Website

What a founder's website needs: structure, legal basics, one action

Some sections describe the law in Germany (as of September 2026). General information, not legal advice. Other countries regulate this differently.

A founder's website has one job: to answer the person a channel just sent, and to make one action obvious. Six blocks do that, in this order: what you do for whom in one line, one call to action, the offer in your customers' words, proof, the person behind it, and how to reach you. Legally, two items apply to every commercial site, an identity block and a privacy notice, and everything beyond that is conditional on what the site actually does: selling, tracking, mailing, subscriptions. Technically, three published thresholds cover it, 2.5 seconds to the largest visible element, 200 milliseconds to respond to a tap, and a layout shift score under 0.1. The website is not the first thing to build. It is what the channels need once they start working.

The page is the last step, not the first

Most people build the website first. It feels like the moment the business becomes real: there is a domain, there is a logo, there is something to send people. Then it goes live, and for weeks nothing happens, because nobody was ever going to arrive on their own.

A website is not a channel. It is where channels end. Someone finds you in a map listing, gets your name from a friend, sees a post, receives an email, and then lands on a page that either answers them within a few seconds or does not. That is the whole function, and it changes what the page has to contain: not everything about the business, but the answer to the four questions the visitor arrived with.

Which channel should be sending people here in the first place: marketing channels for founders, which channel for which audience →

Six blocks, in the order the questions arrive

This is not a design template, it is a sequence of answers. A visitor asks the same questions in the same order every time, and a page works when its blocks arrive in that order. Anything that answers no question on this list is a candidate for deletion.

The page, from top to bottom

The sentence at the top

"Am I in the right place?"

What you do, for whom, in one line, with nothing above it. Not the company name, not a slogan. "Mobile bike repair in Portland, we come to you" answers the question in four seconds. "Mobility, reimagined" never answers it at all.

The one call to action

"What am I supposed to do?"

One button, visible without scrolling, with a verb in it. Call, book a slot, request a quote. The same button repeats further down, but it stays the same button. Five equally ranked options are not a choice, they are a decision you have handed to the visitor.

The offer, concretely

"Do you do the exact thing I need?"

Three to six items, in your customers' words rather than yours. Someone searching for "gear adjustment" does not find "holistic bicycle care". If you can name prices, name them: the most common question before first contact is what it costs, and the most common response to no answer is the back button.

The proof

"Why should I believe you?"

One real customer quote with a name outweighs ten invented ones, and invented ones are explicitly unlawful in Germany. If you do not have one yet: photos of actual work, the number of jobs completed, a membership, a certification. Leaving the section out beats making it up.

The person behind it

"Who am I dealing with?"

A photo and three sentences. For a one-person business this is not decoration, it is the difference between a person and a corporate front with nobody behind it. Writing "we" when you are one person makes a site look smaller, not larger.

How to reach you

"How do I contact you, and where are you?"

Phone number as a tappable link, email, service area or address, and when you answer. On a phone the number belongs near the top, not only in the footer. Name, address and phone have to match your map listing character for character, or the mismatch costs you visibility in local search.

Six blocks, one page, one button. A founder's site does not need a second page until a second question exists.

One call to action, not five

The most common defect on a founder's home page is not an ugly one. It is a row of buttons of equal size: call, book, download the brochure, follow us, sign up for the newsletter. Each was added for a good reason, and together they undo each other, because the visitor now has to decide what this page is for. That decision was yours to make.

Pick the action that is worth the most to you today and that costs the visitor the least. For most founders that is not a purchase, it is a conversation: a phone call, a booked slot, a short enquiry. Everything else stays on the page, but visibly smaller, in plain text rather than in a button, or further down.

The test for the button

Cover everything on the page except the top area, and read the button. Does it contain a verb, does it say what happens next, and would you press it if you had the problem? "Learn more" fails all three. "Book a repair slot" passes all three, and it also tells the person that a slot is what they are getting, not a callback in a fortnight.

The mandatory items depend on what the site does

This is the part that gets copied from another site, and it is the part where copying goes wrong, because the obligations are conditional. A one-page site with a phone number carries two of them. The same site with a shop, a newsletter and an analytics tool carries eight. A generic checklist is therefore wrong for almost everyone, in one direction or the other.

Answer the five questions below and the list changes with you. The German references are named where they apply, with the UK and US equivalents alongside them.

What your site has to show

Tick what is true for your site. The list underneath changes with each answer. Nothing is stored or transmitted.

Mandatory items for this site

Business identity page

In the UK a company has to show its registered name, company number, place of registration and registered office address on its website. In the US there is no equivalent rule, but the same block does the same job: a real address and a working way to reach a human is the single strongest trust signal a small site has.

UK: Companies Act 2006, s. 82 and the Trading Disclosures Regulations

California requires a privacy policy from any commercial site that collects personal information about California residents, and the newer state privacy laws build on that. A contact form, a newsletter box or an analytics tool is enough to be inside the scope, which in practice means nearly every site.

US: CalOPPA and the state privacy laws that followed it

General orientation, not legal advice, and not complete for every trade: regulated professions, food, health and finance carry further duties. If you sell to consumers, have the texts checked once rather than generated once.

One duty that ended, and is now a defect

For years every online shop had to link to the EU online dispute resolution platform. That platform was shut down on 20 July 2025 and the duty ended with it. Anyone who copied an older imprint is now pointing at a dead address, which is the kind of small thing a competitor's lawyer notices. If you took your text from a template written before mid-2025, this sentence is the first one to delete.

