Start with a single clear goal per page. Most small business sites fail because they try to do everything at once. Your homepage should answer three questions in under 5 seconds: what you do, who it's for, and what action to take next. Put your primary CTA above the fold and repeat it every 2-3 scrolls. Speed kills conversions. Every 100ms delay costs roughly 1% in conversion rate. Aim for under 2.5 seconds on mobile. Compress images to WebP under 200KB, lazy-load anything below the fold, and host on decent infrastructure. We see Canadian small businesses lose 30-40% of mobile visitors on slow Rogers or Bell connections when sites exceed 3 seconds. Trust beats design polish for small businesses. A mediocre-looking site with real customer photos, Google reviews embedded, and local address beats a gorgeous site with stock photos and no social proof. Include: - Phone number in header (click-to-call on mobile) - Physical address if local, especially for trades or retail - 3-5 specific testimonials with full names and photos - Industry credentials or years in business - Privacy policy and contact page for legitimacy Mobile accounts for 60-75% of small business traffic in most sectors. Test your site on an actual iPhone and Android, not just desktop responsive view. Buttons need 44x44px minimum tap targets. Forms should be brutally short—every field you remove lifts conversions 5-10%. For Ottawa SEO clients, we typically build on WordPress with lightweight themes or custom code, avoiding page builders that bloat load times. The conversion path is usually: organic search or ad → service page → contact form or phone call. We A/B test CTA copy and form length first because those changes take 30 minutes and often lift conversions 15-25%. Visual redesigns come later, if at all. Measure everything in Google Analytics with goal tracking from day one, or you're designing blind.