What a company website must have: a checklist

A company website has to tell a visitor what you do and where, let them reach you with one tap on a phone, and show that a real, registered business stands behind it. In Poland it also has to meet a short list of legal duties, and you should own everything it runs on.

The first screen says what you do and where

In a 2006 Carleton University study led by Gitte Lindgaard, people judged a page's visual appeal within 50 milliseconds, before reading a word, and kept roughly the same opinion after 500 ms.

The top of the home page needs a plain headline naming the service and the area, one line on who it is for, and one clear way to contact you. “Ski and snowboard servicing near Wrocław” tells a visitor more than “Passion for quality”. We would also drop the hero slider: while one slogan is on screen, the other two are hidden.

Contact is one tap away on every page

A business that depends on calls cannot hide its number on a Contact page. On the site we built for SkiSzop, a ski and snowboard repair shop near Wrocław, the call and WhatsApp buttons are the main action on every page.

• The phone number is a tap-to-call link, in the header or in a fixed bar on mobile.
• The form asks for the minimum: name, phone or e-mail, message. Every extra field costs completions.
• The address and opening hours are written as text that a visitor can copy.
• If customers come to you, add a map. An embedded Google map loads Google's scripts and needs cookie consent; a map image linking to Google Maps does not.

It works on a phone and loads fast

Google's 2016 study “The Need for Mobile Speed” found that 53% of mobile visits are abandoned if a page takes longer than three seconds to load. Google scores pages with three Core Web Vitals: the main content should appear within 2.5 seconds (LCP), the page should react to a tap within 200 ms (INP), and the layout should not jump around (CLS of 0.1 or less), all at the 75th percentile of real visits. PageSpeed Insights shows these field numbers only for sites with enough traffic; a small site gets a lab test, which still exposes heavy images.

Speed mostly comes from dull work: images in WebP at their displayed size, pictures below the fold loaded only on scroll (never the top image), no unused scripts.

Proof that a real business stands behind it

In a 2002 Stanford study led by B.J. Fogg, 2,684 people compared live websites and explained why they trusted them; the site's look came up in 46.1% of comments, more than anything else. The same group advises showing that a real organisation is behind the site: an address, real people, contact details.

Use photos of your own work and premises instead of stock images. OdNowa360, a roof painting company, shows before-and-after photos of real roofs and a gallery from 500+ completed jobs. Keep the name, address and phone number identical on the site and in your Google Business Profile. If you show customer reviews, Polish consumer law also requires saying whether and how you check that they come from real customers.

The legal minimum for a company in Poland

A short summary, not legal advice.

• Company details. Art. 5 of the Act on providing services by electronic means (ustawa o świadczeniu usług drogą elektroniczną) requires an e-mail address plus, for a sole trader, the full name and address, or for a company, its name, registered office and address. A sp. z o.o. must also publish, under art. 206 of the Commercial Companies Code, the registration court and KRS number, the NIP and the share capital.
• A privacy notice once the site collects personal data, including through a contact form. GDPR art. 13 lists what it must say, including who you are, why you collect the data and on what legal basis, who receives it, how long you keep it, what rights the person has, and that they can complain to the President of UODO.
• A cookie banner if the site uses analytics, ad pixels or other non-essential cookies. The rule, in the Electronic Communications Law (PKE) since 10 November 2024, requires consent before any non-essential script runs. EU regulators' common position (EDPB cookie banner taskforce, 2023) adds that a reject option belongs on the first layer, as easy to use as “Accept all”, and that no boxes are pre-ticked.
• Terms of service (regulamin) under art. 8 of the electronic services Act, if the site provides a service online, such as a newsletter, a client account or a shop. A shop adds withdrawal information, and since 28 June 2025 accessibility duties unless it is a microenterprise (fewer than 10 staff and turnover or balance sheet up to €2 million).

The domain and every login belong to you

The domain should be registered to your company, and you should hold the logins to the domain, the hosting, the site's admin panel and Google Analytics. When we launch a site, we deploy it to the client's domain and hand over every access. Before signing with anyone, ask who will be the domain's registrant.

It also helps to be able to change a phone number or price yourself: the Opus HR staffing agency edits vacancies and content in an admin panel we built, without a developer.

Google can read it and customers can understand it

Basic technical SEO belongs in the build: HTTPS, a unique title and description for each page, sitemap.xml, robots.txt, and hreflang tags if there are several language versions. These help Google crawl the site and show the right language version. None of it guarantees first place, so be wary of anyone who promises that.

Offers to consumers in Poland must have a Polish version (art. 7 of the Polish Language Act), with other languages alongside if you like. Other languages pay off: in CSA Research's 2020 survey of 8,709 consumers in 29 countries, 76% preferred to buy products with information in their own language.

Checking a site against this list, or building one to it, is what our website service covers. You can also send us the address of your current site.