How to Build a Small Business Website: 9 Steps, What Each Costs and How Long It Takes

How to build a small business website in nine steps

Each step below says what you do, what the screen shows, how long it takes and what it costs. The steps only you can do come first, because skipping them is how a site ends up with last year's hours and a contact form nobody tested.

What you need before you start:

• The one action you want a visitor to take: call, book, request an estimate, order or visit.
• Your business name, what you do, where, your hours, a phone number and an email address.
• Photos of your work, your team or your place. Phone photos are fine and beat stock images.
• Proof: licenses, certifications, years in business, reviews you already have.

Step 1: Decide what the website has to make happen

Before a platform, a template or a headline, write down the decision the site has to support. A plumber needs someone with a leak to call. A bookkeeper needs an owner to understand the services and ask for a conversation. A bakery needs an order or a visit. Pick one primary action for the whole site. A second one can live on the contact page.

Then write the three to five questions a new customer asks before acting: service area, starting prices, turnaround, credentials, what happens at a first appointment. Those answers become the raw material for every page, whoever builds it. The same answers are the difference between a site that reads like a brochure and one that answers the visitor.

What it looks like: a one-page brief. It lists the business name, what you do, where, the one action, the customer questions with their answers, and the tools you already use for booking, ordering or payments. Time: about an hour. Cost: nothing. A builder, a freelancer or Theo builds whatever it is told, and a clear brief removes a round of rework on every path.

Step 2: Get a domain name

The domain is the address people type, and it is the one part of the site to hold in your own name whoever builds it. Use the business name if it is available, and keep it short enough to read out over the phone. If the exact name is taken, add the city or the trade rather than a hyphen or a misspelling.

If you already own a domain, leave it where it is. It connects in step 8 without being transferred, and your current site keeps running through the switch, so there is no gap. If you do not own one, buy it at a registrar in the business's name, or inside Theo once the site is published. One bought inside Theo is registered in your name, not Theo's, so it stays yours if you ever leave. Beyond the plan, the paid extras on Theo are a domain bought through Theo, top-up credits for more changes in chat and, on Starter and Pro, optional paid directory submission packages. Those packages sit in the Boost checklist, Theo's step-by-step guide to listings such as Google Business Profile.

Time: 15 minutes. Cost: a yearly fee to the registrar, billed separately from the build on every path. Two things to avoid: registering the domain in a freelancer's or agency's account, and buying a bundle of extra domains you will never point anywhere.

Step 3: Pick who builds it and what that costs

There are four ways to build a small business website. They differ less in the launch price than in who keeps the site accurate afterward: who updates the hours, adds the new service page and notices when the contact form stops sending. Builder, freelancer and agency prices vary by vendor, so the table below describes each path by the shape of what you pay, by who does the work after launch and by where the path stops. The dollar ranges, with their sources, are in the small business website cost guide. The best website builder for small business post goes through the builders one by one and the work each leaves you. On Theo the building, the hosting and every change after launch are handled from a chat. These are the situations it is built for:

• Nobody in the business has two or three hours a week for an editor. On Theo there is no editor to learn, and each change after launch is a sentence typed in chat.
• The site will keep changing after launch, with a new service, a new town or a price change every few months. On Theo you type each one into chat, and the plan's monthly credits cover it, with no bill per change.
• There is no room for a retainer every month, but the site still needs pages added and issues fixed after launch. On Starter and Pro that ongoing work is in the plan and uses no credits.
• You want to see a site before paying anything. The first build on Theo is free, so this decision can start from a draft you can open on your phone and refine in chat.

The platform does not decide whether the site gets found

In Theo's audit of 10,470 small business websites, the share of sites with search data that got an estimated zero visitors a month from Google search differed by platform. The share was 52 percent on Wix (537 sites), 47 percent on Squarespace (312), 55 percent on GoDaddy Website Builder (288) and 37 percent on WordPress (1,175). The sample is the sites whose owners ran the free audit, so it is not a random sample. The platform shares run from 37 to 55 percent, so the platform alone does not decide whether a site gets found.

