Franchise Web Design: 9 Best Practices in 2025

Editor’s Note: This post was originally published in February of 2024 and has been updated for accuracy and comprehensiveness.

Your franchise website is the primary touchpoint for prospects, customers, potential franchisees, and other business partners to learn more about your services and operations. 

However, building a franchise website can be complex: Your site needs to attract and convert new leads, help increase foot traffic to your physical franchise locations (where applicable), and communicate a consistent brand identity. 

Today, we’ll explore some critical elements of designing a successful franchise website and share some tips to finding the right agency to support your web design needs. 

The Challenge of Building a Franchise Website

The biggest challenge with designing an effective franchise website is the need to balance the needs of the franchisor and franchisees within one digital environment. 

On one hand, franchisors need the site to present a cohesive brand identity so that every visitor, no matter where they are, experiences the same aesthetics and gets the franchise’s message. This uniformity helps maintain brand recognition and trust.  

On the other hand, a franchise website should allow individual franchisees to tailor their specific location pages to the needs of their local markets. This means customizing their content to showcase local promotions, events, and any location-specific service or product offerings. 

So it’s important to localize content to improve each location’s visibility on search engines. At the same time, you need to maintain brand consistency to increase brand accuracy, recognition, and inspire trust. 

With that in mind, let’s take a look at nine best practices for effective franchise web design.

9 Best Practices for Franchise Web Design

1. Create Dedicated Pages for Important Business Information

The main corporate section of your website should have different pages with information that apply to your entire franchise operations. 

These pages separate different types of content so visitors can easily find what they’re looking for. Here’s an example from Merry Maids: 

Here’s another example of separate pages for different reasons on Starbucks: 

So, in designing your franchise website, include some of the following pages: 

• About page: This is where you share the brand story. The “what” or “why” behind the company. You can also use this page to discuss the core values and mission of the company. 
• Franchise opportunity page: This is where you explain the process (and the benefits) for people who might be interested in becoming a franchisee under your brand. Here’s what Merry Maid’s page looks like:

• Product or service overview: This is where you provide a general overview of what the franchise as a business offers. 
• Corporate news and press releases: This is where you share information about any recent or upcoming milestones, events, and initiatives that impact the entire franchise network. 
• Contact information: This is where you provide details on how a typical user can reach your corporate headquarters. It can include the business email address, phone number, and headquarter address. 
• FAQs: This is where you answer questions people often ask about your franchise as a whole. 
• Careers page: This is where you list any current openings for those interested in corporate-level career opportunities. 
• Legal and compliance documentation: This contains any necessary legal information like terms of service, privacy policy, and compliance-related disclosures
• Locations page: This is where you direct visitors to access information specific to different franchise locations (more on that below). 

Create pages with this information so every visitor (prospects, customers, or potential franchisees) can access everything they need. 

2. Build Separate Pages for Each Franchise Location

On top of your “global” web pages, your franchise website should have a designated page (or even an entire subsection) for each of your locations. 

This approach allows franchisees to create content for their local market, and highlight special promotions, menu options (and varieties) and other location-specific information. 

This will provide a more personalized experience for local visitors and enhance each location’s ability to rank for relevant local queries. 

We recommend creating a separate subfolder within your website for each franchise location (e.g., www.franchise.com/nashville). This structure organizes your site in a clear and logical manner, and lets you create specific content for specific locations. 

Here’s an example of a location page within a subfolder for Chick-fil-A, Summer Avenue, Memphis: https://www.chick-fil-a.com/locations/tn/summer-ave.

3. Ensure Consistent Branding Throughout the Website

Your reputation is important; protect it. It’s what motivates customers to patronize your brand, and is also what compels franchisees to join your network. 

For this reason, users who visit your website should experience the same brand identity no matter which page they land on. This means that your website’s visual design, typography, tone of voice, formatting, and how you describe your product or service should remain consistent. 

However, maintaining this level of uniformity can be tricky when individual franchisees have the freedom to update and manage their own location pages. That’s why you should create in-depth brand guidelines to mitigate any deviations from your online brand identity.

In 2025, franchise websites solve this challenge by using a content management system (CMS) that is designed to balance brand control with local customization.

For instance;

• Template-based systems like WordPress with Multisite and HubSpot CMS Hub lets franchisors run many sites from a single installation. With WordPress, you can manage different locations’ websites while sharing the same WordPress core, themes, and plugins. HubSpot’s Enterprise plan also lets you manage multiple domains and websites from one HubSpot portal. 
• Headless CMS platforms like Contentful or Sanity give franchises the flexibility to deliver consistent content on multiple channels and still allow location-specific customization.
• Franchise-facing platforms like FranConnect also provide built-in workflows that require franchisor’s approval before franchisees’ content goes live. This way, franchises can control the information that franchisees put out. 

You can learn more about creating brand guidelines in our guide to brand consistency.

4. Make Your Website Mobile-Friendly

It’s important that your franchise website works well on mobile as it does on desktop devices. 

In 2024, over 62% of global website traffic came from mobile devices. As of October 2021, Google only considers the mobile version of websites when determining organic rankings.

