A website when you're just starting out — what you actually need (and what can wait)

Anyone starting a business knows two things for certain: money is short and everything feels urgent at once. The website usually falls into one of two traps — it is either over-bought (ten pages, a blog, a store, "for when we grow") or postponed forever ("once I have customers"). Both are expensive. The first in money; the second in customers who searched and didn't find you.

This guide is the version we wish someone had given us: what the site needs on day one, what can wait, what is free, and how to grow without throwing anything away.

What you need on day one

One page. Not ten — one. With five things on it:

1. What you do, for whom, where. In the first sentence, without adjectives. "Driving school in Queluz, category B, weekend lessons" beats "your trusted partner on the road".
2. How to get in touch — working on a phone. A WhatsApp or call button, a short form. The person looking for you is on their phone, standing up, in a hurry.
3. Three real photos. The place, the work, you. A phone is fine, in daylight. Stock photos say "I'm not real".
4. Hours and address, with a map that opens navigation.
5. The five questions people ask you every week, answered. Where prices start, how to book, what to bring, how long it takes. It is the most useful content you will ever have — and you already know it by heart.

And three things around the page:

• Your Google Business Profile. Free, and for a local business it carries more weight than the website in the first months. Do it today; the site links to it later.
• A domain with your name, bought by you, in your name. It costs little per year and stops someone else taking it.
• An email on your domain. An address with the business name inspires trust; a gmail with numbers does not. It takes ten minutes.

What can (really) wait

• A blog. Only when you have something to say every week. A blog with two posts from 2024 is worse than none.
• An online store. Only once you know there is demand. Selling through WhatsApp and MB Way for three months teaches you more than any platform.
• A booking system. If you get three bookings a day, a WhatsApp button is enough. The system comes when WhatsApp stops being enough.
• Several languages. Only if the customers you want speak another language.
• A new logo, animations, a background video. No customer ever chose a mechanic for the background video.

How to grow without throwing anything away

The right idea is called phasing:

• Phase 1 — the page. What is above. It solves today's problem: being found and contacted.
• Phase 2 — the pages customers ask for. A service that deserves its own page, a gallery, real bookings.
• Phase 3 — the site as part of the business. A store, a customer area, integrations with invoicing or the calendar.

The important part: phase 1 has to be built so that phase 2 adds to it rather than replacing it. That is the difference between a site that grows and a site that gets rebuilt every two years. Ask whoever builds your site: "if I want online bookings in a year, does that get added or rebuilt?". The answer tells you everything.

The €0 website — and its real price

There are platforms where you build a site without paying. For testing an idea they are the right choice — and we say that as a studio that sells websites. The real price is elsewhere: the address is theirs, not yours; the ads are theirs; if you leave, you start from zero; and the page that looked fine on a laptop is often slow and awkward on a phone, which is where your customers are. Acceptable while you validate. Expensive once the business is real.

The money part

Here is what most studios don't tell people who are starting out: there is no project minimum. The budget sets the size of the first phase — not the other way round. If what you can invest today is small, we tell you what fits (a well-made single page fits smaller budgets than people assume) and what waits for the next phase. If nothing fits, we say that too — and we tell you what to do for free first.

And there is a way to see before you decide: give us two minutes and we show you a private demonstration of your website. Only then do we talk budget — a fixed figure, in writing, shaped to what you can invest.

Not sure it's time yet? The “Do I need a website — or is it too early?” quiz answers in two minutes. Sometimes the answer is "not yet" — and that is good news too.