Step 1: Settle the business name
Your website, domain, Google Business Profile and truck lettering all follow from the name, so lock it in first. Check it is free with your state (in Kentucky, the Secretary of State business search), as a .com, and on Google in your area. If you are still choosing, our lists of cleaning company names and construction company names include how to check each one.
If you are earlier than that and still setting up the business itself, start with our guides on how to start a handyman business, a cleaning business or a construction company.
Step 2: Buy the domain in your own name
Register the domain yourself, with your own email and card, even if someone else builds the site. A .com costs about $10 a year at an at-cost registrar like Cloudflare, and a little more elsewhere. Keep it short, spell it the way people say it, and avoid hyphens. If a designer offers to register it for you, ask that it be in your name; the domain is the one thing you should never have to ask anyone to give back.
Step 3: Set up your Google Business Profile
For a new local business, the Google Business Profile often brings the first calls, before the website ranks for anything. Create it with the exact business name, your primary category, your service area, your phone number and your hours, then verify it. Google no longer builds websites for Business Profiles (it turned those sites off in March 2024), so you need your own site to link from the profile. Our answer on whether you need a website if you have a Google Business Profile explains why the two work as a pair.
Link the profile to your plain homepage address. In September 2026 I added a tracking tag (a UTM) to the website link on my own Google Business Profile. Within four weeks Search Console was counting the map-listing impressions on the tagged address instead of the homepage: the homepage went from 166 impressions to 41 while the tagged address went from 0 to 259. Nothing was lost, but it looked like the homepage had collapsed, and it split one page's numbers in two. If you want tracking, set it up knowing that, or keep the link plain while the business is new and every number matters.
Step 4: Decide who builds it
There are two real routes. You can build it yourself on a website builder for roughly $15 to $50 a month, which is cheapest in cash and most expensive in evenings. Or you can have someone build it, which costs more up front and saves the time you need for paid jobs. Either way, check who owns the site and whether there is a contract. Our guide to comparing home service website quotes has a checklist to send to any designer.
Sloan's Websites fits a new home service business because you can see the site with your new name on it before you spend anything: we build a free 5-page preview by hand and email it within 24 hours. If you go ahead, the build is a flat $750 plus $25 a month, most sites go live in under a week, and the domain, the code and the hosting account are yours, with no long-term contract.
Step 5: The first pages to build
- Home: what you do, where, and a big call button. One sentence that says it all: "[Name] is a [service] business in [town] serving [towns]."
- One page per service: the jobs you want more of, each with what is included, a rough price range if you can give one, and photos.
- About: you, your photo, your license and insurance, and why you started. For a new business, this page does a lot of the trust-building.
- Contact: phone, text, a short form, and the towns you cover.
Add a page for each town once you have done real jobs there and have something to say about it. Our answer on how many pages a website needs goes into more detail.
How do I build trust with no reviews yet?
Every business starts at zero reviews. Until they come in, let the site show what reviews would: real photos of you and your work (even from jobs for friends and family), your license and insurance, a clear price range, and what happens when someone calls. Then ask every early customer for a Google review the day you finish the job. Our answer on how to get more Google reviews has the wording.
What does it cost to get a website for a new business?
Roughly: about $10 a year for the domain, $15 to $50 a month for a builder you set up yourself, or a one-time build from a few hundred to a few thousand dollars if someone builds it, plus hosting. Our build is a flat $750 plus $25 a month; the details are on our pricing page. Whatever you pay, own the domain and the site.