Where to Start When You Have No Website Yet

If you're starting from zero, with no website, no domain name, and maybe no clear idea of what you even need, this post is for you. We'll walk through the order things should happen in, so you don't end up picking a fancy design tool before you've figured out the basics. By the end, you'll know what to do first, second, and third, and why the order matters.

Figure out the job before the look

It's tempting to jump straight to "what should my website look like?" That's the wrong first question. The right first question is: what do you need this website to do?

Maybe you just need people to find your phone number and address. Maybe you want them to book an appointment, buy something, or read about your services before they call. Each of those is a different job, and the job decides almost everything else: how many pages you need, whether you need a shop feature, whether you need a booking calendar.

Write down, in plain sentences, the two or three things a visitor should be able to do on your site. That short list becomes your checklist for everything after it.

Get your name sorted first

Before you touch design or content, sort out your domain name (that's the www.yourbusiness.com address people type in). This matters more than people expect, because changing it later means updating business cards, signage, email addresses, and every place you've mentioned your website.

Keep it simple. Use your business name if it's available. Avoid hyphens and numbers if you can, since they're easy to mistype. Check that the matching email address works too, since you'll likely want something like yourname@yourbusiness.com rather than a free email account for anything business-facing.

Register it once you're fairly sure, but don't agonise over it for weeks. A decent name registered today beats a perfect name you're still debating in a month.

Fortunately, with SimplePath, we give you a placeholder you can use while you build, and you can easily buy your domain right from our sight.

Start with fewer pages than you think you need

New website owners often plan eight or ten pages before they've published one. That's a lot of pressure to put on yourself before you've seen how any of it works.

A good starting point is usually:

• A home page that says what you do and who it's for
• A page about your services or products
• A contact page with a way to reach you

That's it. Three pages, done properly, will do more for you than eight pages that are half-finished or vague. You can always add a page later once you know what visitors are actually asking about.

Write the words before you worry about design

Design decisions get a lot easier once you have actual words in front of you. Trying to pick colours and layouts for an empty page is guesswork. Instead, write out, in your own voice, what each of your three pages needs to say.

Keep sentences short. Say what you do, who it's for, and what someone should do next (call, email, visit, book). Don't worry about sounding clever. Clear beats clever every time on a small business website. If you wouldn't say it out loud to a customer, don't write it on the page.

Get something live, then improve it

The biggest mistake people make when starting from nothing isn't picking the wrong colour scheme or the wrong domain name. It's waiting too long to publish anything at all. A simple three-page website that's live today is worth far more than a perfect ten-page plan sitting in a notebook.

Once your site is up, you'll learn things you couldn't have guessed beforehand: what questions people actually ask you, which page gets the most attention, whether people are finding you on their phone or their computer. Use that to guide your next changes, rather than trying to predict everything upfront.

Your next step

Don't try to solve the whole website in one sitting. Pick one task from this post, the job list, the domain name, or the three-page plan, and do just that one thing this week. Getting online happens in small, ordered steps, not in one big leap. Start with the step in front of you, and the rest will follow more easily than you expect.