDPR whatever the size of the site.

This is the question buyers ask first and platforms answer last, because a subscription is not a project. The price of a brochure website depends on three things only: how many templates have to be designed, who writes the copy, and whether usable photography already exists.

Our published pricing starts at €1,500 for a landing page delivered in two to three days and €4,500 for a site of 10 to 30 pages delivered in one to three weeks. A brochure site of three to eight pages sits between the two, depending on how much design and writing it needs. Figures are current as of August 2026.

Three items separate two quotes that appear to cover the same site. Copywriting, which is the item most often missing and therefore lands on you. Photography, because on a site with little text, stock images stand out twice as much. And hosting plus maintenance, which is an annual cost rather than a project one.

What moves the price less than people expect: length. An extra section reuses a template that has already been paid for.

A single-page site is appealing because it costs less and reads in one go. It works when you have one offer, one service area and nothing to publish. A wedding photographer, a nutritionist, a food truck: one page does the whole job.

It becomes a handicap the moment there are several services, because Google ranks pages rather than paragraphs. Two offers on one page compete for the same title and neither surfaces. That is the most common limit and the one discovered latest, usually while asking why the site appears for nothing.

The practical rule is one page per distinct search intent. If one customer searches for "emergency plumbing" and another for "bathroom renovation", those are two pages even though it is the same business and the same van.

The same items are always missing, and they are what pushes a launch back by weeks. Gathering them before the first meeting costs an evening and saves a month, and none of it needs technical knowledge.

Raw copy. Your services described in your own words, even roughly. A writer reshapes; they do not invent your trade.

Proof. Photos of real work, reviews with permission to name the client, qualifications, certifications, insurance details.

Legal details. Registered name, address, company number, VAT number, and any professional body you belong to.

Access. Domain if you already own one, hosting, social accounts, Google Business Profile.

One decision-maker. On a project this size, two approvers double the timeline.

A small site is simple, which makes its faults more visible rather than less. Four come up in almost every audit, and none of them is a design problem.

The phone number is not tappable on mobile. Most visits to a local brochure site arrive on a phone, and the expected action is a call. A number set in an image is a lost enquiry.

No address, no opening hours. For a local business these are the two most-searched facts, and they need to match the Google Business Profile.

Never updated. A frozen year in the footer, a "new website" that has been new for four years, news that stops two years ago. Visitors draw conclusions about the business from it.

Speed on a phone. Core Web Vitals are assessed on at least 75% of real page loads against thresholds published on web.dev: 2.5 seconds for Largest Contentful Paint, 200 milliseconds for Interaction to Next Paint and 0.1 for Cumulative Layout Shift. A five-page site has no excuse for missing them.

A well-built brochure site lasts three to five years without being rebuilt. What pushes it out of its role is almost never the design, it is the growth of the business, and that shows up as concrete signals rather than a feeling.

You add a service that fits nowhere. You start hiring and there is no page for it. You open a second language and discover the URL structure was never designed for it, which our guide to multilingual websites covers in detail. Or you want to publish and there is no blog.

At that point there are two paths. Extend: keep the domain and add sections, which assumes a page structure that was thought through at the start. Or rebuild as a full corporate site, in which case the old addresses need a redirect map, the subject of our guide to website migration.

Run this before launch, then once a year. Every line is a yes or a no and the whole thing takes half an hour with a phone and a laptop.

Content

• One page for each service that speaks to a different customer.
• Real photos of your work, not only stock images.
• Reviews or references with permission to use the name.
• Service area visible on the home page and on contact.

Contact

• Phone number tappable on mobile.
• Address and opening hours, matching the Google Business Profile.
• Form tested through to the inbox, including the confirmation email.

Legal

• Legal notice with registered name, address and company number.
• Privacy notice that meets GDPR transparency duties.
• Cookie banner that blocks non-essential cookies until consent.

Technical

• Loads in under 2.5 seconds on a phone on mobile data.
• HTTPS on every page.
• Keyboard navigable with sufficient contrast.
• A named person for updates, and a backup that actually runs.