If you own a small business in Spokane — a restaurant, a service company, a specialty shop, a professional practice — your website is doing one job: turning a Google search into a phone call or a walk-in.
That's it. Not "showcasing your brand." Not "telling your story." Not "having a strong digital presence." Those things might happen along the way, but if your site isn't converting local searches into actual customers, none of the rest matters.
Most Spokane small business sites I audit are missing 2-3 specific things that would dramatically increase the conversion rate. Here's the honest list of what actually matters, in order.
The 4 things your site absolutely needs (and most Spokane sites don't have)
1. A phone number in the top-right of every page
If your business runs on phone calls (and most Spokane service businesses do), the phone number needs to be:
- On every page, not just the contact page
- In the top-right of the header (where phones are muscle-memory in every North American desktop layout)
- Clickable on mobile — a tel: link, so tapping it dials
- Prominent — not tiny grey text
I audit dozens of Spokane small business sites a year. Roughly 40% of them bury the phone number below the fold on desktop or make it un-tappable on mobile. Every one of those sites is leaving calls on the table.
Bonus: consider a call-tracking number. Services like CallRail or CallSource give you a unique number that forwards to your real one, but tracks which searches produced which calls. Costs about $30-45/month and pays for itself the first time you see which pages actually drive calls vs which don't.
2. Real photos of your business, staff, and location
Not stock photos. Not the same "smiling business owner shaking a hand" image every other Spokane site has. Real, taken-with-a-phone photos of:
- The front of your business (looks like the map pin)
- Inside — where customers actually experience you
- Your team (real people, real faces)
- Your work in progress (a plumber under a sink, a stylist mid-cut, a mechanic with a lift)
Why it matters: local customers are picking between you and 5-10 competitors. Stock photos trigger "generic, could be anywhere" reactions. Real photos build trust in seconds because they prove you're an actual local business, not a national franchise or an internet middleman.
The specific test: a customer in Spokane Valley searching "plumber near me" should be able to tell within 5 seconds of landing on your site whether you're a real person they'd let into their house. Your photos are what answer that question.
3. A "Service Area" page that names every neighborhood you serve
Not just "Spokane, WA." Every neighborhood, suburb, and nearby town you actually serve, named individually. For a Spokane service business, that might be:
Spokane, Spokane Valley, Liberty Lake, Airway Heights, Cheney, Deer Park, Mead, Otis Orchards, Millwood, Medical Lake, Coeur d'Alene, Post Falls, Hayden, Rathdrum...
Why: people search "plumber Spokane Valley" or "electrician Cheney" more than they search "plumber Spokane." A service page that names Cheney (real content, not just a keyword stuffed footer) will rank for Cheney searches. A page that only says "Spokane and surrounding areas" won't.
The right way to do this: one service area page listing every neighborhood + a short paragraph about serving that area, OR separate short pages for the 3-5 highest-priority neighborhoods (with real content about that area — not the same 200 words with the neighborhood name swapped in, which Google penalizes).
4. Reviews visible on the homepage, not just linked to Google
Yes, you want people to leave reviews on Google (for local SEO). But you also want to convert the 60% of visitors who don't click through to your Google Business Profile.
What good looks like:
- 3-5 real reviews (with real names, not "Sarah M.") embedded on the homepage
- A clear "★ 4.8 rating on Google (127 reviews)" call-out with a link to see them all
- Ideally reviews rotate/refresh so returning visitors see different ones
What bad looks like:
- No reviews on the site at all
- Reviews that are clearly fake (all posted the same week, generic language)
- Reviews from customers with no last name or location context
The credibility test: if a visitor lands on your site and can't find social proof within 5 seconds of scrolling, they're comparing you to competitors who have it. Reviews are one of the top 3 factors in local buying decisions.
The 3 things most Spokane sites HAVE that they should remove
1. The "Our Story" page (unless it's actually good)
Every small business site has an "About Us" or "Our Story" page. Most of them read like a template: "Founded in 2015, our team is passionate about serving the Spokane community with quality service you can trust." Nobody reads this. It doesn't convert.
Either write a real story or don't have the page. A real story includes: a specific event (why you started the business), a specific failure or challenge you overcame, a specific value you actually hold (with a concrete example), and specific team members with real bios.
A generic "Our Story" page is worse than no About page at all, because it signals to the visitor "we didn't really try here."
