A new website in 7 days: what the week looks like

Most owners picture a new website as a project: a discovery call, a questionnaire, a designer asking for forty rounds of feedback, and an invoice that grows. So the job waits for a quiet month. Quiet months do not come.

The picture is out of date. A website for a local service business is a known shape. It needs your services, your area, your proof, a way to call and a way to ask for a quote. Once you know the shape, a week is enough. This is what that week looks like and what it asks of you.

Day 0: the hour that is yours

Everything we need already exists somewhere in your business. We ask you to send it, in whatever form it is in.

• What you sell, with the prices or price ranges you are happy to show
• Your logo, your license or insurance details if they matter in your trade
• Ten or so photos from real jobs, taken on a phone
• Your best reviews, or where to find them
• The number and inbox that should receive inquiries

A dentist sends insurance plans and team bios. A courier sends a service area and a rate sheet. A baker sends photos of the cakes people ask for by name. A roofer sends before-and-after shots and a license number. The list changes by trade, but the effort does not: about an hour, and a folder or a pile of screenshots is fine.

You do not write the copy. Explaining why a customer should pick you over the next name on the list is part of what we do.

Days 1 to 5: the build

The first two days go on structure and words. Each page answers one question a visitor has before they call: what do you do, where, what does it cost roughly, and why should I trust you. A page for each main service is usual, with the proof placed where a visitor tends to hesitate and a form that asks for just enough to be useful.

The last three days are construction, with a phone in mind first. Most people looking for a local service search from a phone, often in a hurry: a leak, a flat tire, a tooth that hurts, a wedding date that needs a caterer. If the page is slow on that phone, they leave. Google’s 2016 research found that 53% of mobile visitors leave a page that takes longer than 3 seconds to load, and Portent’s 2022 analysis found that a page loading in 1 second converts about 3 times better than one loading in 5 seconds. Neither number is our result. They are the reason speed is part of the build and not an extra.

You do nothing in this stretch. Keep working.

Days 6 and 7: you look, then it goes live

On day 6 you get a link to a live preview. Open it on your own phone, show it to whoever answers your calls, and fill in the form yourself to see what lands in your inbox. Then say what to change. Most changes go live within 24 hours, and that is also how it works after launch.

On day 7 your domain points at the new site. The address on your trucks, invoices, signs and Google Business Profile stays the same, and only the page behind it changes.

What it costs and what you own

The prices are published. The Standard website is $2399£1,899 one-time. The Growth website is $7500£5,900 one-time and adds more pages and deeper local search work. You own the domain, the site and the content, and there is no contract to leave.

Compare that with the picture in your head. The old model is a long timeline, many hours of your time, a quote that arrives after the calls and a platform you rarely control. The week above is shorter on all four.

What a new site will not do in week one

A new site does not jump to the top of Google in a week. Rankings take weeks to months to move, and they depend on reviews, your Google Business Profile and local competition. We do not promise a position.

What changes at once is what happens to the people who already find you. The referral who looks you up before calling, the searcher who clicked your result last month, the customer comparing three businesses from a parking lot. They land on a page that says what you do, shows proof and makes the next step easy.

If you want to see the pattern in your own trade first, the industry versions of this article cover it: accounting firms think about niche pages and intake forms, dental practices about insurance details and emergency visits, excavation contractors about galleries and quote forms, and daycare centers about tours and waitlists.

The next step

Watch the free video walkthrough of a finished site and see what day 7 looks like. If your bigger problem is the phone not ringing at all, the ads offer is the other half of the picture.