Small Business Website: Do You Need One, What It Costs, How to Build It

Free plans: what you give up

Wix’s free plan publishes your site on a subdomain such as username.wixsite.com/sitename and shows Wix ads on it⁸. A buyer comparing that address with a competitor’s own domain sees the difference before reading a word.

Square Online has a free plan as well⁶. It suits a seller who already uses Square and wants a basic online storefront at no monthly cost.

Google Sites is the free route that takes your own domain. The builder costs nothing, and you can connect a domain you already own or buy one through a registrar⁷. You pay only for the domain. The trade-off is design: layouts are plain, which works for a contractor’s information page and less well for a portfolio.

1. Name the buyer and the one action

Write one sentence that names the buyer and their problem. Then add the action you want them to take on the site. “Homeowners in our county book a free estimate for roof repair” is a usable sentence. Every page you add later either moves that buyer toward the action or gets cut.

2. Open the sites you compete with

Search for your service and your town the way a buyer would. Skip directories and open the first three business sites. For each one, write down the promise on its first screen, whether it shows prices, and how you book. Your first screen should state what theirs leave out: a price, an area, a turnaround time, a guarantee. A guide to find the sites you compete with walks through the search.

3. Plan the pages

Each page answers one buyer question. A service business needs these at minimum:

• Home: what you do, for whom, where, a “from” price and one button.
• Services and prices: each service, what it includes, the price or a starting price.
• Work or portfolio: proof that you have done this before.
• Reviews: real ones, from real clients.
• About: who you are and why a buyer can trust you with the job.
• Contact and booking: phone, email, hours, the area you serve and the form.

Put the complaint buyers in your field raise most often on the homepage or pricing page, where they see it before deciding. If buyers in your trade complain about hidden costs, the price goes on the homepage. If they complain about no-shows, your arrival guarantee goes there.

4. Pick a platform

The first fork is a builder against a site you or a developer maintain.

Most small service businesses start on a builder. The builder table narrows the choice.

5. Register the domain

Shortlist several names before you buy. Check the .com first, because buyers type it out of habit. Say each name aloud to someone and ask them to spell it back; a name that needs explaining loses phone referrals. Avoid hyphens and numbers.

You can buy the domain from a registrar or as part of a builder plan. Compare the first-year price with the renewal price, since bundles often discount only the first year. Register the domain in your own name and account, even if a developer builds the site, so you keep it if you change vendors. You can check a name and its domain before you commit.

6. Write the offer and prices

The first screen carries five things: what you do, for whom, where, a starting price and one button. “Half-day branding shoots for coaches in north Austin, from $1,000. Book a call.” does all five in two sentences. Show prices, or at least a starting price, on the services page. A buyer who has to call to learn the price often opens the next tab instead. The guide to write an offer covers the wording.

7. Make it work on phones, in search and for every visitor

Phones: check every page on your own phone before anyone else sees it. Tap every button and fill in every form, and check that prices read without zooming.

Search: give each page its own title and a description that names the service and the town. “Roof repair in Round Rock, TX | Smith Roofing” tells both the buyer and the search engine what the page is. For the map pack and reviews, local search is a separate job from the site.

Accessibility: the federal rule with dates attached covers state and local governments. The DOJ’s April 2024 Title II rule requires WCAG 2.1 AA. An interim final rule effective April 20, 2026 moved the deadlines to April 26, 2027 for entities serving 50,000 people or more, and April 26, 2028 for smaller ones and special district governments⁹. For a private business, plan to meet the same WCAG 2.1 AA standard. That is an assumption for planning, not a statement of what the law requires of you. In practice it means alt text on images, readable contrast, labeled form fields and a site you can use with a keyboard alone.

Privacy: if a form collects personal contact details, post a privacy policy that says what you collect and how you use it.

Reviews: the FTC’s rule on consumer reviews and testimonials took effect October 21, 2024; it authorizes civil penalties for knowing violations¹⁰. Publish only real reviews from real clients. Do not write or buy them, and do not edit them into something the client did not say.

