Your first small business website: where to start

Do you need a website yet?

Not always. If the people who buy from you already find you, understand what you offer and can get in touch easily, a website is an improvement rather than an emergency.

The useful question is what your current channels cannot do. Look for where an enquiry stalls: someone who wants prices, someone who wants to see finished work, someone deciding at ten at night. If nothing stalls, you have time to plan the site properly rather than rush one out.

• Facebook Page or Website? What Actually Differs What a free Facebook Page covers, where it stops, and who controls it.
• Is a Google Business Profile Alone Enough? Whether a free Google listing on its own is enough for the way you sell.

What would a website do for your business?

It depends on the job you are trying to win. Someone baking to order for people they already know, or running a repeat cleaning round, already has a way to reach their buyers. Someone selling crochet to strangers, or building up a dog walking round, usually wants one place that shows the work and takes an enquiry.

Trades split the same way. A full diary of repeat work asks less of a website than chasing bigger one-off jobs from people who have never met you. Read the guide closest to your own trade rather than the general case.

• Does an Electrician Need a Website? The Honest Answer When an electrician gains more from a website than from word of mouth alone.
• Does a Gardener Need a Website? The Honest Answer What changes for one-off garden jobs rather than a regular round.
• Mobile Hairdresser Website: Is It Worth It? What a website adds when you travel to clients instead of working from a salon.

What should your first website include?

Enough for a stranger to understand you and get in touch. A first website does not need every page you can imagine, it needs the few that answer what people ask before they enquire.

Start with the list below and add pages later, once you can see what visitors look for and do not find.

• What you do, written in the words your customers use
• Where you work, named by town or area
• How to get in touch: a form, a phone number, or both
• Photos of your own work rather than stock pictures
• What it costs, or what the price depends on when it varies
• Who you are, so a stranger knows there is a person behind it
• The business details covered in the going-live section below

Website photos: what do you actually need?
Website copy that works: what to actually say

Do you need a business email address?

You can run without one, but it is easier to set up at the start than to change later. An address at your own domain sits alongside the website instead of beside a free provider name, and the awkward part is moving every customer to a new address afterwards.

If your personal address is already on cards, vans and invoices, weigh the cost of switching against carrying on as you are.

• Do You Need a Business Email Address? What an address at your own domain changes, and what it costs to run.

What should you check before going live?

Check what you are expected to publish and what you have promised. A site that takes enquiries or sells online carries obligations a social account does not always make obvious, and they are easier to build in than to bolt on.

Read the guide below before launch rather than after. Adding a missing page is quick; hearing about it from a customer is not.

• Website Legal Requirements: What UK Law Says The details a UK business website is expected to publish, and where that comes from.

Ready to choose how it gets built?

Once you know what the site has to do, the next question is who builds it and what you pay. Building it yourself is genuinely cheaper and costs your time instead. Paying someone costs money and buys the time back, along with a person to ask when something breaks.

The next hub sets those options beside each other.

Website costs and choices