2. Sliders / carousels on the homepage
The animated image slider at the top of the homepage — three or four rotating hero images with fade transitions — was popular from about 2012 to 2019. Every UX study since has shown that they hurt conversion:
- Only 1% of visitors click on any slider slide beyond the first one
- Auto-rotating sliders slow page load significantly
- They're bad for accessibility (screen readers hate them)
- They're bad for SEO (the text in them isn't indexed as prominently)
If your Spokane website has a slider, replace it with one static hero image (of your actual business) with clear text about what you do and a "Call Now" button. Every measurable metric will improve.
3. Stock icons and clip art
Icons that look like they came from a 2015 PowerPoint template. Generic "handshake" images. Clip-art-style illustrations of service industries. These signal to visitors that you didn't invest in your website.
If you can't afford custom illustration, use no illustration. A clean text-only section with real photos is better than one filled with generic vector icons.
The 2 things about local SEO you have to get right
1. Google Business Profile — this is more important than your website
For a Spokane small business, your Google Business Profile is often the single most important piece of your online presence. The "Map Pack" (the 3 businesses shown on a map at the top of Google results) sits ABOVE the organic results and captures the majority of clicks.
If you don't have a Google Business Profile, or yours is unclaimed, or you haven't updated it in a year — that's the highest-priority fix on the entire list, above anything on your actual website.
Setup basics:
- Claim it at business.google.com
- Complete every field
- Add 10+ real photos
- Get to 20+ reviews (ask every satisfied customer; make it easy with a review link card)
- Post updates monthly (specials, projects, seasonal content)
- Respond to every review, positive or negative, within 48 hours
Common Spokane-specific tip: your business category matters. "Plumber" and "Emergency Plumbing Service" are different categories in Google's system and will show up for different searches. Pick the one that matches your primary revenue driver.
2. NAP consistency across every listing
NAP = Name, Address, Phone Number. Every place your business appears online — your website, Google Business Profile, Yelp, Facebook, Bing, Apple Maps, the Chamber of Commerce, industry directories — needs the EXACT same name, address, and phone number.
- "Joe's Plumbing" ≠ "Joe's Plumbing LLC" ≠ "Joes Plumbing"
- "123 W. Main St., Spokane, WA 99201" ≠ "123 West Main Street, Spokane, WA 99201"
- "(509) 555-0123" ≠ "509-555-0123" ≠ "509.555.0123"
Google uses NAP consistency as a signal for how trustworthy your business is. Every inconsistency across directories weakens your local ranking. This is the single most under-appreciated local SEO fix.
How to check: Google your business name in quotes and see how many variations show up. Fix the inconsistencies.
Real example: what changed for a Spokane restaurant
A restaurant owner in Spokane had a decent-looking website but wasn't generating calls or reservations. Audit found:
- Phone number was in the footer only, not the header
- No photos of the interior; only the food (couldn't tell what the space was like)
- No mention of the neighborhood in the site copy (missed all "restaurant in [neighborhood]" searches)
- 4.7-star Google rating but no reviews shown on the actual website
- No Google Business Profile at all — the location was on Google Maps as an unclaimed business
Changes made (over about 6 weeks):
- Phone number moved to the top-right header on every page
- 15 real photos taken (interior, exterior, chef, food, staff)
- Added a "Serving Spokane and Spokane Valley" section with 3 short paragraphs about each area
- Embedded 5 Google reviews on the homepage
- Claimed and fully filled the Google Business Profile, uploaded photos, started responding to reviews
Result over the next 3 months: online reservations up ~60%, phone reservations up noticeably (they didn't measure precisely), Google Business Profile impressions up 3x.
Total cost of the changes: about $2,800 (including the photographer). The restaurant's revenue increase in the first quarter alone was many times that.
What to do this week
Load your own website on your phone. Not on your laptop. Try to call yourself in one tap. If you can't, that's fix #1.
Google your business name in quotes, from an incognito window. See what shows up. Check the Name/Address/Phone consistency across the top 10 results.
Log into (or claim) your Google Business Profile. Complete every field. Upload 10 photos taken today, on your phone, of your actual business.
Look at your 3 top local competitors' websites. Note what they have that you don't. Copy the good ideas; note the mistakes to avoid.
If you're deciding whether to hire a designer to make these changes or do them yourself, read choosing a web design agency in Spokane for the framework. And if you're deciding between hiring locally vs a freelancer vs an agency, the vendor decision tree applies here too.
A Spokane small business website doesn't need to be beautiful. It needs to be trusted, quickly findable, and easy to act on. Those four properties are worth more than any award-winning design.
---
If you'd like an honest audit of what's working and what's costing you customers on your specific Spokane business site, reach out via the contact page with your URL. I'll spend 30 minutes on it and send you a real diagnosis — no sales pitch.