How much does a small business website cost?

Our websites are fixed-price so you know the cost before we start. They begin at **£477** for a Starter site, **£1,170** for Growth and **£2,370** for Complete, with no hourly billing and no surprise invoices. Care plans to keep everything running start at **£27 a month**, and SEO or a full redesign is quoted per project. You can see the [full breakdown on our pricing page](/pricing).

How long does it take to launch a website?

Most of our sites go live within **three to six weeks**, depending on how quickly we get your content and photos. The checklist steps above run alongside the build, so nothing is left to the last minute. Every build also includes 30 days of aftercare so you are not on your own the moment it goes live.

Can I launch a website myself, or do I need a professional?

You can absolutely do it yourself with a checklist like this one, and plenty of owners do. The honest answer is that it takes time and attention you might rather spend running your business. If you would rather hand it over, we handle the whole thing, and you still own your site, domain and data at the end with no lock-in.

What is the most common mistake when launching a website?

Two things, really. The first is not owning your own domain and email, which becomes a headache the day you part ways with whoever set it up. The second is telling everyone the site is live before testing the contact form, so enquiries quietly vanish. Both are easy to avoid if you follow the steps above.

What is a free teardown?

It is a short, screen-recorded review of your current website where we point out what is working, what is costing you enquiries and what we would fix first. There is no charge and no obligation. It is the easiest way to see how your site measures up against this checklist without lifting a finger yourself. Just [get in touch](/contact) and we will record one for you.

Resources / Websites

The Ultimate Website Launch Checklist for Small Businesses

By Mohammad Javad Samadi·18 February 2026·7 min read

Launching a website feels a bit like opening a new shop. You want the door to open smoothly, the lights on, the prices clear and someone ready to answer the phone. Miss a detail and the first visitor notices before you do. This is the ultimate website launch checklist for small businesses, written for the owner who is not technical and does not want to be.

Work through it in order and you will go live with confidence. Skip a step and you might be chasing broken links or a missing contact form on day one, usually while you are meant to be running your actual business. If any of it makes your eyes glaze over, that is fine, this is exactly the sort of thing we do every week.

Get the foundations right before you touch design

Before you fuss over colours or fonts, sort the plumbing. These are the things that are painful to change later and easy to get right now. Most owners rush past them because they feel boring, then pay for it when an email bounces or the domain renewal lapses.

Make sure every one of these is in your own name and under your own login. Ownership is the single biggest thing people get wrong, and it is why we build every site so that you own your site, domain and data with no lock-in.

→Register your domain in your business name, not your web person's, and note the renewal date

→Set up business email on your domain (you@yourbusiness.co.uk always beats a Gmail address on your business cards)

→Confirm you have logins for your hosting, domain and any tools, and store them somewhere safe

→Decide on one clear goal for the site: phone calls, bookings, quote requests or online sales

→Write your core pages before design starts so the layout fits real words, not placeholder text

Check every page reads well and works

Now for the content itself. Read every page out loud, ideally on your phone, because most local searches happen on a mobile and that is how your customers will see it. If a sentence trips you up when you say it, it will trip up a reader too.

Check the practical details a customer actually needs: your phone number, opening hours, the areas you cover and a genuine reason to choose you. A plumber in Leeds and a wedding photographer in Bath need very different pages, and good copywriting and website design makes that difference obvious in the first few seconds.

→Business name, phone number and address match everywhere, letter for letter

→Every button and link goes where it should, with no dead ends

→The contact form actually sends, and you have tested it from a real inbox

→Images are your own or properly licensed, and none are stretched or blurry

→Spelling and grammar checked by a second pair of eyes, not just you

“If a sentence trips you up when you say it out loud, it will trip up your customer too.”

Set up the technical bits that Google cares about

This is the part owners dread, but the essentials are simpler than they sound. You do not need to understand how a car engine works to check the oil, and you do not need to be a developer to tick these off. Get them in place and you give yourself a fair chance of being found.

A fast, secure, findable site is the groundwork for every bit of SEO and local SEO that follows. Launch without it and you are effectively opening with the lights off.

→The padlock (SSL certificate) shows in the browser, so the site loads as https not http

→Pages load quickly, especially the homepage, on a normal phone signal rather than office wifi

→Page titles and descriptions are written for each page, not left blank or duplicated

→The site is submitted to Google Search Console so Google knows it exists

→A basic analytics tool is installed so you can see what visitors actually do

Connect your Google Business Profile

For a local business, your Google Business Profile often does more heavy lifting than the website itself. It is the box that appears on the right when someone searches your name, and the map pin they tap when they want directions or your number.

Claim it, fill it in completely and make sure the details match your website exactly. Add real photos, your opening hours and the services you offer. If you want a hand tying your profile and site together, that is a core part of what we do for local businesses across the UK.

Do a final walk-through, then go live

Before you announce anything, do one calm walk-through as if you were a first-time customer. Open the site on a phone and a laptop. Tap through every page. Fill in the form. Call the number to check it rings the right phone. It is the digital version of walking the shop floor before you unlock the door.

Once it is live, tell people. Update your social profiles, your email signature and any directory listings so they point to the new address. And keep an eye on things for the first few weeks, which is exactly why every build we do includes 30 days aftercare and the option of a simple care plan to keep it healthy after that.

If reading this checklist has quietly convinced you that you would rather not do it all yourself, that is a perfectly sensible conclusion. We build fixed-price websites for UK small businesses so you know the cost up front, most go live in three to six weeks, and you can see the full pricing here. Either way, use this list, launch well, and give your new site the opening day it deserves.

Key takeaways

✓Sort ownership and email before anything else, they are painful to fix later
✓Test the contact form from a real inbox before you tell anyone the site is live
✓Secure, fast and findable beats pretty every single time