What is the first step to getting a website?
Define what the website needs to do. Before choosing a platform, a designer, or a domain name — answer: who is this website for, what do you want visitors to do when they arrive, and what are the 3–5 pages you actually need? A website built on a clear brief takes a fraction of the time and cost of a website built by accumulation.
Do I need a brand identity before my website?
Yes — at minimum a logo, a colour palette, and a primary typeface. Without these, your website will either look generic (template defaults) or require significant rework when the brand is defined later. The brand-first, website-second sequence is faster and cheaper in total. Read more at brand-before-website-why-order-matters.
How much does a business website cost?
A professional business website ranges from $1,500 to $10,000+ depending on complexity. A focused 4–5 page website (Home, About, Services, Contact) designed and built by a professional: $1,500–$3,500. More complex requirements (e-commerce, booking, client portal): $3,500–$8,000+. DIY website builders (Squarespace, Wix) cost $15–$40/month but require your time and produce template-constrained results.
You've started a business, or you're about to. You know you need a website. But when you start thinking about it — domain names, hosting, design, platforms, developers — the number of decisions feels overwhelming before you've made a single one.
This guide walks you through the actual sequence, in the right order, with no assumed knowledge. By the end, you'll know exactly what to do next.
Before You Build Anything: Three Questions to Answer
Most websites are built backwards — the platform is chosen, the content is written on the fly, the structure is guessed. The result is a website that works mechanically but doesn't clearly communicate what the business does or why anyone should care.
Answer these three questions first:
1. Who is this website for? Be specific. Not "anyone who might need our services" — but the specific person who is your ideal customer. Their situation, their problem, what they're already considering. The more specific this answer, the more effective the website.
2. What is the one thing you want visitors to do? Book a consultation? Submit an enquiry? Buy a product? Call a number? Every website has one primary action that is more valuable than all others. This is the thing the site is designed around — every page, every button, every layout decision serves this goal.
3. What are the 5 pages you actually need? Most business websites need: Home, About, Services (or Products), and Contact. Sometimes a Blog, a Portfolio, a Pricing page, or a Booking page. Resist the urge to add pages because they seem like something websites have — build only what serves the visitor's journey from "curious" to "enquiry."
Step 1: Get a Domain Name
Your domain name is your address on the internet. It's how people find you, what appears in their browser, what goes on your business card, and (for .com and .co.uk domains) part of how professional you appear to first-time visitors.
Domain name principles:
- Aim for .com if you're targeting international or US markets; .co.uk for UK-primary businesses; country-code TLDs for specific market focus
- Short is better — under 15 characters is ideal
- Easy to spell when heard out loud — avoid hyphens, numbers, and ambiguous double letters
- Exact business name or a clean variation of it — avoid keyword-stuffed domains ("bestplumberslondon.co.uk")
Where to register: Namecheap, GoDaddy, Google Domains, or directly with your hosting provider. Domain names cost $10–$20/year for standard .com registration.
If your exact business name domain isn't available, read how-to-choose-a-domain-name for the complete decision framework — including when to consider a premium domain and what alternatives to standard names work.
Step 2: Sort Your Brand Identity
Before the website is designed, you need at minimum:
- A logo in vector format (SVG, AI, or EPS)
- A colour palette (2–3 colours with hex codes)
- A primary typeface
Read brand-before-website-why-order-matters for the full explanation of why this order matters — and the specific cost of doing it the other way.
If you have an AI-generated logo: It needs to be vectorized before it can be used professionally. Read why-ai-generated-logos-need-vectorization. This is a $50–$150 step, not a major undertaking.
If you have no logo yet: A wordmark — your business name set in a strong, well-chosen typeface — is a legitimate professional starting point. Many established brands use wordmarks. A custom wordmark from a professional designer costs $300–$800.
Step 3: Choose Your Approach — DIY, Platform, or Professional
There are three realistic options for building a business website:
Option A: DIY Website Builder (Squarespace, Wix, Webflow)
Good for: Very early-stage businesses, service businesses with simple needs, when budget is zero.
What you get: A template-based website that you build yourself using drag-and-drop tools. Squarespace and Wix are accessible to non-technical users. Webflow has more design flexibility but a steeper learning curve.
Cost: $15–$40/month subscription + your time (typically 20–60 hours to build a proper site).
Honest limitation: Template constraints mean the website will look somewhat similar to other sites on the same template. The professional ceiling is lower than a custom-built site.
Option B: WordPress with a Theme
Good for: Content-heavy sites, blogs, businesses needing specific integrations, those comfortable with more configuration.
What you get: More flexibility than a website builder, a massive ecosystem of themes and plugins.
Cost: $5–$30/month hosting + $50–$200 for a premium theme + your time (significant: WordPress has a learning curve).