This means that even if your site works perfectly on a desktop, your rankings can take a hit if the mobile version of your site isn’t up to par.

To improve the mobile user experience, focus on page speed and ensure every link is clickable and obvious to web users. Page speed is important because it affects important metrics like bounce rate and conversion rate. Because the poorer your page speed, the easier it is for users to exit your page without taking any action. 

So, to improve this, check the three metrics of Google’s Core Web Vitals: 

• Largest Contentful Paint (LCP): measures your website’s loading performance. For a good user experience, your page speed shouldn’t be more than 2.5 seconds. 

Here’s an example from web.dev. 

• Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS): Measures your page’s visual stability as it loads. It checks how your page shifts around while it’s loading for the first 5 seconds. It also assesses if your banner, images or texts jump around while the page loads, especially after every element on the screen is supposed to have been completely processed: 

Here’s an example from Debug Bear: 

You can learn more about CLS here. 

• Interaction to Next Paint (INP): Measures your website’s responsiveness. Your pages should respond to users within 200 milliseconds or less, so users get immediate feedback when they interact with your site. 

According to Debug Bear, it measures “how quickly a website responds to user interactions like clicks or key presses. 

Specifically, it measures how much time elapses between a user interaction like a click or key press and the next time the user sees a visual update on the page.” 

Here’s an example of what it looks like from Debug Bear. 

The faster your website responds to every click, the better. 

This is because the metrics show how users interact with your page, why some users exit your page, and why you’re not ranking even when you’re optimized for certain keywords. 

You can easily test your site’s loading times and diagnose any speed issues using Google’s free PageSpeed Insights tool.

While optimizing for mobile performance, implement local schema markup on each franchise location page as well. 

It’s a code you add to your pages to show web crawlers what each page is about. It can be a location and contact details code like this from Backlinko:

It can also be operational details markup: 

All these provide more context to users (before they even open your page) so they know what the page is about. Here’s what that may look like: 

So, implementing schema markup on your website can increase your CTR from the search results because users already see that the page content can meet their needs. 

5. Use an Intuitive Website Navigation

Your visitors need to be able to find all the information they need easily. This may be general corporate information about your commitments, specific products or services, or details on how to join your franchise network. 

The goal is for visitors to grasp the overall structure of your site within seconds of scrolling through the menu and pages.

Here are some ways to facilitate users’ ability to quickly find the information they need:

• Logical menu structure: Use a straightforward top-level navigation structure, grouping similar items together under clear headings. Your site’s most important sections should be easily accessible from this main menu. Remember Starbucks:

• Search functionality: Use a search feature to allow users to input keywords and find relevant information quickly. Here’s the search bar from Chick-fil-A: 

• Breadcrumbs: Use breadcrumb navigation to help users track their path from the homepage to their current location. Here’s what that looks like: 

Learn more about breadcrumbs here. 

• Internal linking: Strategically place internal links throughout your content to help users find related information.
• Footer navigation: Include a footer with links to important pages like ‘About Us,’ ‘Contact Us,’ and ‘FAQs’

Also, use the proper title tags in your content to give users an idea of what the content is about before they click on it from the results page. Make sure the title correlates to the page content and is not misleading. 

A tip is to optimize your title tags with keywords that potential customers are searching for to show search engines and users the local relevance of such pages. 

6. Show Your Credibility With Social Proof

One of the most effective ways to reassure visitors that your franchise is trustworthy is by showcasing positive feedback from existing customers and franchisees throughout your site.

Social proof can come in various forms. They include testimonials, user reviews, user-generated content, and star ratings. The more reviews, the better your chances of converting new visitors. 

In 2025, modern franchises can also use any of these tactics: 

• Live review feeds: They are embedded widgets that automatically update your reviews as users write them. It pulls these reviews from platforms like Google Business Profile, Yelp, Facebook, and other review sites, and updates them on your page so users can see your most recent feedback. 

Here’s an example from StarFeedback: 

• Video testimonials: Short, authentic video clips of actual customers or franchisees sharing their experiences show users that real people enjoy your product or services, and it’s not just an incentivized or half-hearted written review. With this, marketers say they see an 80% improvement in their conversion rates after using video testimonials.

Here’s an example from ShopperApproved: 

• Location-specific social walls: Use curated displays that showcases your social media mentions, tagged photos, and location-based hashtags from satisfied customers at different franchise locations. It’s a form of UGC that tells potential customers that you’re trustworthy.  

It looks like this example from Calvin Klein’s #MyCALVINS:

• Before/after showcases: If you offer transformative services or products, add comparisons that show the before and after a user tried that product or service. This tells users what to expect, and it can immediately convince them to purchase your business. 

You can also highlight the specific strengths of different franchise locations by adding local customer reviews and success stories to location pages, like Two Maids does for all locations.

Here’s one for Auburn, Alabama: 

It’s also worth integrating third-party review verification platforms that authenticate reviews through purchase verification or location check-ins, to show credibility and avoid user’s skepticism around online reviews. 

