How to create a website for your business, step by step

Start with the one thing your website has to do

Many guides start with a domain or a template. Start one step earlier. Write one sentence about what a visitor should do on your site. “A homeowner should see we fix decks in their town and send a request with photos” is a goal you can build and test. “We need a modern website” is not.

If more than one group visits, rank them. One homepage can serve owners and renters, but one of them comes first. Write the sentence down with the pages you think you need, and you have most of a website brief. A designer needs that to quote, and you need it to stay on track if you build the site yourself.

That sentence changes by business. Here is what it often looks like:

• A contractor or trade: send a request with the address, the job and a few photos, or tap to call.
• A café or restaurant: check today’s hours and menu, then order catering or book a table.
• A shop or showroom: see what’s on the floor, find the store, and ask about a special order.
• A property manager: owners ask about management, renters see vacancies, and tenants find where to send a repair request.

How to create a website for your business in nine steps

Here is the whole job in order. Next to each step is who usually does it on a small business site: you, whoever builds the site, or either. Site builders and agencies word the steps a little differently, but the work is the same.

Notice that the first three steps belong to you whichever way the site gets built. Nobody else knows your services, your area or the questions customers ask on the phone. Those steps also take the longest when nobody plans for them.

• 1. Decide what the site must do and who it’s for. You.
• 2. Register a domain in your business’s name and set up email on it. You, even if someone else builds the site.
• 3. Gather the words, photos and business details. You, with help writing if you want it.
• 4. Plan the pages and what goes on each. Either.
• 5. Choose how it gets built: a site builder, WordPress or custom. You decide; whoever you hire may suggest one.
• 6. Design and build the pages. You, on a site builder; otherwise whoever you hire.
• 7. Set up the request or booking form and decide where each request goes. Often worth handing off.
• 8. Test on a real phone, fix what’s wrong, and launch. Either, but you send the test request.
• 9. Keep it current: hours, prices, photos, new services. You, with help for updates and bigger changes.

Register the domain in your business’s name

Your domain is your web address, and it can also be your email address, like [email protected]. Register it yourself, in an account tied to an email you control, even if a designer builds the site. One problem to watch for: a domain bought years ago by a past web person, in their own account. Whoever holds that login controls where your website and email point.

Pick something short and easy to say over the phone. Your business name is usually best. If it’s taken, adding your town or trade can work. Skip hyphens and spellings people mishear.

Then check the renewal price, not only the first year. Some builders include the domain free at first. Squarespace, for example, includes one year of free registration for one eligible domain with yearly website plans. Some domains don’t qualify. After that, the domain renews at Squarespace’s standard rate (when we checked in October 2026). Put the renewal on a card the business will still have next year. Email at your domain is often a separate service with a monthly fee for each mailbox, so check that cost when you compare prices.

Already have a domain? Search it on ICANN Lookup, a free tool, to see which company it’s registered with. Then log in there and check that you or your business is listed as the registrant, meaning the domain’s holder on record.

References: Squarespace: Pricing (opens in a new tab) · ICANN Lookup: Domain name registration data (opens in a new tab)

Gather the content only you can supply

This is where do-it-yourself sites often stall and hired projects often slip. The design can be ready in days while the pages wait for words and photos. Make a simple list with four columns: what’s needed, where it is now, who supplies it, and by when.

For example, a landscaper with 4 crews might write one page each for mowing, cleanups and new plantings. It would list the 12 towns it covers and add before-and-after photos from last season. A café would gather the current menu, catering options with how much notice it needs, and photos of the counter and the food. None of this needs a designer, and all of it makes the site better.

Start your list with these:

• Your services, each with a sentence on what’s included and who it’s for. Use the words customers use on the phone, like “water heater replacement,” not only trade terms.
• Where you work: the towns, neighborhoods or ZIP codes you serve, or your address and parking if customers come to you.
• Hours, phone, email, and how soon you reply to requests.
• Real photos of your work, your team, your shop or your food. Phone photos taken in good light beat stock photos that look like every other site.
• Proof you’re allowed to use: reviews quoted with the customer’s permission, plus licenses and insurance if your trade has them.
• The ten questions you answer most on the phone. They become a short FAQ that saves you calls.
• Prices or starting prices, if you share them.

