A good website doesn’t have to be expensive. It does have to be deliberate.
Here’s how I’d spend a small budget, in order, and where I’d refuse to cut.
Start With What It’s For
Before you pick any tool, answer one question. What do you want a visitor to do?
Call you. Request a quote. Buy a thing. Pick one. Every decision after this gets easier, and most of the money people waste gets wasted before this question is answered.
Pick the Simplest Thing That Works
If you need five pages and a contact form, that’s a template on a builder, or a small static site. Not a custom build.
Match the tool to the actual job. The most expensive sites I’ve been asked to rescue were overbuilt for what the business needed, usually by someone selling the build.
Own Your Domain
Register it yourself, in your own name. Ten or fifteen dollars a year.
This is the one I get firm about. Whatever else changes, you own the address.
Do the Writing Yourself
Your own words about your own work, in the way you’d explain it to a customer standing in front of you.
That’s better than anything a stranger writes for you, and it’s free. Write it plain. Don’t try to sound like a corporation.
Photos Are Worth Real Money
If you spend anywhere, spend here.
Actual photos of your actual work beat stock photos by a mile. A phone camera in good light is genuinely fine. Stock photos of smiling people in headsets make you look like everyone else, and people can tell.
Then Tell People It Exists
Claim your Google Business Profile, which is free and takes an afternoon. Put the address on everything you already print.
A good website nobody knows about isn’t doing anything for you.
The Two Places Not to Cheap Out
Hosting where nobody answers the phone will cost you more than it saves, on the worst possible day.
And anybody who won’t give you your own domain and a copy of your files isn’t a bargain. That’s a hostage situation with a monthly fee.
Working with a real number and want a straight opinion on what it buys? Call me.