That is why the table above says who does the work after launch and where each path stops. Those two columns matter more than the launch price. What helps a site on any platform get found is the same work: pages added for the searches customers make, technical issues fixed and the pages submitted to Google. Somebody has to do that work every month. Decide who that is in step 3, not in month six.

Step 4: Gather the words, photos and proof

Weak websites are rarely short on adjectives. They are short on evidence, and every path, Theo included, builds from what you hand over. Put each item in one folder, named plainly, before the build starts. Time: an afternoon. Cost: nothing but the afternoon. A page with the wrong hours is worth less than a plainer page with the right ones.

• Real photos of your work, your team, your place or your product, placed next to the claim they support. Ten good phone photos beat one stock image.
• The look: a logo file, your brand colors if you have them, and the URL of a site whose look you want matched, or two sites you like. On a builder this is the template choice. On Theo it is a line in the brief, since Theo can match the look of an existing site from its URL.
• Licenses, certifications, insurance and years in business, with the numbers where customers check them.
• Reviews you already have on Google or Facebook, quoted with the reviewer's first name and the date, and a link to your Yelp page rather than copies of its reviews.
• Menus, price ranges, service areas, lead times and payment options.
• Your limits, stated plainly: areas you do not serve, jobs you do not take, the smallest order you accept.
• Every contact detail, opening hour and booking link, checked against what is true this week.

Step 5: Build the core pages

A small business site needs a page for each distinct customer question, not dozens of pages. Start with a homepage that says what you do and for whom, a page for each service or product people compare, and an about page carrying the proof from step 4. A contact or booking page and a short page of answers to the questions that stop people acting complete the set. The seven-page checklist lists what goes on each page, so this step covers only how to get them built.

On a builder, this is the step that eats the weekends: pick a template, learn the editor, place every block, then repeat for each page. With a freelancer or agency it is drafts, comments and approvals, and each round has a date attached. With Theo it is a conversation, and this is what the screen shows:

1. Describe the business in the chat: what you do, where, for whom, and the one action from step 1. If you already have a site, paste its URL. Theo reads the public site, rebuilds its pages as a draft and matches the look.
2. Wait for the first preview, which is usually ready in minutes. The first build is free, so you see a starting draft of the main pages before deciding anything.
3. Refine it in chat, in plain English. There is no drag-and-drop editor: type "Move the fifth section above section two" or "Add a page for water heater repair" and Theo makes the change. Drag photos straight into the chat.
4. Check each page against the brief: the one action, the customer questions, the proof from the folder. Theo can miss things, so when something is missing, ask for it in a sentence.
5. Publish, choosing Basic, the 30-day Starter trial or Pro. The site goes live on a temporary address you can open on your phone and send to a friend, and your own domain takes over in step 8. From then on, changes you ask for in chat use the plan's monthly chat credits: 1,500 on Basic, 4,500 on Starter and 7,000 on Pro. A small edit takes a little, a new page takes more, and a redesign takes the most. Top-up credits roll over and never expire.

• Time: on Theo, minutes for the first preview, then as long as you choose to spend refining it. On a builder, plan for an evening or two per page the first time through.
• Cost: the plan or project fee from step 3.
• What the core pages look like on a site Theo built: the table below lists the pages of Brunvald Insurance, a Sioux Falls insurance site for contractors only, and the customer question each page answers. Nine pages carry the whole sales conversation, and the picture under the table is the workers' comp page. See the live site.

Step 6: Connect the store and the tools you already use

A small business rarely needs the website to run everything. It needs the website to work with the things that already run the business: the store, the booking calendar, the reservation system, the point of sale. Building those into a site from scratch is where budgets and timelines break. Linking to them takes minutes.