Plan five to eight pages for a small business website

A small business website rarely needs more than five to eight pages at launch. Start with the pages in the list below.

Beyond those, plan the small pages that make a site feel finished: a thank-you message after the form and a helpful page for broken links. If your form collects personal details, add a privacy policy. In California, a commercial website that collects personal details like a name, email or phone number from California residents must conspicuously post a privacy policy. The law counts a link with the word “privacy” on the homepage as one way to do that. It also lists what the policy covers, such as the kinds of information collected, who it may be shared with, and its effective date. Other states have their own rules. This isn’t legal advice, so ask a lawyer what your policy should say.

Give each page a clear, specific title, like “Deck repair in Sacramento | Your Business Name.” Google’s starter guide says a good title is unique to the page, clear and concise, and describes what’s on it. Build for phones first, too: Google says it uses the phone version of your pages to index and rank your site.

• Home: what you do, where, and the main way to reach you, all near the top on a phone.
• Services: one page for each main service, or one page listing them if you only do a few things.
• About: who you are, how long you’ve worked in the area, and the people customers will meet.
• Service area or location: the towns you cover, or a map, hours and parking.
• Contact or request: the form, phone and email, and what happens after someone sends a request.
• One page for your trade: past work, a menu, the brands you carry, or an owners page for a property manager.

References: California Legislative Information: Business and Professions Code section 22575 (opens in a new tab) · California Legislative Information: Business and Professions Code section 22577 (opens in a new tab) · Google Search Central: SEO Starter Guide (opens in a new tab) · Google Search Central: Mobile-first indexing best practices (opens in a new tab)

Which parts you can do yourself, and which are worth handing off

You can build a simple, decent site yourself on a site builder. Squarespace offers a 14-day free trial, and Wix has a free plan, though a free Wix site sits on a wixsite.com address. Connecting your own domain or removing Wix ads takes a paid plan (both when we checked in October 2026). What builder plans, a hired build and the monthly bills cost, and how long each route takes, is covered in what a small business website costs.

Every site also needs hosting, the service that keeps it online. Squarespace and Wix include hosting in their plans. If you put WordPress on your own hosting instead, you pay a hosting company separately and keep WordPress and its plugins updated. Our guide to WordPress, a site builder or a custom CMS compares the three.

Some builders also offer to draft a site for you with AI. Wix, for example, offers to create a site with AI (when we checked in October 2026). It can give you a first layout fast. Check every line, though: it doesn’t know your prices, service area or licenses.

Count your own time, too. Writing pages, learning a builder and fixing small layout problems take real evenings. If you’re weighing a ready-made design against one built for you, our guide to template or custom websites covers what each gets you.

A builder is often the right call. It can suit a contractor who mostly gets calls, or a café that needs a menu, hours and a map. The list below marks the parts you can likely handle yourself (“You”) and the parts worth handing off (“Hand off”). Mistakes in the second group cost you requests and are hard to spot until a customer runs into them.

• You: registering the domain and setting up business email.
• You: writing the pages and taking the photos.
• You: building a simple site from a builder’s template, if you’re comfortable trying things and fixing them.
• You: creating your Google Business Profile, which Google says is free, and adding your website to it. Check Google’s guidelines first, because some setups, like a virtual office, don’t qualify.
• You: updating hours, prices, menus and photos after launch.
• Hand off: forms that do more than send an email, like putting a request on your calendar or in your customer list.
• Hand off: online booking with real availability, deposits or card payments.
• Hand off: an online store whose stock has to match what’s on your shop floor. A simple store with a few products is often fine to set up yourself.
• Hand off: moving an existing site without losing the pages people and search engines already find.
• Hand off: accessibility and speed checks beyond the basics. W3C’s quick checks cover things like page titles, seeing where you are when you tab through with a keyboard, and form labels. W3C warns that a page can pass them and still have significant barriers.
• Hand off: anything tied to the rest of your business, like quotes, jobs or QuickBooks.

