Getting your first website is six steps, and only two of them involve a web designer. Most of the work, and nearly all of the delay, is on your side of the fence: deciding what the site is for, writing the words and finding the pictures.
Here is the whole thing in order, with a realistic idea of how long each part takes and what it costs. It is written for somebody who has never done this before and does not particularly want to become an expert.
Step one: decide what the website is actually for
Half an hour, and it saves weeks. Write one sentence: what do you want somebody to do after they land on this site.
Ring you. Fill in a form. Come to the shop. Book an appointment. Buy something. Just believe you are real before they ring the number they already had. These lead to different websites, and a site trying to do all six does none of them well.
Then write the three questions customers ask you most often before they buy. Those three answers are your homepage. Not your history, not your values, not a welcome message. The answers to the questions people actually ask.
Do you even need one yet?
Worth asking honestly, because the answer is occasionally no, and nobody selling websites will tell you that.
If you are a brand new business with no customers yet, a website is not going to bring you any on its own. What brings the first customers is people you know, a Google Business Profile if you serve a local area, and whichever place your particular trade actually gets found. For a maker that might be a marketplace. For a trade it is very often word of mouth plus a van.
What a website does from day one is make you look real when somebody checks you out, which they will, and give you somewhere to send people. That is worth having early and it does not need to be elaborate. One good page beats nothing, and it beats a nine page site you are still writing in six months.
Step two: sort the domain out
Do this early because occasionally your first choice is gone and it changes the name you trade under. An afternoon, and about ten pounds a year.
For a UK business serving UK customers, a .co.uk is completely fine and nobody thinks less of it. Keep it short enough to say on the phone without spelling it twice. Avoid hyphens and numbers. Check the name is not already a business three towns over.
The thing that matters more than the name: register it in your business name, with you as the contact, at a registrar you can log into. Not in your web designer's account. This is the single most common way small businesses get stuck later, and it costs nothing to get right at the start. The full detail is in choosing a domain name.
Step three: decide how it is getting built
Four routes, and they suit different people. Briefly:
- Do it yourself on a platform. Cheapest in money, expensive in evenings. Good if you enjoy this sort of thing and have the time.
- A local freelancer or small studio. Usually the best value for a straightforward small site if you turn up organised.
- An agency. More money, more process, right when the site is complicated or the stakes are high.
- Rent it and pay monthly. No lump sum, nothing to maintain, and you do not own the files.
There is a proper comparison, including what to ask each of them, in comparing the four ways to get a website built. Whichever you pick, budget realistically: a straightforward small business site in the UK is a few hundred to a couple of thousand pounds built, or from £49 a month excluding VAT rented.
Step four: write the words
The step that decides whether this takes three weeks or five months. Be honest with yourself now about whether you are going to do it, because the alternative is paying somebody, and both are fine. What does not work is assuming it will happen somehow.
If you are writing it yourself, a page at a time, in the order people read them:
- Services or products. Easiest to start with because you know it cold. What you do, who for, and what it costs or what drives the cost.
- About. Who you are, how long you have been doing it, why somebody should trust you. Include a real photograph of a real person.
- Contact. Phone, email, area covered, hours, and where you are if people visit.
- Home, last. It is a summary of everything else, which is why writing it first is so hard.
Write the way you speak to a customer on the phone. Read it aloud and cut anything you would not say out loud. There is a full method in writing the words for your own website. Allow an evening a page and start before the design does, because the design will be ready first.
Step five: get the pictures together
A weekend, and usually free. Your own photographs beat a stock library for almost any local business, because they are visibly yours.
Take more than you need, in daylight, holding the phone sideways. Photograph the work rather than the premises: finished jobs, things you have made, the van, the shop front, your team, you. Put them all in one folder with sensible names before you hand them over. If your business is one where appearance is the product, a half day with a photographer is money well spent and is typically a few hundred pounds.
While you are at it, find your logo file. Not a screenshot of it, the actual file. If you have never had one, a designer can produce something simple, or good type on its own is perfectly respectable for a new business.
Step six: build, check and launch
For a small site this is faster than most people expect once your side is ready. A few days to a couple of weeks is normal, and the wait is usually queueing rather than working.
Before you approve it, check these yourself:
- Look at it on your own phone, not on a laptop. That is how most visitors will see it.
- Send yourself a test enquiry through the contact form and make sure it arrives, including in the spam folder.
- Ring the phone number by tapping it on the page, so you know the link works.
- Read every page aloud once, for typos and for anything that does not sound like you.
- Check the prices, twice, and the opening hours.
- Time how long it takes to appear on mobile data rather than on your own wifi.
There is a longer pre payment list in ten things to check before you pay a web designer, and it is worth ten minutes.
What happens after it goes live?
This is the part nobody tells a new business, and it matters more than the build.
Set up your Google Business Profile. Free, an afternoon, and for a local business it frequently brings in more enquiries than the website does. Fill in every field, add photographs, get the hours right, and start asking customers for reviews. The method is in getting found on Google when you only work locally.
Accept that search takes months, not days. A brand new site does not appear near the top of anything immediately, and anybody promising otherwise is selling. What you can expect quickly is to be findable by your own business name.
Put a reminder in the diary. Once a month, send yourself a test enquiry and check the prices are still right. Once a year, check the domain renewal actually went through.
Decide who changes it. If changes are chargeable and awkward, the site will go stale within a year. Either learn to edit it, or pick an arrangement where changes are included.
The mistakes people make on a first website
- Waiting until everything is perfect. The site that goes live with three good pages beats the one that is still being refined. You can change it next week.
- Writing about yourself instead of the customer. "Established with a passion for quality" tells a reader nothing. "We fit bathrooms in Grantham and Sleaford, usually within three weeks" tells them everything.
- Hiding the phone number. Header, footer, and a tap to call button on mobile. Not just a form.
- Using somebody else's photographs. A stock image of a generic office says you have nothing of your own to show.
- Buying functions you have not needed yet. Booking systems, live chat, a blog you will not write.
- Letting somebody else register the domain. Still the most expensive mistake on this list.
- Never looking at it again. Put a reminder in the diary now, while you are thinking about it.
How long does the whole thing take?
If you are organised: two to four weeks from deciding to going live, for a small site. The build is days. The rest is you.
If you are not: three to six months, and it will stall at the words. This is so predictable that it is worth planning around. Write two pages before you contact anybody, and you will already be ahead of most projects.
What it costs, all in
For a straightforward first website in the UK in 2026: the domain is around ten pounds a year, hosting is £3 to £15 a month if you buy it separately, and the build is anywhere from a few hundred pounds to a couple of thousand depending on which route you took. Add a realistic figure for changes in year one.
Renting bundles all of that into one figure. Ours start at £49 a month excluding VAT for a single page, £79 for three pages and £99 for five, with hosting, SSL, business email, a free .co.uk domain and a yearly redesign included, the first three months paid up front and no setup fee. One design revision comes with the build and content changes are unlimited and free, which for a new business matters because everything changes in the first year.
If you want a number before you talk to anyone, price up your website and it will show you without asking for an email address. And if you want to sanity check any quote you get, there is a method in work out what your website should cost before you ask.
The one thing to take away
Start smaller than you think. Three pages that exist, load fast and say what you do will earn more than ten pages that are still being written at Christmas. You can add to a site that is live. You cannot get an enquiry from one that is not.
