To create a website you need seven things: a domain name, somewhere for the site to live, a plan for its pages, the words on them, the build itself, a proper launch check, and someone to keep it alive afterwards. The order matters less than most guides pretend, but skipping any of the seven is how businesses end up with a site that looks fine and does nothing.
The three routes to create a website
- DIY website builder - Wix, Squarespace and friends, typically somewhere between £10 and £30 a month. Genuinely fine for a one-page presence with your services, photos and phone number. The trade: templates only stretch so far, and the monthly fees never stop.
- Template build - a freelancer fits your content into a pre-made theme, usually WordPress. Cheaper than custom, faster than DIY done well. The trade: quality varies wildly, and themes carry baggage that can make the site slow.
- Custom build - designed and coded for your business. Costs more up front and is the only route where the site is genuinely yours, built around what you need and nothing else. Our own website builds start from £900, for context.
The honest test for which route fits: if the website just needs to exist so customers can find your number, DIY is fine. If the website needs to win you work - rank in Google, take bookings, make you look like the professional outfit you are - the maths usually favours having it built properly once. We put real numbers on this in what a small business website costs.
How to create a website, step by step
- Register the domain - your business name, as a .co.uk or .com, typically £10 to £20 a year. Register it yourself, in an account you own, whatever route you take for the build. Businesses lose their domain to departed developers depressingly often.
- Choose the route - DIY, template or custom, using the test above. Decide before anyone starts building, because switching route halfway costs the full price of both.
- Plan the pages - one page per service you offer, a page per town you genuinely serve, about, and contact. A page can only rank in Google for what it is clearly about, so "everything on the homepage" is a plan to rank for nothing.
- Write the words - the step everyone underestimates. Plain English, specific to you: what you do, where, for whom, and proof you are good at it. Name your towns and your services in headings, not just in pictures.
- Build it - whichever route you chose. Insist on seeing it on a phone before you call it done, because that is where most of your visitors are.
- Launch properly - a padlock (SSL) on the domain, every page loading fast, forms actually sending, and the site registered in Google Search Console so you can see what Google sees.
- Keep it alive - updates, backups, and small content additions over time. A website is a garden, not a statue. The sites that rot are the ones nobody owned after launch day.
The mistakes that sink new websites
- Building before writing - a beautiful site with vague words loses to an ordinary site with specific ones.
- Ignoring phones - if it is fiddly on a phone, most of your visitors meet the fiddly version.
- No way to measure - without Search Console and some analytics you cannot tell whether the site earns its keep.
- Copy-paste town pages - ten identical pages with the town name swapped. Google notices, and so do customers. If you cannot say something real about a town, do not build the page. This is the same logic behind what SEO is and why it works.
- Letting it rot - an out-of-date site quietly tells customers the business might be too.
The fastest honest path for most small businesses: register your own domain, get the site built properly once with one page per service, write the words like you talk to customers, and put your phone number where a thumb can reach it.