Three numbers instead of a technical debate

Speed is where founders get talked into things. It helps to know that Google publishes exactly three thresholds and that a small site reaches all three without specialist knowledge. They are measured on real visits, at the 75th percentile over a rolling 28 days, which means three quarters of visits have to be inside the threshold, not the average.

The three published thresholds

LCP How fast the largest thing appears

≤ 2,5 s

This measures when the largest visible element has painted, usually the image at the top. The most common reason for a bad score is an uncompressed photo at full camera resolution.

INP How fast the page answers a tap

≤ 200 ms

The official responsiveness metric since 12 March 2024, replacing the older First Input Delay. Bad scores almost always come from too much script loading alongside the page.

CLS How much the content jumps while loading

≤ 0,1

If a button moves while someone is tapping it, this number catches it. The cause is almost always an image without fixed dimensions, or a banner that appears after the fact.

Thresholds as published by Google for the Core Web Vitals, measured at the 75th percentile of real page views over a rolling 28 days. Interaction to Next Paint replaced First Input Delay on 12 March 2024. The bar lengths above illustrate the three thresholds side by side; they are not measurements of any particular site.

Accessibility: probably not required, still worth doing

In Germany the Accessibility Strengthening Act has applied since 28 June 2025, and the question most founders actually have is whether it applies to them. Usually not: the act exempts micro-enterprises, meaning fewer than ten people and at most two million euros of annual turnover or balance sheet total, but only for services, not for the sale of products. A site that presents a business without concluding contracts is outside the scope in any case.

In the US the picture is different in form and similar in effect: website claims under Title III of the Americans with Disabilities Act have been brought against private businesses for years, with WCAG 2.1 AA used as the practical yardstick although it is not written into the statute. The Department of Justice rule adopted in April 2024 binds state and local government, not private companies.

The practical point is simpler than the legal one. Four things cost nothing when they are right from the start and a rebuild when they are not: text that keeps a contrast of 4.5 to 1 against its background, form fields with real labels, everything reachable and visible with the keyboard alone, and alternative text on images that carry meaning. That is also most of what makes a page readable on a phone in daylight, which is the situation most of your visitors are actually in.

The listing this page has to agree with, field by field: local SEO for small businesses, the listing, the reviews, the page →

Five things not to build

The expensive mistakes on a founder's site are things that were added, not things that were left out. Every item here was built by someone acting on advice.

A carousel at the top

Three statements taking turns are not three chances, they are one that slides away before it has been read. Pick the single sentence. That the choice is hard is the actual work, not an obstacle to it.

A contact form with twelve fields

Every required field costs enquiries. Name, message, one way to reach them. Ask the rest in your reply, once there is a conversation.

A blog with no plan to fill it

A news section whose most recent post is from last year reads worse than no section at all, because it suggests something here fell asleep. The plan comes before the section.

An automated accessibility overlay

Tools that drop a toolbar onto a page by script do not fix the causes and have a reputation for interfering with screen readers. Contrast, labels, keyboard operation and alternative text cannot be layered on afterwards.

Thirty location pages with the town name swapped out

The same template with a different place name is a well-known pattern with a well-known ending: pages nobody reads, on a site that then looks thin as a whole.

Five mistakes that cost the most

The first one decides whether the page ever had a chance. The last one is the reason a page that once worked quietly stops.

Building the website before it is clear who is supposed to visit it. A page with no channel leading people to it is a brochure in a locked drawer. The route comes before the destination.

Five equally sized buttons on the home page. Offer everything and nothing gets clicked. One primary action, everything else subordinate to it.

Hiding the identity page in the footer or leaving parts of it out. In Germany an incomplete imprint is the most warning-lettered defect on the web, and it takes twenty minutes to fix.

Letting analytics or maps load before anyone has consented. The banner is only worth something if nothing actually loads ahead of it, and neither template generators nor good intentions check that.

Not opening the site for a year. Prices, hours, services and legal texts go stale, and the change that would have cost nothing then costs a legal letter.

Frequently asked questions

Does a founder even need a website?

Not first. For many place-bound businesses the map listing brings in more enquiries than the website, and for the first ten customers personal routes beat any channel that ends on a page. The site becomes necessary the moment channels start sending people to you, because then you need somewhere that answers them and belongs to you. A profile on a social network does not belong to you.

What does every business website have to show?

It depends on the country and on what the site does. In the UK a company must show its registered name, number, place of registration and registered office address. In the US there is no equivalent rule, but a privacy policy is effectively mandatory once any personal information is collected, which a contact form or an analytics tool already does. In Germany two things apply to every commercial site: a complete imprint under § 5 DDG and a privacy notice under Article 13 GDPR. The check further up in this article works through the conditional items.

Does my website have to be accessible?

In the US, ADA Title III litigation over websites has been brought against private businesses for years, with WCAG 2.1 AA used as the practical yardstick even though it is not written into the statute; the Department of Justice rule from April 2024 binds state and local government rather than private companies. In Germany the Accessibility Strengthening Act has applied since 28 June 2025 but exempts micro-enterprises providing services, meaning fewer than ten people and at most two million euros of turnover or balance sheet total. Either way, contrast, labels, keyboard operation and alternative text cost nothing when they are right from the start.

How fast does a website have to be?

Google publishes three thresholds, measured at the 75th percentile of real page views over 28 days: the largest visible element within 2.5 seconds, a response to input within 200 milliseconds, and a layout shift score under 0.1. A small site reaches all three without specialist knowledge, as long as images are compressed and given fixed dimensions and third-party scripts are not loaded on every visit.

What is the single most common mistake?

Offering five equally weighted actions on the home page. A visitor who has to decide what the site is for usually decides to leave. One primary action, repeated further down as the same button, with everything else visibly subordinate to it.