Making a website takes five steps: choose a domain name, arrange hosting, decide which pages you need, write the copy around your customers' questions, and go live with redirects from your old addresses. Doing it yourself with a site builder costs €10 to €30 per month and mostly a lot of your own time. Having it built costs €2,000 to €4,000 once and generally produces a site that also gets found.
There are two routes: build it yourself with a site builder, or have it built. Which is sensible depends on what the site has to deliver and how much time you have. Below are the steps that apply either way.
This is your address, for example yourcompany.nl. Short, pronounceable and without hyphens. Always register it in your own company name. Cost around €10 per year. See what a domain name is.
The space where your site runs. For an ordinary business site €5 to €50 per month is enough. Watch the backups and the server location, preferably inside the EU. See what hosting is.
This is the step most people skip, and precisely the one that determines whether you get found. Google judges per page. A site with only home, about and contact can only be found by your company name.
List the questions customers ask you before they become customers. Each question is a page. Three services across four service areas is twelve pages, plus your explainer articles.
This step decides the outcome: without a page per search question you stay invisible.
If you already have a site, permanently redirect every old address to the new page. Skip that step and you lose the visibility built up over years. Then submit your sitemap through Google Search Console.
| Yourself with a builder | Have it built | |
|---|---|---|
| Cost | €10 to €30 per month | €2,000 to €4,000 once |
| Your time | Dozens of hours | A few hours of discussion |
| Findability | Limited, a template is not written for search intent | Built in, a page per search question |
| Ownership | Site stops when you stop paying | Site and code are yours |
Doing it yourself is fine when you need a digital business card and already know your customers. If the site has to bring in new customers, findability is the difference, and that does not come with a template. See what a website costs.
Yes, with a site builder you can reach a working site without technical knowledge. Do count on dozens of hours of your own time, and bear in mind you are filling in a template that thousands of others also use. Where it usually falls short is findability: a template is not written around the words your customers search for, so you mainly get found by people who already know your company name. For a digital business card that is fine; if the site has to bring in customers, it is rarely enough.
Doing it yourself depends on your own time; in practice we see people take weeks to months because it happens alongside their actual work. Having it built takes three to six weeks depending on scale. The biggest delay is nearly always in supplying copy and photos, not in the building itself. We therefore work with weekly moments where you review progress, so you can steer along the way rather than face surprises at the end.
Three things: a clear picture of what you sell and to whom, a list of the questions customers ask before they become customers, and imagery of your own work. That list of questions matters most, because each question becomes a page that can be found. Beyond that you need access to your domain name if you already have one, and to your existing site and Google account. What you do not need is a finished design or technical knowledge; that is precisely what we are for.