8. Test before launch

Run this list on a phone and on a laptop:

• Every form sends to an inbox you check, and you receive the test message.
• The phone number is a link that dials when tapped.
• Every page loads and reads on a phone without sideways scrolling.
• Prices on the site match the prices you quote by phone.
• Booking works from start to confirmation, including the confirmation email.
• A mistyped address shows a page with a link home, not a blank error.
• Every image has alt text that describes it.
• Your business contact block (name, address, phone) reads the same on every page.

9. Launch small, measure inquiries, then expand

If you have not yet tested demand, launch the smallest site that can count inquiries: one page, one offer, one form. Decide in advance how long you will run it and what number of inquiries would justify building more. A guide on a one-page site to test demand covers the layout, and you can test demand with paid traffic before writing more pages. Wait until buyers have written to you before you add the services and portfolio pages or a blog.

The competitors decide the first screen

In our example, the check found 8 direct competitors^ex. Here are the five most visible:

All figures in the table are examples by our method. Following the rule, she opens the sites of the three most visible direct competitors (ambervickery.com, Alicia Leigh Photography, Melissa Bordeau Photography) and notes the promise on each first screen and whether it shows a price. Her own first screen has to state the difference those three leave out.

The complaints decide the page order

In the example, price is the top complaint theme with 3 mentions^ex, and “Availability, minimum order” has 1^ex. The check also flags a risk: “Customers already complain about price, so a price-led offer may attract buyers who leave after one shoot” (example by our method)^ex.

So the homepage shows a “from” price next to a package, with no discount. The package answers the complaint by showing what the money buys, and a visible price filters out buyers who would leave after one shoot. Availability goes on the booking page as the next open dates.

The unit model sets the budget and the site’s job

All inputs below are example by our method and come from the check’s model, not from market data.

In our example, contribution per shoot is $1,000 × 0.4 = $400. LTV is 1,000 × 1 × 10 × 0.4 = $4,000 (example by our method). Payback is 900 ÷ 400 = 2.25 months, shown as 2.3 (example by our method). LTV to CAC is 4,000 ÷ 900 = 4.44 (example by our method).

One shoot covers 400 ÷ 900, about 44%, of what it costs to win the client (example by our method). The model only works because it assumes each client books once a month for ten months. A half-day branding shoot is not a monthly purchase by nature, so the site has to create the repeat: a package of refresh sessions, or a monthly content retainer, sold on the services page. If the site sells single shoots only, each client brings $400 against $900 spent to win her (example by our method).

Site payback in shoots, example by our method: a DIY build under $500¹ takes 500 ÷ 400 = 1.25 shoots, so the second shoot covers it. A designer build at $2,000–$5,000¹ takes 5 to 12.5 shoots. With demand unmeasured, she starts on a builder. You can run your own numbers in the unit economics calculator.

The risks and the missing demand data decide the first build

The check rates this risk at probability 3 and impact 3: “The closest competitor already offers about 80% of the same service, so the idea may not stand out” (example by our method)^ex. The homepage answers it with a stated difference in the headline: shoots at the client’s home or workplace, built for women-owned businesses and coaches, with images delivered sized for a website and social posts.

A second risk carries impact 3: “A local Austin studio closed after 9 years, which suggests the cost of running a studio may outweigh the revenue it brings in” (example by our method)^ex. The site sells on-location shoots, so no studio rent sits inside the price.

The third high-impact risk: “No search-volume data exists for this market, so demand for the exact service in suburban Austin is unverified” (example by our method)^ex. The check’s demand source is none^ex. Its market-size figure, $9.1 billion for 2024 from marketresearch.com^ex, covers the whole market and says nothing about how many coaches in suburban Austin look for a branding shoot (example by our method).

So her first build is one page: the headline with the difference, a “from” price and one package, a short portfolio, real client reviews, the area served and a booking form. She counts inquiries for a period set in advance before adding pages. If inquiries stay at zero, she will test demand with a small ad budget before spending on design.

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