What business details do you have to show on your website?

Every business website should make three things easy to find: who is behind it, a real way to reach you, and where you are or the area you serve. In the US, no single law forces every website to show these, but visitors quietly demand them anyway, and a few activities do carry real rules. If your business is registered in the UK or Europe, some details are required by law. The whole job is a footer line and a contact page, not a legal project.

Quick answer

• Show your business name, one real way to get in touch, and where you are or the area you serve. Visitors look for these before they trust you with money.
• In the US there is no single rule that makes every website display its details, but specific activities carry rules, like a privacy policy once you collect personal information.
• UK limited companies must show the registered name, the company number, the registered office address, and where the company is registered on their websites, per gov.uk.
• Selling to customers in the EU means giving your identity, a physical address, and an email address before the customer buys.
• You do not have to publish your home address. A service area works for visitors, and where an address is required there are workable stand-ins.
• Put the details in the footer and on your contact page, the two places everyone looks first.

What details do visitors expect to see?

Before any rule gets involved, your visitors are already checking. Someone deciding whether to send you money or book your time scans for a few small signals, usually without noticing they are doing it.

A name. Not just a logo. The name of the business, and ideally the name of a person. A website with no one behind it reads as risky, which is why an honest about page does so much quiet work.

A real way to get in touch. An email address, a phone number, or a form that clearly goes somewhere. If reaching you looks hard, visitors assume that getting help after paying you will be harder. What belongs there is its own topic, covered in our guide to what should be on your contact page.

A place. A street address if customers come to you, or a plain sentence about the area you serve if you go to them. "Serving Riverside and the surrounding towns" answers the question just as well as a pin on a map.

None of this is law in the US. All of it decides whether a stranger trusts you, and a website missing all three looks exactly like the websites scammers make, because scammers are the ones with a reason to hide.

Do you legally have to show your business details?

It depends on two things: where your business is registered, and what your website does.

Where you are registered matters because countries answer this question very differently. The US mostly leaves it to trust and to activity-specific rules. The UK and many European countries write the list into law, down to which numbers go in the footer.

What your website does matters because rules attach to activities, not to websites. A page that only describes your work carries almost no requirements. Start collecting names, taking payments, or sending marketing email, and each of those switches on its own rule.

So the honest answer is not one list. It is a short list for everyone, plus whatever your country and your activities add. The next two sections walk through both.

What do the rules look like in the US?

There is no general US law that makes every website post the owner's name and address. The rules that do exist attach to the things your website does.

Collecting personal information. A contact form or signup box is enough to trigger this one. California's law reaches almost every US website, and it asks for one honest page. Our guide on whether you need a privacy policy covers it in plain words.

Sending marketing email. The federal CAN-SPAM rule says every marketing email must include a valid physical postal address. Under the FTC's rule, that can be your current street address, a post office box registered with the US Postal Service, or a registered private mailbox from a commercial mail service. So building an email list commits you to having a real mailing address, though not necessarily your home one. Our guide on growing an email list covers the sending side.

Licensed work. If your trade needs a license, the board that issued it often has its own rules about showing the license number on your advertising, and your website counts as advertising. Check the rules that came with your license rather than guessing. The same goes for permits and sales tax if you sell online.

Selling anything. No identity rule kicks in federally, but the trust math changes. A checkout page on a website with no name, no address, and no working contact converts poorly for a reason.

What if your business is registered in the UK or Europe?

Here the list is written down, and it is short enough to just do.

UK limited companies must show four things on their websites, according to gov.uk: the company's registered name including the "Limited" or "Ltd" at the end, the company's registered number, the registered office address, and where the company is registered, meaning England and Wales, Scotland, or Northern Ireland. One more detail from the same guidance: naming directors is optional, but if you name any of them, you must name all of them. Sole traders have a lighter load, but the trust list at the top of this guide still applies in full.

Selling to customers in the EU comes with its own list. The EU's consumer rules, as the European Commission explains them, say an online seller must give customers the seller's identity, a physical address, an email address, and a phone number if one is available, before the customer completes the purchase. In practice, websites answer this with a footer and a contact page that carry the real details.

Some European countries ask for more. A few require every business website to carry a formal legal notice page listing the company's details. If your business is registered in Europe, spend five minutes with your own country's official business guidance. It is the one part of this topic where copying a US website's footer can genuinely put you on the wrong side of a rule.

Do you have to show your home address?

This is the question behind the question for most first-timers, because most first businesses run from home.

In the US, for the website itself, no. Show the area you serve instead of a street address, and you have answered the visitor's real question, which is "are you near me", not "where do you sleep". If you build an email list, the mailing address the email rule requires can be a registered post office box or private mailbox instead of your street address.

In the UK, a limited company's registered office address must be on the website, and it is public either way. But it does not have to be your home. Accountants and registered office services rent that job out, and many home-based companies use one for exactly this reason.

The one place never to fake it is anywhere a customer might actually use the address. A made-up address is worse than a missing one, because the visitor who checks it, and some will, now knows you lied about something easy.

Where should these details go on your website?

Two places do almost all the work.

The footer. The strip at the bottom of every page is where the whole internet has agreed the identity details live. Business name, the legally required numbers if your country has them, and links to your contact page and privacy policy. Visitors scroll there when they are deciding whether to trust you, which is exactly when you want the details found.

The contact page. The address or service area, the ways to reach you, and when you reply. If customers visit you, the details here should match your Google Business Profile exactly, so nobody ends up at a closed door.

The about page rounds it out by putting a person behind the name. That is the whole map. No banner, no pop-up, no wall of small print, just the right details in the two places people look. If you are still deciding what else the website needs, our guide to what pages a website needs has the short list.

Will the AI builder fill these details in for you?

No, and this is worth understanding before you build. Tell an AI website builder to make a website for your business and it will happily produce a footer and a contact page. What it puts there is filler: a placeholder address, a made-up email, the same "123 Main Street" every other generic website gets. The builder does not know your registered name, your service area, or which country's rules apply to you, so it cannot get this right on its own.

That is the gap Expert Built closes. You describe what you are starting in your own words, including the real details, and Expert Built turns that into the detailed prompt the AI builder needs. We do not build the website ourselves. We make sure the builder starts from your actual business name, your actual area, and your actual ways to be reached, so the details that carry your trust come out real instead of generic.

What should you do first?

Write five lines in plain words before you touch any tool: your business name as customers know it, your legal name if it is different, the way you want to be reached, your address or the area you serve, and any number a rule asks you to show, like a company number or a trade license. That is the raw material for your footer and your contact page, and it takes ten minutes.

Then check your country's side of it. US owners can go straight to the privacy policy and stop there. UK and EU owners should spend five minutes on their government's official business pages and copy the required list into the footer.

When the five lines are ready, start with your description and get a prompt built around your real details, and give the footer one last look before you share the website. It is the smallest part of the page, and it is doing more of the trust work than anything else on it.