The small business website checklist: 27 things every UK site needs in 2026

Copy and messaging (items 1–6)

Design is what people see; copy is what they act on. Get these six right and the design has something worth framing. Get them wrong and the prettiest design in the world won't save the conversion rate.

• 011. A specific homepage headline that names who you're for, not 'Welcome to our website'.
• 022. A subheadline that names the next step (call, quote, book) in one sentence.
• 033. A visible primary call-to-action above the fold on every page.
• 044. Real proof: named clients, dated results, a specific number — not 'trusted by many'.
• 055. An 'About' page written in first person that names the humans who do the work.
• 066. A contact page with a real phone number, real email, and one form — not three.

Search and SEO (items 7–12)

Google is still 90%+ of UK web search in 2026. If your site isn't earning organic traffic, you're paying for every visitor forever. Get the six SEO fundamentals in place at launch — retrofitting them later costs three times as much.

• 017. A unique <title> under 60 characters on every page, with the primary keyword.
• 028. A meta description under 158 characters on every page, written for humans.
• 039. One H1 per page, containing the primary keyword naturally.
• 0410. A submitted XML sitemap and a valid robots.txt — not blocking your own site.
• 0511. JSON-LD structured data: Organization, LocalBusiness, and Article on posts.
• 0612. Descriptive alt text on every meaningful image — not 'image1.jpg'.

Performance and Core Web Vitals (items 13–17)

Google now measures every visitor's real-world experience via the Chrome UX Report. A slow site loses rankings and conversions simultaneously. Five performance requirements are non-negotiable at launch in 2026.

• 0113. Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) under 2.5 seconds on 4G.
• 0214. Interaction to Next Paint (INP) under 200ms — the metric that replaced FID.
• 0315. Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) under 0.1 — no jumping content on load.
• 0416. Images served in modern formats (WebP or AVIF), correctly sized, lazy-loaded.
• 0517. One self-hosted webfont family, subset to the glyphs you actually use.

Accessibility and compliance (items 18–22)

The UK Public Sector Bodies Accessibility Regulations set the floor at WCAG 2.2 AA. For private-sector sites in 2026 it's still a best-practice standard — but the Equality Act 2010 does apply, and enforcement is rising. Five items make a site legally defensible.

• 0118. WCAG 2.2 AA contrast on every text/background combination — no exceptions.
• 0219. Every interactive element reachable by keyboard, with a visible focus ring.
• 0320. Form labels, error messages and required-field indicators announced to screen readers.
• 0421. A cookie consent banner that blocks non-essential cookies until acceptance (GDPR).
• 0522. A privacy policy that names your lawful basis, your data, and your DPO contact.

Analytics and tracking (items 23–25)

You can't improve what you don't measure. Three analytics items should be live before launch — not added in month three when a stakeholder asks 'how's the site doing?'

• 0123. A GDPR-compliant analytics platform (Plausible, Fathom, or GA4 with consent).
• 0224. Conversion tracking on every primary CTA — form submits, calls, bookings.
• 0325. Google Search Console verified, sitemap submitted, indexing coverage clean.

Ownership and continuity (items 26–27)

The two most valuable items on this list, and the two most commonly missed. Neither costs anything extra to include — but their absence can destroy a business's ability to move on from a bad supplier.

• 0126. Domain, hosting and DNS registered in your business's name — not the designer's.
• 0227. Full source code and CMS admin credentials handed over on launch day.

How to use this checklist

If you're commissioning a new site, share this document with the designer or agency before you sign — and ask which items are included in the quoted price. If a quote comes back with any item marked 'extra', that's negotiating information, not a technicality. If you already have a site, use this as an audit — every 'no' is a compounding revenue leak, and the cheapest ones to fix (title tags, alt text, meta descriptions, structured data) typically deliver the fastest ranking and conversion improvements.

What Project Pixel guarantees

Every Project Pixel build ships with all 27 items on this list marked yes on launch day — not as an upgrade, not as a phase two, not as a retainer add-on. It's the definition of 'done' in our contract. Because the alternative — a site that launches with half of them missing — is a website that quietly costs its owner customers for years before anyone notices.