Answer in brief
A company website needs a home page that says what you do and for whom, an overview of what you sell, one page per distinct offer, an evidence page naming real work, an about page with an accountable entity and address, and a contact page that says what happens after sending. Add a careers or investor page only if that audience actually exists. Each page answers one arriving question.
Verified facts
- Source review
- 7 September 2026
- Reader need
- corporate website requirements map
Start from the questions, not from the sitemap
Most corporate sitemaps are assembled before anybody writes down what visitors arrive wanting to know. The template supplies Home, About, Services, Blog, Contact, and the work then becomes justifying those five. Reversing the order is cheaper: list the questions people actually turn up with, group them, and let the page count fall out of the grouping.
Collecting those questions is mostly mechanical — read the enquiries you already receive, the objections sales answers weekly, and the questions procurement sends before signing. That part is quick with AI-assisted preparation. Deciding which question deserves its own page, and which belongs three paragraphs down on an existing one, is a judgement about what you sell and who decides.
Home page
Must answer: what you do, for whom, and where to go next — in the first screen, before any scrolling. Finished when: a stranger can say what you sell after a few seconds and can name the link they would click next.
What we do
Must answer: how many distinct things you sell and how they differ, so a visitor can self-select instead of reading everything. Finished when: each item links to its own page and no two descriptions could be swapped without anybody noticing.
One offer page
Must answer: what is included, what is excluded, what it costs or how the price is arrived at, and how long it takes. Finished when: a buyer can decide without emailing a question the page already had room to answer.
Evidence page
Must answer: what you have actually done, with names, dates and scope rather than adjectives. Finished when: every item either names a client who agreed to be named, or says plainly that it is internal or concept work.
About the company
Must answer: who is accountable, where you are, and since when. Finished when: a procurement reviewer can find the legal entity, an address and a named contact without leaving the page or opening a PDF.
Contact and next step
Must answer: how to start, what happens after sending, and how long a reply takes. Finished when: the form asks only for what you will actually use, and the page states the next step rather than implying one.
Careers or investors
Must answer: whichever second audience you genuinely have, kept off the main commercial path. Finished when: the page exists because somebody asked for it, not because the template had a slot in the navigation.
One page per question, named the way people search
A page earns its place by answering a question nobody else on the site answers. Two pages covering the same ground split the attention of whoever links to you and leave visitors unsure which is current. When you cannot say in one sentence which question a page owns, it is a section of another page, not a page.
Name it the way somebody would ask for it rather than the way the company refers to it internally. Departmental names, invented product names and initialisms all read as correct from the inside and as meaningless from the outside, and the navigation label is the part a visitor has to decode before they can click anything.
The evidence page is the one that gets read twice
Visitors who are nearly ready to contact you go looking for proof, and they read that page more carefully than anything else. What makes it credible is specificity: what the work was, when, what scope, and who it was for. Adjectives do the opposite — a page of superlatives with no nameable work reads as a page with nothing to name.
Be explicit about what each item is. Client work with permission, internal work, and concept work are all legitimate things to show, and labelling them costs nothing. Showing concept work as though it shipped is the one version that damages you, because the person most likely to check is the person most likely to buy.
The audiences a sitemap usually forgets
Two groups arrive regularly and are rarely planned for. Procurement and legal need the entity name, the registered address, how long you have existed and who signs — and they need it without asking, because asking is a delay they attribute to you. Recruiters and candidates need to know what it is like to work there, and they arrive through a completely different door.
Neither belongs on the main commercial path, and neither should be buried three levels down in a footer nobody reads on a phone. A single well-made page for each, reachable in one click from the footer and from search, is usually the whole answer.
Navigation is a promise about how many pages exist
The menu is where visitors form an expectation of the site's size, and a mismatch is felt immediately. Seven top-level items on a site with nine pages reads as padding; three items hiding forty pages reads as a maze. Keep the top level to the things people came for, and let the depth live inside those sections.
Declare the structure to crawlers as well as to people. A sitemap file listing the pages you actually want found, and internal links that reach every one of them, is the difference between a page existing and a page being discoverable. A page reachable only from a dropdown is a page you have decided not to promote.
Every claim needs an owner and a date
Corporate sites rot in a specific way: the numbers, certifications, team members and client lists all age, and nobody notices because nobody owns them. Attach a named owner and a review date to every claim that can expire, and keep that list somewhere a person will actually open.
This is also an accessibility question, because the same neglect shows up there. Every page type needs a template that works with a keyboard and with assistive technology, and WebAIM documents what interactive elements have to support. Template-level problems multiply: fix them once per page type, or inherit them on every page built from that type afterwards.
A second language multiplies pages, not just words
Adding a language does not add translation work to the existing pages — it doubles the number of pages somebody has to keep current. Every claim, price, date and team change now has to land twice, and the version that falls behind is the one you cannot read at a glance.
Declare the relationship between versions rather than leaving crawlers to infer it; Google Search Central documents how localized versions are signalled. Decide in advance which pages exist in which languages, because a partially translated site with no stated rule produces the worst outcome — visitors landing on a language they did not ask for and leaving before finding the version that was written for them.
What a 7–12 day scope covers, and what it does not
An engagement of this length covers the page map, the design of each distinct page type, the states those templates need, the navigation, and a handoff a developer can build from. It does not cover writing all the copy, photography, a blog programme, a client portal, or a second language version unless those were scoped and priced separately.
The number that drives the estimate is distinct page types, not pages. Twelve pages built from four templates is a smaller job than six pages that each need their own layout, and a buyer comparing two quotes is usually comparing different answers to that question without either quote saying so.
Write down the pages the site will not have
Name the absences before the build starts: no blog in phase one, no client login, no case-study template, no second language. Not as a disclaimer but as a decision, each with the condition that would change it — a blog when somebody owns publishing, a portal when there are accounts to log into.
Absences are what keep a small site coherent. Most corporate sites feel thin not because they have too few pages but because they have pages nobody maintains, added on the assumption that a site of this kind ought to have them.
Practical checklist
- Arriving questions collected from real enquiries, sales objections and procurement requests
- One page per question, each with a one-sentence statement of what it alone answers
- Navigation labels written the way a visitor would ask, not the way the company refers internally
- Evidence items labelled client, internal or concept, with scope and date
- Entity name, registered address and a named contact reachable in one click
- Every expiring claim given a named owner and a review date
- Language coverage decided page by page, with the relationship between versions declared
- Absent pages written down as decisions, each with the condition that would add it
Questions and answers
How many pages does a company website need?
As many as there are distinct questions visitors arrive with, which for most companies is between six and twelve. Counting pages is the wrong starting point; counting the questions you can name, and the page types needed to answer them, gives a number you can defend.
Do we need a blog?
Only if somebody owns publishing it. A blog with four posts from two years ago is worse than no blog, because it reads as a company that stopped. If nobody has agreed to write monthly, leave the space out and add it when that changes.
What belongs on the about page?
Who is accountable, where you are, and since when — in a form procurement can use without asking. The legal entity, a registered address, a named contact and the founding year do more work here than a mission statement, and they are the details a reviewer is actually checking.
Should each service have its own page?
If someone buys them separately, yes. A shared page covering several offers forces every visitor to read past the ones they did not come for, and gives you nothing specific to link to. If two offers are always bought together, they are one page.
What does the 7–12 day estimate depend on?
Distinct page types rather than page count. Four templates covering twelve pages is less work than six pages each needing a bespoke layout, so that is the number to settle before comparing quotes.