What a corporate website needs: a checklist

A corporate website’s job isn’t just to “look nice”. Within a few seconds of arriving, a visitor should understand what you do, find enough proof to trust you and be able to contact you easily. The site also needs to load quickly, work comfortably on mobile, be findable in search engines and meet legal requirements.

The sections below are a practical guide you can use when planning a new site or reviewing your current one.

Service and product pages

The most common mistake on corporate sites is listing every service on one page in short bullet points. That gives visitors too little information and limits visibility in search engines. It’s better to create a separate page for each main service or product group.

A good service page should include:

• A clear introduction explaining what the service is and who it’s for
• How the process works: steps, timings, what we need from you
• The concrete benefits the service delivers
• Related project examples or images
• Frequently asked questions
• A clear call to contact at the end of the page

Write the text on your service pages in the customer’s language. Industry abbreviations and technical terms may mean nothing to a purchasing specialist researching you for the first time. Keep the technical detail, but answer “which of my problems does this service solve?” first; that makes the page easier to read and more likely to convert.

Having each page focus on one main topic helps users find what they’re looking for and helps search engines understand the page correctly.

References and trust elements

Before working with you, visitors want to see whether you’ve done similar work before. References and project sections answer that question. But rather than just showing a wall of logos, adding short case descriptions that explain each project is more convincing where possible: what was needed, what was done, what solution was produced?

Don’t forget to get permission from the companies concerned before publishing reference logos and project images. Other trust-building elements include:

• Certificates and quality documents (current and verifiable)
• Company history and team information
• Photos of the facility, office and production area, or a promotional film
• Full address, map and company contact details

The About page matters more for trust than people think. Visitors want to see that there is a real team and a real facility behind the site. When and how the company was founded, what it specialises in, how it works and a short introduction to the management team can all go here. Use concrete facts that genuinely describe you rather than generic sentences that could fit any company.

Real photos and videos build far more trust than stock images. For product-focused companies, professional product photography is a good investment here.

Contact page and forms

Contact is the real purpose of a corporate site. Visitors should be able to reach contact from every page. The contact page should include:

• Phone number (tappable to call on mobile)
• Email address
• Full address and map
• Opening hours
• A WhatsApp or similar instant contact option where appropriate
• Separate contact details for different departments

The most important rule for forms is simplicity. Do not ask for fields you do not really need. After the form is submitted, show the user a clear confirmation and test regularly that enquiries reach the right person. Add spam protection, but avoid complicated checks that wear users out. Because the form collects personal data, it also needs a link to the privacy notice.

Speed and mobile friendliness

A slow site quickly wears out visitors’ patience. Page experience is also among the signals search engines take into account. Basic speed tips:

• Use images at the right size and in modern formats (for example WebP or AVIF).
• Remove unnecessary plugins and scripts.
• Rather than uploading videos directly to the site, present them with a suitable player and preview image.
• Use reliable hosting and caching.
• Keep the number of font files limited.

A large share of visitors come to the site from a phone. So rather than designing for desktop and adapting to mobile, the design should be planned with mobile use in mind from the start. Buttons that are easy to tap with a finger, text readable without zooming and an easy-to-use menu are the basic criteria. You can regularly check your site’s speed and mobile performance with free tools such as Google’s PageSpeed Insights.

KVKK and legal texts

If your website processes personal data through forms, cookies or analytics tools, you need to consider your obligations under Law No. 6698 on the Protection of Personal Data (KVKK). Corporate sites usually include these texts:

• Information notice on the processing of personal data
• Cookie policy and cookie preference management
• Explicit consent forms where required
• Privacy policy and terms of use

The content of these notices depends on your company’s data processing activities, and ready-made templates are often not enough. For current obligations, we recommend checking the official resources of the Personal Data Protection Authority and preparing the texts with a legal expert.

Structured data and technical SEO

Structured data describes the information on your page to search engines in a standard format. For example, company name, address, phone, logo and social media accounts can be marked up with the “Organization” or “LocalBusiness” types. There are suitable types for FAQs, services and content pages too. Because which types are supported and when they produce different appearances in search results can change, follow Google Search Central documentation as your current source.

Other key elements to check for technical SEO:

Multilingual support

For companies that export or work with foreign customers, a multilingual site is an important need. There are a few points to watch:

• Use a separate, permanent URL structure for each language (for example /en/, /de/).
• Prefer translations by people who know the industry’s terminology over machine translation.
• Link language versions to each other with hreflang tags.
• Put the language switcher somewhere visible and take users to the other language version of the same page.
• Make sure contact forms and legal texts exist in all languages too.

A multilingual site isn’t just translated text; examples and emphasis should be adapted to the target market’s expectations. You don’t have to launch all languages at once either; preparing the core pages in your most important market’s language first and expanding over time is more manageable.

Corporate website checklist

1. The home page explains what you do within a few seconds.
2. There is a separate page for each main service or product group.
3. References and projects are approved, described and up to date.
4. Contact details are accessible from every page.
5. Forms are simple, tested and link to the privacy notice.
6. The site is comfortable to use on mobile and loads quickly.
7. The KVKK information notice, cookie policy and required legal texts are live.
8. Structured data and basic technical SEO settings are done.
9. HTTPS is active and the sitemap has been submitted to Search Console.
10. If a multilingual structure is needed, it’s built with the right URL and hreflang setup.
11. Images and videos are real, current and optimised.
12. The site is regularly updated and backed up.

Conclusion

A strong corporate website comes from clear service pages, references that build trust, easy contact, speed, mobile friendliness, legal compliance and solid technical foundations working together. You can use this checklist to assess your current site or plan a new one. To see how we approach corporate website projects in Kocaeli, take a look at our web design and SEO page or get in touch with us.