Kindlepoint Church, a site Theo built around streaming every service, shows the linking on its Watch Live page below. The site does not host the video: Open the live stream and every Watch replay button link out to a streaming service, and the giving and podcast pages link out to their tools the same way. See the live site.

• Online store: Shopify and Wix stores connect directly to a Theo site on every plan. Products, prices and stock appear on the site with a cart, and the checkout itself completes on the store. After you change a product, open the E-commerce tab and click "Refresh my products". For a new store, Theo recommends Shopify. The Shopify connection page explains what appears on the site and what stays in the store.
• A store on WooCommerce, Square Online or another website platform: Theo recommends moving it to Shopify, which connects directly. You can also keep the store and move it to shop.yourdomain.com, with the Theo site on the main domain. Where that is too much work, the current site and store can stay as they are, with a separate Theo site on a subdomain such as blog.yourdomain.com.
• Selling on Etsy, Big Cartel, Gumroad, Payhip or PayPal: you keep the checkout you already have. Theo builds a page for each real product, and the Buy button opens your live listing. Later price or product changes are a request in chat.
• Booking, reservations and scheduling: appointments can be booked on the site itself, and Calendly, Square Appointments, Acuity, Mindbody, Jobber, Housecall Pro, ServiceTitan, Toast, OpenTable and Eventbrite can stay linked from the site. The button on your site opens the booking page or the tool your customers already know.
• Member areas: Theo does not run a member database. The connected membership tool does that work, and the site itself is a static website served over HTTPS.
• Time: one session in the E-commerce tab for a store connection, a few minutes per booking link. Cost: included on every Theo plan. On a builder, whether a store is included depends on the plan tier. With a freelancer, each connection is a line on the estimate.

Step 7: Make the next step obvious and test it on a phone

A visitor can find the business credible and still leave because the next step is vague. Label the action with what happens next: "Request an estimate," "Book a consultation," "Order online," "Call for urgent help." Keep the phone number and the button visible on a phone without scrolling. Repeat the same action at the bottom of every service page, where a reader who has just been convinced is looking for it.

Then test it as a first-time customer would. Give a friend who does not work in the business a real task, such as booking a haircut for Saturday or getting a quote for a leaking water heater. Watch where they pause and write down what they did, without explaining anything. The checks:

1. Open the site on a phone, on mobile data rather than the office wifi, and find the main service or product within two taps.
2. Read the homepage as a stranger: is it clear what the business does, where, and for whom, before scrolling?
3. Complete the call, inquiry, booking or purchase path all the way to the confirmation, and check that the form or booking lands in an inbox someone reads.
4. Tap the phone number and the address. The call should connect and the map should open.
5. Repeat on a laptop, then read every price, hour and service area against the folder from step 4.
6. Fix the one point of friction that most affects the decision before adding anything decorative.

• Time: an evening. Cost: nothing. On Theo you type each fix the test turns up into chat. On a builder it is another session in the editor, and with a freelancer it is a change request.
• Ledgerwood Deck & Porch, a deck and porch site Theo built for Roanoke, shows an obvious next step below. The button says what happens, Get on the spring list, and it sits in the header of every page beside Call June and the number. The page explains how the spring list fills and how a build runs from the site visit to the footings, then asks for five things: name, email, phone, the project and a note about the space. See the live site; the contractor website examples have the rest of the site.

Step 8: Connect the domain, go live and set up Google

Going live has two halves, and it is easy to stop after the first. The first half is the domain. Theo walks you through pointing it at the new site, both the root name and the www version. Turn off any forwarding or parking at the registrar, and leave the email records alone so your mail keeps working. Visitors still reach the old site until the registrar's records update, usually within a few hours. Time: an hour of your attention, most of it waiting.