References: Squarespace: Pricing (opens in a new tab) · Wix Help Center: Building a Website for Free (opens in a new tab) · Wix: Create a Small Business Website (opens in a new tab) · Google: Business Profile (opens in a new tab) · Google Business Profile Help: Guidelines for representing your business on Google (opens in a new tab) · W3C WAI: Easy Checks, a first review of web accessibility (draft update) (opens in a new tab)

Decide where each request goes before you launch

For a service business, the website’s main job is bringing in requests. So the most useful question isn’t how the site looks. It’s what happens after someone presses Send. Many how-to guides skip this, and it’s where requests can quietly get lost. Answer the questions in the list below before launch.

For example, a property manager with 40 units might get owner inquiries and tenant repair requests through the same website. If both land in one inbox, a leaking water heater can sit behind a sales email. Two forms, each sent to the right person and saved to a list, fix that without new software.

If requests already get retyped into a spreadsheet, a calendar and QuickBooks, that’s a sign the website should hand them straight to your other tools. That part is worth paying someone for.

• What the form asks. Name, phone or email, address, what they need, and photos if they help you quote. Each extra field is one more reason to give up, so ask only what you need for the first reply. Our page on what to put on a quote request form goes field by field.
• Where it lands. A shared inbox, a list everyone can see, or straight onto your calendar or job list.
• Who replies, and how soon. If two people check the inbox, decide who owns it on which days.
• What the customer sees. A thank-you message that says when you’ll reply, and a copy by email if you can.
• How you’ll know it still works. Send yourself a test request every month, because a form can stop sending without anyone noticing.

Test on a real phone, launch, then check the first month

Before you announce the site, open it on your own phone and act like a customer. Find a service, check your area, and send a real request. Make sure it arrives where you planned, and that every page, especially the form, loads with https at the start of its address, so what customers type is sent securely. Our website launch checklist covers the rest of the checks in order, from a form filled in wrong to old page addresses and who holds the domain, the hosting and the logins.

Then put the address everywhere customers already see you: your Google Business Profile, quotes, invoices, truck signs, menus and email signature.

Expect search to take time. Google’s starter guide says some changes take effect in a few hours and others take several months. It suggests waiting a few weeks before judging whether a change worked. A new site rarely gets found through search on day one, so the places you already meet customers matter most at first.

Add your site to Google Search Console, which Google describes as a free service for monitoring your site in Google Search. It shows which searches your site appears for and alerts you when Google finds a problem on your site. Your builder may also show visit numbers. Count requests too, because that’s the number that pays.

In the first month, keep a short list of questions people asked that the site didn’t answer, and add the answers. Update hours and prices the day they change. A small site that stays accurate does more for you than a big one that drifts.

References: Google Search Central: SEO Starter Guide (opens in a new tab) · Search Console Help: About Search Console (opens in a new tab)

When to bring us in

If a site builder fits your business, use it; the steps above will get you a working site. Bring in help when the site has to do more than show information. Think requests that reach the right person, bookings, deposits, or jobs handed straight to your other tools.

That’s the work our website design and development team does. A new website from us is usually 5 to 8 pages, with a request or booking form and pages you can edit. It typically costs $2,500–$6,000 and takes 3–⁠6 weeks; these are our prices as of 2026-10-04. We help write the pages and ask you to check every business detail. Requests can go to Gmail or Outlook, bookings to Google Calendar, and deposits through Stripe or Square; for anything else, we check before we quote.

The first call is free, and you get a fixed price in writing within 48 hours of it. Every launch includes 30 days of fixes. Hosting is its own monthly line in your quote; it runs on our account, and you can take it over after payment. You own the code we write once the project is paid in full, and your domain stays in your name.