If this is your first business website, it’s natural to wonder where to begin. The good news is that most of the groundwork is simple, and a little planning up front makes everything that follows go more smoothly. This guide walks you through what you’ll need, the decisions you’ll make along the way, and a few things worth avoiding. If anything here raises a question, just ask.
Start by Looking at Your Competition
A good first step is to look at a few top-ranked websites in your industry. Search for your type of business in your area and spend some time on the sites that come up first. Notice what makes a site easy to use, how the information is organized, and which features stand out, like online booking, photo galleries, or quote request forms. Pay attention to how quickly the pages load and which services they emphasize, since that often reflects what people in your area are searching for.
While you’re browsing, try narrowing your browser window to see how each layout adapts to a smaller screen. Many of your visitors will find you on their phones, so this gives you a feel for what works well on mobile. Make notes on what you like and what you don’t. We’ll use those notes as reference points, and everything we write for you will be original and in your own voice.
Choosing the Right Platform
Your website will be built on one of two types of platform. A traditional HTML5 site is lightweight, fast, and very secure, which makes it a great fit for smaller sites that don’t change often. WordPress includes an admin panel, so it’s the better choice if you want to make your own updates, publish blog posts, show a portfolio, or sell products online. The tradeoff is that WordPress needs routine updates to stay secure and running well.
Either way, every site we build is fully responsive, so it looks and works well on phones, tablets, and computers alike. We’ll recommend the best platform once we understand your goals, your budget, and how often you expect to update your site.
Registering Your Domain Name
Your domain name is your address on the web, and it’s worth getting right. The most important thing is to register it yourself, in your own name. If a developer or marketing company registers it for you, they become the legal owner, and getting it back later can be difficult.
For most businesses, a .com extension is the best choice, since it’s what people assume when they type in an address. If the .com version of your name is taken, .net or an industry-specific extension can work. Keep the name short, easy to spell, and easy to say out loud, and avoid hyphens and numbers, which are easy to forget or mistype. It’s just as important not to choose a name that closely resembles another business’s domain, such as a competitor’s name with a word added. Besides confusing customers, it can send your visitors to them and may create trademark problems.
When you register, you’ll likely be offered extra extensions and spelling variations of your name. Most small businesses don’t need them. Do turn on auto-renewal, though, so your domain never expires by accident.
Choosing a Hosting Provider
Your hosting provider is where your website lives, and it affects your site’s speed, reliability, and search performance. Look for Linux hosting, which is required for WordPress and the best choice for HTML sites, along with a free SSL certificate (the padlock visitors see in their browser) and cPanel for managing your account. Our recommendation is InMotion Hosting for its fast servers and helpful support. Bluehost and HostGator are other popular options.
Ideally, register your domain with the same company that hosts your site, so everything is managed in one account. If you already own a domain somewhere else, that’s fine; it can be connected to your new hosting.
The one provider we suggest avoiding for hosting is GoDaddy. Their shared servers are often overcrowded, which makes sites slow, especially in the admin area where you make updates. They also cost more than better entry-level hosts, and in our experience their free SSL certificates often have to be reactivated manually, where better hosts renew them automatically.
As with your domain, your hosting account should be in your name. If you don’t have hosting yet when your project starts, we can build your site on our own hosting and move it to your account when it’s ready.
Setting Up Business Email
An email address that matches your domain, like you@yourbusiness.com, looks professional and builds trust with new customers. Our first choice is Google Workspace. It’s a paid service, but it’s reliable, has excellent spam protection, and works smoothly with your website’s contact forms.
If you’d rather not pay for email, most hosting plans include email accounts at your domain, and those messages can be forwarded to a free Gmail account so everything arrives in one inbox. Many small businesses now simply use a Gmail address, which is free and easy to manage, though an address at your own domain makes a stronger impression.
Whichever option you choose, your domain needs a few authentication records (SPF, DKIM, and DMARC) so your messages and website form notifications reach the inbox instead of the spam folder, and we help clients set these up. Microsoft 365 is also a popular choice, but connecting it to a website’s form-sending plugin is more involved than with Google, so if your site will have contact forms, Google Workspace is usually the smoother option.
