When you start a business, everyone has an opinion about what you need online. Your cousin says you need an app. A cold email says you need SEO. Someone on Instagram says you need to be on every platform, every day.
Most of that is noise. If you sell a service in your area (a cleaner, a contractor, a salon, a clinic, a coach), the list of things you actually need is short. Here it is, in the order I would set it up, plus the things you can safely ignore for now.
1. A domain name, in your name
The domain is your address online, like yourbusiness.com. It usually costs around $15 to $25 a year from a registrar like Namecheap, GoDaddy or Cloudflare.
Two things matter here. First, keep it simple: if someone hears it once over the phone, they should be able to type it. Avoid hyphens and clever spellings. Second, and this one is important, register it yourself, with your own email and your own card. Not your nephew’s account. Not your web designer’s account. The domain is the one piece you never want someone else to control.
If you only take one thing from this post, take that.
2. A business email that matches your domain
An email like [email protected] looks more established than [email protected]. It is a small thing, but customers notice it, especially when they are deciding who to trust with their money.
Google Workspace or Microsoft 365 will run it for you for a few dollars a month per person. You still get the normal Gmail or Outlook app you already know. It just comes from your own address.
3. A Google Business Profile
This is the listing that shows up on Google Maps and on the right side of Google when someone searches your business name. It is free, and for a local business it is often the first thing a customer sees, before your website.
Fill in everything: hours, services, service area, photos of real work. Then ask your first few happy customers for a review. Those first reviews do a lot of heavy lifting. I wrote more about whether to start with a website or a Google Business Profile if you are trying to decide where to put your time first.
4. A simple website that answers the basic questions
You do not need a big website on day one. You need a site that answers the questions people have before they contact you:
- What exactly do you do?
- Where do you work?
- Roughly what does it cost, or how is it priced?
- Why should they trust you? Photos, reviews, how long you have been doing this.
- How do they reach you? A phone number they can tap, and a short form.
A clear one to five page site covers all of that. It should load fast and work well on a phone, because that is where most of your visitors will be. Fancy animations can wait. Clear answers cannot.
A website also needs somewhere to live, called hosting. Expect to pay around $10 to $30 a month for decent hosting for a small business site. Very cheap plans are fine for a while, but if your site feels slow, that is often the reason. If you want a rough idea of the total cost of a site, I broke it down in how much a small business website costs.
5. One way to know it is working
Set up a free analytics tool on day one so you can see how many people visit and where they come from. And simply ask new customers: “How did you find us?” Write the answers down. After a few months, that list will tell you more than any marketing report.
What you can skip for now
This is the part that saves you money.
- An app. Unless your business is the app, you do not need one. A good mobile website does the same job for a fraction of the cost.
- Every social media platform. Pick one where your customers already spend time and show up there properly. One account you post on is better than five you abandon.
- SEO packages from cold emails. If someone you have never heard of emails you promising page one on Google, delete it. Real search visibility for a local business mostly comes from a solid website, a complete Google profile and genuine reviews.
- “Domain renewal” letters in the mail. Some companies send official looking notices that are really an attempt to move your domain to them at a higher price. Only pay renewals through the registrar you actually signed up with.
- A perfect logo before you start. A clean, simple logo is enough to launch. You can refine it once you know your business better.
Keep a simple list of your logins
This sounds boring, and it is, but it will save you a real headache later. Keep one note with where everything lives: your registrar, your hosting, your email provider, your Google profile, and your website login. Store it somewhere safe, like a password manager.
Owners lose weeks over this, simply because nobody remembers which account the domain was on. It only takes ten minutes to avoid that.
The short version
Get your domain in your own name. Set up a matching email. Claim your Google Business Profile and collect a few reviews. Launch a simple, fast website that answers the obvious questions. Ignore most of the rest until you are busy.
That is a solid foundation for almost any new local business, and you can grow it from there as the work comes in.
If you are just getting started and want someone to look at your plan before you spend money, book a free strategy call. I will tell you honestly what you need now and what can wait.
