Nine kinds, not nine pages
A practice website needs nine kinds of page. Several are templates repeated for each service and each person, so the finished site may run to thirty pages, all generated from records. Here is each kind, what it has to contain, and how to stage the build.
1. Home
Above the fold on a phone: who you are, who you help, where, and a button that books the first meeting. Then the services you most want clients for, each linking to its own page; the people, with faces, linking to profiles; three specific reasons clients choose you, not adjectives; how you charge, in a line, linking to Fees; your regulator and registration; and a second booking button.
One real photograph of the team or the office, sized properly. No slider. No stock image of a handshake.
2. Services, one page each
The search engine of the site and the reason it ranks. A page per service in the client's words: what it is, when people come to you for it, what happens step by step, what it costs or how you quote, who does it here with a booking button, the questions clients ask, and a way to start.
Eight to twenty pages for most practices. They are called practice areas in a law firm, situation pages for a broker or adviser, problem pages for a consultant, pathway pages for an immigration adviser, product pages for an insurance broker, and language pairs for a translator, but they are the same content type underneath.
3. Fees
In the main menu, never a PDF. Fixed fees with what is included, ranges with what moves them, hourly rates by seniority, what sits outside the fee, whether tax is included, payment terms, and the quoting process for everything not listed. An effective date at the bottom. Rendered from the fee fields on the service records, so it can never contradict a service page.
4. Our team, with a profile each
The team page lists everyone with photo, name, role and one line. Each profile carries the photograph, role, qualifications, registration or admission number with a link to the public register, what they work on drawn from the service relationships, languages, a short bio in the first person, and a booking button for that person. Support staff get simple entries.
Clients instruct people, not firms. This is the page that converts the ones who are deciding between you and a similarly qualified practice down the road.
5. Book a consultation
The single page that carries the booking widget from Calendly, Acuity, Microsoft Bookings or your practice system, with the intake questions attached, a line about what the meeting covers and what it costs, and the phone number beside it. Nothing else on the page. Every Book button on the site links here with the right consultation type and person already chosen.
6. Client portal
Where you use one, a page that explains what the portal is for, links to the login, says what clients should send through it rather than by email, and tells them who to contact if they cannot get in. This is where documents belong, and keeping it visible is what stops identity documents and financial statements arriving as email attachments.
7. Regulatory information
The full disclosure set: regulated name and entity details, regulator or professional body with the registration number and a link to your register entry, the scope of the authorisation, professional indemnity information where required, complaints procedure with timescales, and the external redress body with its contact details. Plain pages linked from the footer, alongside the privacy notice, terms of business and accessibility statement.
8. Insights
Articles that answer the questions clients ask, written by the people who answer them. This is the page that earns links, feeds the service pages and gives you something to send. It only works if somebody will genuinely write, so commit to one a month or leave it out. A section that stopped two years ago is worse than none.
9. Contact
Tappable phone with the hours it is answered, email, address with a map link, opening hours, access and parking, a short enquiry form of four fields that delivers to a monitored inbox, a call back request for outside hours, and a booking button. Structured data for the practice.
Optional
- Switching, for accountants and anyone whose clients fear that changing provider is painful.
- Case studies, for consultants, where nothing external validates you.
- Calculators, for brokers and advisers.
- Area guides and listings, for estate agents.
- Careers, when hiring.
Leave off
Separate pages for mission, values, philosophy and history. A news section nobody updates. Testimonials pages where your regime restricts them. Anything as a PDF that could be a page.
Building in stages
Stage one, launch. Home, Contact, Fees, Book, Regulatory information, Team with brief profiles, and the six services that carry the most value. Complete, honest and bookable.
Stage two, first quarter. The remaining services, full profiles, the portal page, and the first insights.
Stage three, ongoing. Whatever the practice will genuinely maintain.
Booking, speed, tracking and structured data go in from stage one. They are not content, they are the site working.
The structure underneath
Services, people, fees and registrations as records with relationships. The wills page lists the people who do wills because the relationship says so; their profiles list wills for the same reason; the Fees page is always right because the numbers live in one place. Adding the fifteenth service is filling in fields.
Where this sits
These nine kinds are the page list for every professional services website we build, and the sub pages for each profession, from law firms to estate agents, change the records rather than the shape. Practices arrive expecting to need a large site and leave with a structured one where every page is doing a job.