The second half is Google. A new site is not found by default. In Theo's audit of 10,470 small business websites, 47 percent of the 7,071 sites with search data got an estimated zero visitors a month from Google search. The median was an estimated one visitor a month, according to The State of Small Business Websites 2026. Three connections are where that work starts, and how to get your website on Google walks through each of them on any platform:

• Google Search Console, which is how the site's pages are submitted to Google for indexing. The same free tool shows how those pages appear in search. On Theo it connects after the domain is active: you sign in with Google one time, and Theo sets up both Search Console and Analytics. Connecting it also submits your sitemap on every plan, so Google finds every new page.
• Google Analytics, so you see what visitors do once they arrive. It comes with the same Google sign-in. The clicks and impressions compared in step 9 come from Search Console.
• Google Business Profile, which is what a "near me" search shows. Starter and Pro include Theo's Boost checklist, which walks through it and the other listings that matter: Facebook, Apple Business Connect, Bing Places and Yelp.
• Cost: hosting, security and HTTPS come with every Theo plan. The ongoing Google work is part of Starter and Pro, and Basic does not include it.

What happens on Theo once the domain is live

On Starter and Pro the growth work switches on once the domain and both Google connections are in place. From then on Theo researches keywords and competitors, drafts pages, posts and landing pages, fixes technical SEO issues and improves page speed. The work also aims for citations in AI search tools such as ChatGPT and Google AI Overviews. On every plan, connecting Google also submits your sitemap.

None of that work uses chat credits, and none of it needs a request from you. What you see: a Growth tab that lists each page, post and fix as it is drafted, and a weekly email that counts the new posts, updates and landing pages. What you do: review each draft in the Growth tab and publish it, or turn auto-publish on so drafts go live as they are ready. Then read the report, and tell Theo in chat when a new service, a new town or a price change should be reflected on the site.

Step 9: Keep the site working for the first 90 days

The first 90 days after launch decide whether the site becomes a working part of the business or a brochure nobody opens again. You can run the list below yourself in about an hour a week. On Starter and Pro most of it is the growth work Theo does, and your part shrinks to reviewing the drafts and reading the report.

• Week 1, once: tell everyone. Put the address on Google Business Profile, invoices, email signatures, social profiles and the van.
• Every week, ten minutes: open Search Console and note which searches show the site and which pages get clicks. On Theo the Google clicks and top pages also appear in the Analytics tab.
• Every two weeks, one page: add a page that answers a question customers asked by phone recently, such as a service you were asked about, a town you drove to, or a price question. On a builder you write that page yourself. On Starter and Pro, Theo drafts new pages and posts weekly, and they wait in the Growth tab for your review or go live on their own once auto-publish is on. Ashbrenner Plumbing's water shutoff page, built by Theo and pictured below, is that kind of page.
• Every month, fifteen minutes: check that the hours, prices and service areas are still true, and send a test through the form to confirm it still lands in an inbox someone reads.
• At 90 days, one hour: compare clicks and impressions with the first month, and keep adding the kind of pages that are earning searches. On Theo the Analytics tab shows the clicks and top pages, and the Growth tab lists every page, post and fix, so there is no spreadsheet to keep.

What the first 90 days looked like for one customer

Buy My Lunch runs school lunch ordering, and its site moved to Theo in June 2026. Its clicks from Google search reached 929 in the 90 days to September 27, 2026, compared with 131 in the 90 days before. Over the same two periods, search impressions rose from 7,500 to 61,700 and the average position moved from 13 to 8 while new pages went live. Those are the site's own Search Console numbers.

Every site starts from a different place and nobody can promise a ranking, so the number to take from this is not 929. What carries over to your site is the order of events. The site went live, the domain and the Google connections were made, pages were added week after week for the searches customers make, and the clicks followed the pages. On a builder that is your hour a week, and with a freelancer each new page is billed. On Theo it is the growth work on Starter and Pro, which never uses chat credits.

Five things that stall a new small business website, and the fix for each

None of these is a design problem, and none needs a designer to fix. Each one costs a new site weeks or costs the business inquiries it never sees.

Frequently asked questions