A PROPER WEBSITE FOR A BUSINESS THAT TRADES IN PERSON
You meet your customers face to face: at a market, on site, or through word of mouth. Taking payment on the website is a different job needing a different kind of site. What you need is to look as real as you already are, be easy to find, and be easy to reach. One page, built properly, live in a week.
What it costs
I do not publish prices for anything else I build, because no two builds are alike. A Starter Site is different: the scope is fixed, so the price can be too, and you deserve to know it before you talk to me.
Nothing further is payable to me to keep it online. Your domain is paid to the registrar directly, at roughly the price of a coffee a month.
What a small site still has to get right
A site built down to a price usually skips the unglamorous half: the consent notice, the legal pages, the search set-up, whose name the domain is in. That half is the half that bites later. It is all here.
Reads properly on a phone
Which is where nearly everyone will open it, usually while standing in front of your stall or squinting at a business card.
Loads in under a second
Built as plain files rather than a page that assembles itself on arrival. Nothing to wake up, nothing to time out on a weak signal.
Findable in local search
Your name, your trade and your area, structured so Google understands them. Set up and submitted, not just hoped for.
Legal pages written for you
Privacy, terms and cookies, written around what your site actually collects. Not pasted from someone else's business.
Analytics and consent wired
You can see how many people looked, and the cookie notice is done properly under POPIA. Most one-page sites have neither.
Every account in your name
The domain and the hosting are registered to you on day one. I am a collaborator on your accounts, never the owner of them.
Is a Starter Site right for you?
The honest answer is that it depends on where the work comes from, not on how much you want to spend.
Yes, if
- You win work in person: a market stall, a local trade, a stand at an event
- People look you up to check you are real, then phone or WhatsApp you
- You are starting out and need to exist online before anything else
- It is a one-off: an event, a wedding, a pop-up, a season
Something else, if
- You need people to buy from the site itself
- You need people to book and pay for a slot without phoning you
- The website is your main channel and has to win the work on its own
- You want to publish regularly and rank for it
- You cannot describe what you need yet, or a site you already have is broken
Every need listed above is a different job, not a bigger Starter Site. The last of them is the Audit, which exists precisely because the price cannot be known in advance. A Starter Site is the reverse: the scope is fixed, so the price is fixed, and printed above. I would rather tell you which of the two you need than sell you the wrong one.
If the business changes later
Most businesses that trade in person never need anything else, and needing nothing else is a good outcome rather than a missed one. But if what you do changes, the site you need changes with it.
If you start selling online, that is an online store. If you start taking bookings, or the website becomes the main way you win work, that is a business website. Neither is a larger edition of a Starter Site; they are built differently because they do a different job.
If you start selling online or taking bookings within 12 months of your Starter Site going live, 50% of what you paid for the Starter Site comes off the new build. Your words and pictures carry across. The build itself does not, and I would rather say so plainly than pretend otherwise.
Common Questions
A finished website, live on your own domain, from R4 000. One page that says who you are, what you sell, and how to reach you, built to load fast and read properly on a phone. It ships with your analytics, cookie consent and legal pages already done, which is the part most one-page sites skip.
For most businesses that trade in person, yes. If people find you at a market, on site, or by word of mouth, the website's job is to prove you are real and make you easy to contact. A ten-page site does not do that job better; it just costs more and takes longer to keep current. Extra pages are there if you need them.
Nothing to me for hosting. The site is built to run on a free hosting tier, and the account is opened in your name, not mine, so there is no hosting invoice for me to pay and reclaim from you. You pay your domain registrar directly, roughly the price of a coffee a month. A care plan is optional and separate.
Live within a week of you sending your content. That is the whole reason it is priced the way it is: the scope is fixed, so the work is short and predictable. The clock starts when your words and images arrive, not when you enquire.
Yes. The domain and the hosting account are registered in your name from day one, and the site itself becomes yours on final payment. Nothing is held back, and there is no account of mine you have to keep paying to stay online.
Then you may need a different kind of site rather than a bigger Starter Site. Taking bookings or selling online is a different job, and it is worth reading business websites or online stores when that day comes. Plenty of businesses never need either, and that is a perfectly good outcome.
Tell me what you do
A sentence about the business and where you sell is enough. I will tell you whether a Starter Site is the right thing for you, or whether it is not.
No obligation • 15-minute call