3 Things a Small Business Should Get Clear Before Building a Website

When many owners come to us, their first line is: "I want a website — how much?" There is no way to answer that first. The same word "website" means a different build and a different price depending on who it is for, what you want it to achieve, and who will look after it afterwards. Get the three things below clear before you start, and you will save yourself a great deal of rework.

1. First, be clear about who this website is for

A website is not made for you to look at — it is made for your customers. First describe your typical customer clearly: who they are, what they do, in what situation they would search for you, and what is the first thing they want to confirm when the page opens.

Take an example: an export factory's customers are overseas buyers, and what they look at first is product specifications, minimum order quantities and lead times; only once you look like "a serious supplier" will they send an enquiry. A neighbourhood restaurant's customers look first at the address, opening hours and menu prices. Both are "corporate websites", but because the reader is different, what belongs on the homepage — and which sentence goes first — is completely different.

If you are not clear about who it is for, the website easily ends up in the old mould of "company profile + product list": everything is said, and the one thing the customer actually wanted to find is nowhere to be seen.

2. Decide the action you want customers to take after viewing

Every page needs one main action: make a call, add you on WeChat, fill in an enquiry form, or place an order — pick one of the four, and do not be greedy for all of them. If the action is undecided, the page ends up with a button here and a QR code there; the customer does not know what to do, and in the end just closes the page and leaves.

Once the action is set, many questions answer themselves: contact details go where they are easy to reach; the enquiry form asks only for the information that is genuinely needed, rather than making the customer fill in a dozen fields; on an export site, the WhatsApp entry has to stay within reach at all times. Our experience: decide the action first, then the page order, and only then talk about how it looks.

3. Arrange in advance who will keep the content updated

A website is not a one-off project. Products change, prices are adjusted, cases accumulate and contact details change — the content that was current on launch day starts going out of date within about six months. So decide before you start: who will provide new material afterwards, how often updates happen, and whether updating is done in-house or handed to someone else.

If there really is nobody to look after it, do not force it: hand the updates and maintenance to a hosting and care service. You only send over the new products and new prices; someone else lays them out and puts them live. What is worth worrying about is not paying for care — it is a website that nobody looks after once it is built, slowly turning into an out-of-date online business card.

With these three things clear, you can talk about how many pages, what style, and how much — the quote will be accurate, and the finished website will actually be able to receive customers.