Building a small business website
A good small business website doesn't need to be big or expensive. It needs to load fast, answer customers' questions, and make it easy to get in touch. Here's what to put on it, the main ways to build it - including the new option of building it with AI - and how to look after it.
In short
- Start with five pages - home, services, about, reviews or work, and contact - and make the next step obvious on every page.
- There are four main ways to build it - a website builder, WordPress, a designer or agency, or "vibe coding" a site with an AI assistant and hosting it on a service like Cloudflare through GitHub.
- Speed, mobile-friendliness and clear text matter more than fancy design, for customers and for search engines.
- Own your domain name and your accounts, keep everything updated, and have a backup.
- Plan for maintenance. A website is never "finished".
What your website needs to do
For most small businesses, a website has three jobs:
- Be found: in Google, in maps and in AI assistants’ answers.
- Build trust: show who you are, what you do, what it costs, and that others are happy with you.
- Turn visitors into enquiries: make calling, booking, quoting or buying easy.
Everything on the site should help with one of those three.
The pages you need
Start with five, and do them well:
- Home: who you help, what you do, where, and one clear button (Call, Book, Get a quote).
- Services (one page per main service is better for search): what’s included, price ranges, the areas you cover, and common questions.
- About: the real people behind the business, qualifications, licences and your story.
- Reviews or work: testimonials, photos of real jobs, case studies.
- Contact: phone, email, a short form, hours, service area or a map.
Then add a privacy policy if you collect any personal information (contact forms, bookings, newsletters, analytics). Many small businesses are exempt from the Privacy Act, but not all of them are (health service providers, for example), and a clear policy builds trust either way.
Four ways to build it
| Website builder | WordPress | Designer or agency | AI “vibe coding” + hosting | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| What it is | An all-in-one service where you pick a template and edit it in your browser | Popular open-source software, hosted with a web host | A professional builds it for you | You describe the site to an AI assistant, which writes the code; you host it on a service such as Cloudflare |
| Skill needed | Low | Moderate | Low (you supply content and feedback) | Low to moderate, plus patience |
| Up-front cost | Low | Low to moderate | Moderate to high | Very low |
| Ongoing cost | Monthly subscription | Hosting, plugins, updates | Hosting plus support fees | Often free or very low hosting |
| Watch out for | Being locked into one provider | Security updates and plugin sprawl | Who owns the site and logins | Checking the AI’s work; knowing how to make changes |
Website builders
Fast and simple. Good if you want to do it yourself and need standard features like bookings or a small online shop. Check that you can connect your own domain, and what happens to your site if you stop paying.
WordPress
Flexible, with thousands of themes and plugins, and widely supported by freelancers. It needs regular updates to stay secure, and every plugin you add is something else to maintain.
A designer or agency
Worth it when you need something tailored, or simply don’t have the time. Before you start, agree in writing on what’s included, how many revisions, the timeline, ongoing costs, and that you own the domain, the hosting account and the content.
Building it with AI (“vibe coding”)
AI assistants can now write a working website from a plain-English description. You describe what you want (“a five-page website for a mobile dog groomer in Hobart, with a booking button and a page per service”), review what it produces, and ask for changes until you’re happy. This approach is often called vibe coding.
A common, low-cost way to publish a site built this way:
- Keep the website files in GitHub, a service that stores code and every change made to it, so you can always go back to an earlier version.
- Connect GitHub to a hosting service such as Cloudflare, which publishes the site and updates it automatically every time you save a change. Cloudflare has a free plan, and recommends its Workers product for new projects (its older Pages product works similarly).
- Point your domain name at the new site.
The result is usually a very fast, secure “static” site with little or nothing to update. The trade-offs: you need to check the AI’s work carefully (spelling, facts, links, how it looks on a phone, accessibility), and you need a little confidence, or a helper, to make changes later.
A real example: AusBusiness.net itself was rebuilt this way in 2026. The old website was recovered from the Web Archive, cleaned up with the help of an AI assistant, redesigned, stored in GitHub and published through Cloudflare.
What matters most, whichever way you build
- Mobile first. Most visitors will be on a phone. Check every page on one.
- Speed. Compress images, avoid heavy add-ons, and test with a free page-speed tool.
- Clear text, not pictures of text. Prices, menus and services should be real text that people and search engines can read.
- Obvious next step. One main call to action on every page.
- Accessibility. Readable fonts and contrast, descriptive link text, and alt text on images. It helps every visitor, and search engines too.
- Search basics. A unique title and description for each page, and a page per service and location. See SEO and GEO.
Security and ownership
- Own your domain name, registered in your business’s name, with renewal on auto-pay.
- Keep your logins for the domain, hosting and site yourself, protected with multi-factor authentication. Give helpers their own access, rather than your password.
- Use HTTPS (most hosts include it free).
- Keep software updated if your site uses a content system or plugins.
- Back up the site, or keep it in GitHub, so you can restore it after a mistake or attack.
See Cyber security and backups and Domain names and web hosting.
Keeping it current
Put a recurring reminder in your calendar:
- Monthly: check the contact form works, update hours and offers, add a recent job or review.
- Quarterly: review your services and prices, check every page on a phone, fix broken links.
- Yearly: review the whole site, your privacy policy and your domain renewal.