Decide the one job the site has to do before anything else. Plan the pages around the questions your buyers ask, write the words before the design, and build it to be fast on a phone.
You can do it yourself with a website builder over a few weekends, or have a studio take it from the first call to launch. With us that takes two to four weeks, from €2,000.
“We need a website” is one of the most common sentences in business, and one of the least specific. It can mean a single page with a phone number, or a site that brings in half of a company's new clients every month. The steps to get there are the same either way. What changes is how much care goes into each one.
This is the order we follow on every project, written so you can follow it yourself. If you decide halfway through that you would rather hand it over, you will at least know what a good studio should be doing for you.
Step 1. Decide the one job the site has to do
Every good website has one main job. For most businesses it is one of four things. Getting people to call, getting them to book, getting them to buy, or getting them to leave their details so you can follow up.
Write that job down in one sentence before you look at a single template. “The site exists to get homeowners in Lisbon to book a free kitchen survey.” That sentence will settle more design arguments than any mood board. Every page, section and button either moves a visitor closer to that action or it is in the way.
Most websites that do not work skip this step. They try to do everything at once, so they end up doing nothing in particular, and visitors leave without knowing what they were supposed to do next.
Step 2. Know who it is for and what they need to see
Your visitor arrives with questions. Can this business solve my problem? Are they real? Are they good? What will it cost me? What happens if I get in touch? A website that converts answers those questions in roughly the order people have them.
Talk to three or four of your best clients and ask what made them choose you, and what almost stopped them. Their answers are the raw material for your site. The worries they mention are the objections your pages need to answer, and the words they use are usually better than anything you would write yourself.
Step 3. Plan the pages before anything else
With the job and the audience clear, you can plan the structure. For most service businesses the list is short.
- Home. What you do, who it is for and the one action you want, all visible in the first few seconds.
- Services. One page per service if people search for them separately, because each page can then rank for its own search.
- Proof. Work, results or client words. It can live on its own page or run through the others.
- About. Why you, told plainly. People buy from people, even when they buy from a company.
- FAQ. The questions you answer on every sales call, written down once.
- Contact or booking. As little friction as possible. Every extra field loses some people.
Sketch each page as a list of sections before you think about how it looks. If a section does not answer a question your visitor has, cut it.
Step 4. Write the words first
This is the step almost everyone gets backwards. They choose a design, pour text into the boxes it leaves, and then wonder why the site feels generic. Words carry the message. Design makes the message easier to take in.
Write the headline of every section first. If someone read only the headlines, they should still understand what you do and why it matters. Then write the rest in plain language, in short paragraphs, the way you would explain it across a table. Cut anything that sounds like a brochure.
If writing is not your strength, this is the step worth getting help with. A good studio will shape the copy with you rather than wait for you to send it.
Step 5. Design around the words
Now the look. Pick typefaces, colours and imagery that feel like the business you actually are, not the one a template imagines. Two typefaces at most. A small palette. Real photographs of your work, your team or your place wherever you can, because stock photography is the fastest way to look like everyone else.
Lay out the key pages with the real words in them. Check that the most important action is obvious on every page, that the text is easy to read on a small screen, and that nothing moves or animates without a reason.
Step 6. Build it fast, and phone first
You have three broad ways to build it.
- A website builder such as Wix, Squarespace or Framer. Quick and cheap to start, limited once you need something specific.
- A platform such as WordPress, Webflow or Shopify. More flexible, and the right choice when a shop or regular content updates are central to the business.
- A custom build. The most freedom and usually the fastest pages, which is why we prefer it when the project allows.
Whichever you choose, build for the phone first. Most visitors will see your site on a phone, many of them on a slow connection, and a page that takes too long to load loses people before they have read a word. Keep images light, avoid piling on plugins and scripts, and test the speed as you go.
Step 7. Launch properly
A launch is more than switching the site on. Before it goes live, go through this list.
- Test every page on real phones, a tablet and a laptop, not just a resized browser window.
- Send yourself a message through every form and check that it arrives.
- Give every page its own title and description, the two lines Google shows in its results.
- Add a sitemap and basic structured data, so search engines and AI assistants understand what the business is.
- Connect Google Search Console, submit the sitemap and set up simple analytics.
- Make sure you own the domain, the hosting account and the code or the platform login.
That last point matters more than it sounds. If you do not hold the keys to your own website, you will find out at the worst possible moment.
Do it yourself or hire a studio?
Doing it yourself makes sense when the budget is very small, the site only needs to exist, and you enjoy this kind of work. Plan for a few weekends and a monthly subscription, and follow the steps above in order.
Hiring a studio makes sense when the site has to win clients. You are paying for the thinking in steps one to four as much as for the design and the build, and for the experience of having done it many times before. A studio also saves you the hours, which for most founders are worth more than the fee.
If you are weighing the two, we wrote a full comparison in website builder or web design studio.
How long it takes and what it costs
On a website builder, a simple site can be live in a weekend, and a considered one in a few weeks of evenings. With a studio like ours, a new website usually takes two to four weeks from the first call to launch and starts at €2,000. The price depends on the number of pages, the complexity, the integrations and how much custom motion or photography the site needs, and you get a clear quote before any work begins.
For a deeper look at pricing across the market, read how much a premium website costs.
The short version
- One job for the whole site, written down before anything else.
- Pages planned around the questions your buyers actually ask.
- Words first, design second.
- Fast on a phone, tested on real devices.
- Titles, descriptions, sitemap and Search Console on launch day.
- Everything in your name.
If you would rather have it built for you, see our company websites and landing pages, and read what pages a business website needs before you start.