Planning Your Content
You don’t need to be a writer to have great website content. A list of the pages you want, with a few notes about each, is the best place to start. Most of our clients send brief notes about their business, and we follow up with questions about their services, experience, and service area. From there, we write copy that’s clear, easy to read, and built around the words your customers actually search for. Each page will have a clear purpose and a next step for the visitor, whether that’s getting in touch, requesting a quote, or booking an appointment.
Start Collecting Photos Now
Good photos do more to build trust than almost anything else on a website, and it’s never too early to start gathering them. If you’re a contractor or tradesperson, get in the habit of taking before and after photos of every job. Over time, they become a portfolio that shows your work better than any description could. Photos of your team, your vehicles, and your workspace help too, since people like to see who they’ll be working with.
Take photos in good light, turn your phone sideways for shots that might be used as banners, and keep the original files. Images sent by text message or downloaded from Facebook are compressed and lose quality. Only use photos you took yourself or have licensed for commercial use. If you need more, stock photography is an option, and we’ll resize, crop, and optimize everything for the web.
Claim Your Google Business Profile
Once you have your domain name, set up your free Google Business Profile and complete Google’s verification. Your profile is what shows your business on Google Maps and in local search results, along with your hours, photos, and reviews. Add your website address, your location or service area, and a few good photos. For a local business, it’s one of the most valuable things you can do, and it’s where many of your reviews will come from.
Getting Started on Social Media
You don’t need to be on every platform. Start with one or two where your customers spend time, and add more as you go. Facebook and LinkedIn are good places to begin for most businesses. Instagram is especially effective for service businesses like contractors, plumbers, painters, and yoga studios, where a quick daily photo or short video is an easy way to stay in front of people. If you have video to share, a YouTube channel is worth setting up too.
Since social media accounts are tied to your personal login, you’ll create the accounts yourself and then add us as a manager. From there, we can help with Facebook posting, YouTube setup and publishing, X and LinkedIn, and connecting everything to your website. Instagram works best when you post straight from your phone on the job, so that one is yours to run.
Reviews, Testimonials, and Case Studies
People trust what other customers say. Your Google and Yelp reviews can be featured on their own page or highlighted on key pages, and testimonials work well throughout a site. If you do project-based work, case studies are especially powerful. A short write-up of a job with before and after photos shows exactly what you can do, which is why we recommend them for construction and service businesses.
Privacy Policy and Legal Pages
California law requires a privacy policy on any business website that collects personal information from California residents, and a simple contact form counts. If you sell products online or offer memberships, Terms of Service are a good idea as well. We can draft a privacy policy based on the information you give us. It’s general website content rather than legal advice, so if you need legal assurance, have an attorney review it. If you use text messaging, advertising, or tracking tools, the required consent and opt-in wording should come from the provider of that tool.
Keeping Your Accounts Secure
Your domain, hosting, email, and social media accounts are valuable business assets, so protect their logins accordingly. Use a strong, unique password for each account, ideally stored in a password manager, and turn on two-factor authentication wherever it’s offered, especially for your domain, hosting, and email. Make sure every account is tied to an email address you control, not a former employee’s or a past vendor’s.
When someone needs access, give them their own login where possible, like a WordPress user account or a manager role on Facebook, rather than sharing your password, and remove that access when the work is done. For WordPress sites, routine updates, backups, and security monitoring are the best protection against hackers, and our affordable administrative maintenance takes care of all three.
After Your Site Launches
Once your site is live, we’ll set up Google Analytics and Google Search Console so you can see how people find you, which pages they visit, and what they search for. That information makes it easy to see what’s working and where to improve. Websites also do best when their content stays current, and we offer affordable content updates whenever you need them.
What to Do Next
- Contact us with an overview of what you’d like to have built.
- Register your domain and, if you’re ready, your hosting. If you’re not sure where to start, we’re happy to advise.
- List the pages you want and any features you need, like forms, galleries, or online booking.
- Gather your notes and photos, organized by page where you can.
- Set up your business email, Google Business Profile, and social media accounts.
Once your project is scheduled, you can send your content by email, Dropbox, or Google Drive. We look forward to helping you get online.