7. Include a Franchise Locator

We’ve already mentioned the importance of clear navigation and adding dedicated location pages to your franchise site. However, you can make it even easier for users to find nearby franchises by using a franchise locator feature. 

A franchise locator is an interactive tool, often map-based, that lets users enter their zip code, city, or region to find their nearest franchise locations quickly. Here’s what it looks like on Starbucks: 

In 2025, these modern locators will help users find locations of your franchise where they are through features like: 

• Geolocation auto-detection: Automatically detect the user’s location (with permission), and display nearby franchise options with no manual input from the user.
• Filtering capabilities: Allow users to filter locations based on services offered, hours of operation, amenities, or other location-specific features. Example from Starbucks: 

• Mobile-optimized interfaces: Touchscreen-friendly controls that are designed for users on the go.
• Visual search results: these tools show search results as a map and a list, and allow users to toggle between views based on their preference. 
• Rich location previews: They also show key information like hours, services, photos, and ratings directly in search results to help users make quick decisions.
• Save and share functionality: Users can also save their favorite locations and share them with others via text, email, or social media.  

Since many visitors to your site are likely seeking a local franchise location, your locator tool should feature prominently on your homepage and within your top-level navigation menu.

Here’s a franchise locator example from Anytime Fitness:

8. Prioritize ADA Compliance and Web Accessibility

There are over 1.3 billion people with disabilities in the world, and despite this, only about 4% of US web pages are ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act)-compliant. This means only 4% of US websites are navigable for people with disabilities, and other potential customers of a brand are excluded from using a website because of their disability. 

To stay ADA-compliant, you should: 

• Follow the web accessibility guidelines (WCAG 2.2): It defines how you can make your web content accessible to people with different kinds of disability. This includes adding alt texts to all images for screen readers to interpret, providing captions and transcripts for multimedia content, and maintaining sufficient color contrast for standard texts. 
• Make your franchise locator fully accessible: Make sure your locator works well with screen readers and keyboard controls, with simple instructions.  
• Test with actual assistive technology: Don’t rely solely on automated checkers. Test with software that disabled users actually use when navigating your website. This will help you know what’s working firsthand. 

9. Optimize Your Website Architecture for Local SEO

Your website architecture shows how your pages link together to create an easily navigable structure. The goal of any website architecture is to allow users and search engine bots to find every page on your website within a few clicks. 

Here are some best practices to improve your architecture for local SEO: 

• Use fewer clicks to get users to the pages they need: Users may get distracted along the way if they have to click so many times before they get to a specific page they’re looking for. Stick to three or fewer clicks to get users around your website through the flat architecture (not the deep one). 

Here’s an example of what a flat architecture looks like vs deep architecture from Ahrefs: 

One gets users to pages faster than the other. And the one that gets users to all pages faster is easy to navigate and user-friendly. 

• Group your content into categories. If you have a blog, use categories to group them into sub folders so users can go for the category they need or find the type of content they’re looking for. 

Here’s an example from our Insite blog: 

You can also create different categories for the type of services you offer (if you offer multiple services). Here’s an example from Chewy. 

• Use internal links: Your internal links determine your website structure. For example, if you link to your service page from your homepage, and then link to your different services from there, it shows users a clear path to move from your landing page to where they need to go. 

All these make your website easily navigable and usable on different devices (and for different types of users). 

How to Select a Web Design Agency for Your Franchise Site

Given the complexities of building a well-functioning franchise website, many franchisors prefer to outsource web design to a professional agency. 

However, before you can find a suitable web design agency, you first need to iron out your project requirements, the timeline and your budget. 

A good way to approach this task is by creating a web design Request For a Proposal (RFP) document. A web design RFP breaks down your project needs and helps the potential web design agency understand your needs. 

Once you send your RFP, they’ll respond with a proposal on how they’ll approach the project and what they’ll charge. If you like the proposal, the next step is to arrange a meeting (or call) with the agency to discuss more about your idea and how they can bring it to fruition before you officially hire them. 

To improve your chances, here are some of the information to have in your RFP document: 

• Project summary. 
• Overview of your franchise business. 
• Goals and objectives.
• Project scope.
• Problems with your existing site (if applicable).
• Timeline and budget.
• Agency selection criteria.
• Contact information.
• Proposal deadline.

Check out our web design RFP template to make the process faster for you. 

Final Thoughts

You can unify your franchise website without compromising the autonomy of your franchisees. From a web design perspective, this helps you retain global traffic and direct users to franchisees near them from a map locator (or location pages). This also helps to increase brand consistency (even as a multi-national franchisor). 

With the tips we’ve shared above, you can design a website that attracts new franchisees and local users. It’ll also increase the visibility of your brand whenever people search for queries you’ve optimized for. If you need to outsource the web design process of your franchise website, hire a team that has web design and digital marketing experience. They can use their SEO knowledge to improve your success on search engines. We do this at HigherVisibility, so check our web design and franchise marketing pages to see how we can help your franchise.y with tons of experience delivering digital marketing success for franchise businesses, feel free to get in touch with HigherVisibility today.