Honest limitation: WordPress can become complex quickly. Security and plugin maintenance is ongoing. The quality ceiling is high but requires more technical investment to reach it.
Option C: Professional Design and Development
Good for: Businesses where the website is a primary customer acquisition channel, competitive markets where brand presentation matters, businesses that want a site built to perform.
What you get: A custom-designed website built to your brief, by someone whose job is making websites that work.
Cost: $1,500–$8,000+ depending on complexity and the studio or freelancer.
Why it costs what it costs: A professional web designer is designing a site specific to your brand, your customers, and your goals — not fitting your content into a template. The site is typically faster, more distinctive, and more conversion-optimised than a DIY equivalent. Read how-much-does-web-design-cost for the detailed breakdown.
Step 4: Write Your Content Before You Design
The most common reason website projects stall is content. The design is ready; the content isn't.
Write your core pages before the design process starts:
Homepage: Your positioning statement (what you do, for who, the main benefit), your primary service/product, 2–3 trust signals (testimonials, credentials, years in business), and a clear call to action.
About: Your story, your specific expertise, the people behind the business (with photographs), why you do what you do. Not a CV — a narrative.
Services/Products: One page (or section) per service. What it includes, who it's for, what the outcome is, pricing or starting from price.
Contact: An enquiry form (not just an email address), your phone number if you take calls, your location if relevant, and your response time commitment.
The website design wraps around and presents this content — but the content drives the structure. A designer given your real content produces better results than one working from placeholder "lorem ipsum" text.
Step 5: Choose Hosting and Set Up the Technical Foundation
If you're building with a website builder (Squarespace, Wix), hosting is included in your subscription. If you're having a custom site built, hosting is separate.
For custom-built websites:
- Vercel — the best hosting for Next.js sites; global edge network, excellent performance, free tier for small sites
- Netlify — similar to Vercel; strong for static and JAMstack sites
- SiteGround or Kinsta — strong options for WordPress hosting
Connect your domain: Once your hosting is set up, you'll need to point your domain name to it. This involves changing DNS records at your domain registrar — usually a 10-minute task with clear instructions from the hosting provider.
Set up email: A professional email address (name@yourdomain.com) is as important as the website itself. Google Workspace ($6/month/user) or Microsoft 365 ($5/month/user) both handle custom domain email reliably.
Step 6: Launch and Improve
A launched imperfect website is worth infinitely more than a perfect website that isn't live yet.
Before launch, check:
- All pages load correctly on desktop and mobile
- Contact form sends and receives correctly (test it yourself)
- Google Analytics or your preferred analytics tool is installed
- Google Search Console is connected (submit your sitemap)
- The site loads in under 3 seconds on a mobile connection
- Social media profiles link to the website
After launch: Your website is not finished — it's version one. Read the analytics. See which pages visitors spend time on and which they leave immediately from. Improve the pages with high exit rates. Update the homepage based on the questions you're being asked by prospects. The best websites are improved continuously, not launched perfectly.
Need a professional website but don't know where to start?
Evoke Studio handles the entire process — brand identity, domain guidance, design, and development — so you get a professional website without the overwhelm. Brand + web packages from $1,500.
A professionally designed and built 4–5 page business website: 2–4 weeks from signed brief to launch. DIY on a website builder: 2–8 weeks depending on your pace and the complexity of the site. The biggest variable in timeline is always content — how quickly you can provide the text, images, and information that the site is built around. Clients who provide content promptly get faster results.
For most business websites, a web designer who also handles development (a full-stack web designer or a designer working with a developer partner) is exactly what you need. A pure developer without design skills produces technically functional but visually undistinctive sites. A pure designer without development skills can't build the site. Look for 'web design and development' as a combined capability, or a studio that pairs the two disciplines.
Start with the homepage formula: what you do (one sentence), who you do it for (specific), why someone should choose you over alternatives (specific), and how to take the first step (one CTA). Then an About page: your background, your specific expertise, and why you care about the work. Then a Services page: each service described by its outcome, not its process. This structure — built from real answers — is better than elaborate copy that avoids saying anything specific.
If your website is a primary customer acquisition channel — meaning most of your customers will find you online and evaluate you there — hire a professional. The ROI on a website that converts well is significant, and the opportunity cost of a website that doesn't is real. If your business runs primarily on referrals and the website is more of a credibility confirmation point, a DIY site on Squarespace with good photos and clear copy is completely adequate.
More important for performance than most people realise, less important for aesthetics than most people think. Any platform can produce a beautiful website with a good designer. But for speed (Core Web Vitals), scalability (as content grows), and flexibility (as requirements evolve), a custom-built site on Next.js outperforms website builders significantly. For most startups, a website builder is a perfectly reasonable starting point; a custom site is appropriate when the business is ready to invest in performance.