Starting from nothing? Good. There's nothing to untangle.
No website yet, or just a Facebook page. You know you need something; you're less sure what, in what order, or who to trust with it.
What you actually need first
Not everything at once, and not the biggest package someone will sell you. Four foundations, in order: a domain registered in your name, a Google Business Profile so you show up on the map, business email on your own domain instead of a Gmail address, and a simple site that says who you are, where you work, and how to reach you.
Set up right, all of it belongs to you from day one. That matters more than anything about how the site looks — plenty of new businesses discover years later that their domain or their Google listing is registered to whoever set it up. Yours won't be.
What actually goes into putting a site online
- A domain, pointed at the right place
- Hosting, with a certificate so the site isn't flagged as insecure
- A way to publish changes without breaking what's live
- Real photos and real words about the business — not placeholder copy
- A page for each service, and each area served
- Structured data, so search engines and AI tools know what the business is
- A contact form that reliably delivers and doesn't land in spam
- Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster, so the site can be found
- A Google Business Profile, claimed and filled in properly
- Analytics, so you know whether any of it worked
- Monitoring, so you find out before your customers do
Any one of these is manageable. It's the eleven of them talking to each other that takes the time — and the troubleshooting when one of them stops.
Three steps, sized to a new business
- A conversation. What you do, where you work, what customers ask for. No forms to study, no jargon — you talk, I take notes.
- The foundations, in your name. Domain, Google listing, and email, all registered to you and handed over documented. If you ever leave, everything comes with you.
- A site sized to now. Builds are quoted by scope, so a new business isn't paying for pages it doesn't need yet — it grows when you do. Plans from $395 to $1,495 a month keep it running, monitored, and current.
Start with the conversation
No obligation, and I'd rather answer your questions before you've spent anything than after. If you have a Facebook page or an old listing, I'll look at what's already out there first.
Or email hello@littleservant.com