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Your first business website: a step-by-step plan

SiteSmith · · 5 min read

A first business website goes smoothly when you do things in the right order: decide what the site is for, secure the domain name, plan a few pages, write and photograph, build, test on your phone, then launch and tell people. Most of the effort is in the middle steps, the words and the photos, not in the technology. Here is the plan, step by step, with what to do at each stage and what to check before moving on.

Step 1: Decide the one job the site must do

Before anything technical, finish this sentence: "When someone visits, I want them to ___." For most local businesses the answer is one of:

  • call me,
  • send a request for a quote,
  • book an appointment,
  • visit the shop.

Write it on a sticky note. Every later decision, from what goes at the top of the home page to which button is biggest, follows from it. A site that tries to do everything equally usually does nothing well.

Step 2: Secure your domain name

Your domain is your address online, like millerroofing.com. Pick it early because it goes on everything else.

  • Keep it short, easy to spell after hearing it once, and close to the name customers use.
  • Prefer .com for a business. .com, .net or .biz explains the alternatives.
  • Register it in your own name with an email you read, and turn on auto-renew.
  • If your first choice is taken, add your town or trade rather than an odd spelling.

Step 3: Set up an email address on it

An address like [email protected] looks established and stays yours if you ever change provider. Set it up now, so it is ready to print alongside the website. You can start with a single mailbox and add extra addresses that deliver into it. How to set up a business email address walks through it.

Step 4: Plan the pages

Keep the first version small. Four or five pages is plenty:

  1. Home: what you do, where, and the main button from step 1.
  2. Services (or Menu, or Treatments): one section per thing you offer.
  3. About: who you are, with a real photo.
  4. Work or Reviews: photos of jobs, or what customers have said.
  5. Contact: phone, email, form, hours, area or address, and a map if people visit.

Sketch them on paper: a box per page, with the three most important things that page must say. That sketch is your plan for everything that follows.

Step 5: Write the words

Writing stalls more first websites than anything else. Make it easier by answering questions instead of facing a blank page:

  • Home: What do you do, in one sentence a neighbor would understand? Which towns? Why do customers pick you over others?
  • Each service: What is it? Who is it for? What happens, from first call to finished job? Roughly what does it cost, or how is it priced?
  • About: How did you start? How long have you been doing it? What do you care about that customers notice?
  • Contact: When do you answer the phone? How quickly do you reply to messages?

Write the way you talk to customers. Short sentences. Then read it out loud and cut anything you would not say in person.

Step 6: Gather the photos

Real photos of your work beat stock photos almost every time. Over a week or two:

  • Photograph finished jobs, your products or your premises, in daylight.
  • Ask someone to take a photo of you, and of the team if you have one.
  • Take one clear photo of your vehicle, sign or shopfront.
  • Hold the phone horizontally for wide shots and keep the lens clean.

If you have very few, a website for a business with no photos yet has workarounds.

Step 7: Choose how it gets built

Now you have the material, decide who puts it together: you on a website builder, a designer, or a done-for-you service. With steps 1 to 6 done, every option is faster and cheaper, because the hardest part is already in your hands.

Step 8: Test before anyone sees it

Before you connect your domain, test the site on your own phone, then on a computer. Go through this list:

  • The phone number is near the top, and tapping it starts a call.
  • The main button from step 1 is easy to find on every page.
  • Text is readable without zooming, and nothing runs off the screen.
  • Every link and menu item goes where it should.
  • The contact form arrives in your inbox. Send yourself a test.
  • Your name, address and phone are spelled the same everywhere.
  • Hours are correct, including holidays if you mention them.

Then ask two people who do not know your business well to find one specific thing, such as your prices for a service, and watch where they get stuck.

Step 9: Launch

  1. Connect the domain to the site and check it works with and without "www".
  2. Add the website to your Google Business Profile. Adding your website to your Google Business Profile shows where.
  3. Add it to your Facebook page, Yelp listing and other directories.
  4. Put it in your email signature.
  5. Add it to your next print run of cards, invoices and signs.

Step 10: The first month after

  • Check the form and your inbox each day for the first week.
  • Ask new customers whether they looked at the site, and what they were looking for.
  • Fix the first thing they mention.
  • Put a reminder in your calendar every three months to check hours, prices and photos.

A website is never finished, but a small one kept current does its job well for years.

Your plan on one page

  • One job for the site, written down.
  • Domain registered in your name, on auto-renew.
  • Email on the domain, tested.
  • Five pages sketched.
  • Words written by answering the questions above.
  • Photos taken in daylight.
  • Builder, designer or service chosen.
  • Phone test passed.
  • Launched, and listed everywhere you appear.

If you would like to skip ahead and look at a finished version first, you can see a first website for your business built from your details, and use it to check your plan.

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