Plain steps in the right order. This is written for new starters in Faringdon, Wantage, Witney, Swindon and across Oxfordshire, but the advice is the same wherever you are in the UK. You do not need to do everything at once.
A lot of people launching a small business spend too long trying to decide what to do, get overwhelmed, and either do nothing or spend money in the wrong order. This checklist is deliberately short. It covers what actually matters in the first few months of trading, roughly in the order you should tackle it.
Before you build anything, buy your domain. It costs about £10 to £15 a year and you can register one in ten minutes through a provider like Namecheap or Cloudflare Registrar.
A few rules for picking a good domain. Keep it short. Use your business name if you can. A .co.uk works well for a UK local business, though .com is fine too. Avoid hyphens in the domain itself. Make sure you can actually spell it out loud without confusion.
Buy the domain in your own name, or in a company account you personally control. Do not let a web designer or agency register it for you. If they ever disappear or you fall out, getting a domain back can be a real headache.
A new business does not need a thirty-page website. It needs five clear pages that answer the questions every potential customer has before they decide to contact you.
Homepage. This page has one job: tell a stranger what you do, who you do it for, and where you are, in about five seconds. Most people read almost nothing on a homepage. They scan. Make the first paragraph do all the work. State your trade and your area. Then give them one clear thing to do next, whether that is calling you, booking, or reading more.
Services page. One page per main service works better than one giant list. For a sole trader starting out, a single services page with clear sections is fine. The key is to describe what you do in plain terms, say who it is right for, and give enough detail that someone can tell without calling whether you are the right fit.
About page. People buy from people, especially for local services. This page does not need to be long. A few sentences about who you are, why you started the business, and what your approach is. A real photo helps more than anything else on this page. Stock photos of strangers do not build trust.
Contact page. This is where you convert a visitor into an enquiry. Put your phone number on it, a contact form, and if you have a fixed location, your address. Do not make people hunt for it. If you can take calls during business hours, say so. If you prefer messages, say that instead.
Portfolio or gallery page (if relevant). If you do work people can see, such as building, decorating, hairdressing, catering, or anything where photos show quality, add a gallery early. Real photos of real work are more persuasive than anything you write. Even a handful of phone camera shots from a job you are proud of is worth having.
This is free, it takes an afternoon, and it is the single most important local search action most new businesses never properly do.
A Google Business Profile is what makes you show up on Google Maps and in the local results box when someone searches for your trade plus your town. For businesses in Faringdon, Wantage, Carterton, Highworth and the surrounding area, this is often the first place customers will find you, before your website.
Go to business.google.com, claim your listing, and fill in every field. Business name, address or service area, phone number, opening hours, website, and a description of what you do. Add real photos. Then ask Google to verify the listing, usually by a postcard to your address or by phone.
Once it is live and verified, ask a few of your first customers to leave a review. Reviews matter for local visibility and they matter even more for trust. We have a separate guide on how to ask for reviews without being annoying if you want the detail on that.
This sounds obvious but a lot of new business sites get it wrong. Your phone number should be on every page, near the top, and on mobile it should be tappable so it calls you directly. A buried contact form at the bottom of a page is not enough.
Decide how you want to receive enquiries and make that the path of least resistance on your site. If you are out on jobs most of the day and cannot take calls, point people to a form or a WhatsApp link instead. If you are desk-based and happy to take calls, put the number front and centre.
Set up a proper business email address using your domain, something like [email protected]. A Gmail address or a Hotmail address in a business context gives some customers pause. It costs almost nothing to add email to your domain and it makes you look more established from day one.
This is not essential on day one, but if your business involves appointments or deposits, setting up online booking early saves you a lot of phone tag.
A simple booking calendar, services like Calendly have a free tier, lets customers book a slot without calling. A Stripe payment link lets you take a deposit before you turn up, which protects you from no-shows and last-minute cancellations. For trades, salons, holiday lets, classes and most service businesses, this pays for itself quickly.
We help new businesses set this up as part of a website build, or as a standalone job. It is smaller and simpler than most people expect. You do not need expensive booking software. You need a calendar link and a payment link, both of which can be live in a day.
A few things people spend time on at the start that honestly do not need to happen yet.
A blog. Only start one if you are going to keep writing. A blog with three posts from 2026 and nothing since is worse than no blog. When you have time and things to say, start one. Not before.
Social media accounts on every platform. Pick one or two where your customers actually are and do those properly rather than spreading yourself thin across six. For most local Oxfordshire businesses, Facebook and Instagram cover most of the ground. LinkedIn is worth it if you sell to other businesses.
Paid Google Ads. Ads can drive traffic quickly, but if your site is not ready to convert that traffic into enquiries, the money is wasted. Get the site right first. We have written a longer piece on where a small budget should go first if you want the full argument.
A fancy logo. A clean, readable wordmark in a decent font is fine to start with. You do not need a designer to spend weeks on a brand identity before you have any customers. Fix the logo properly once you know what the business actually is.
We are based near Faringdon, which puts us within a short drive of most of Oxfordshire, north Wiltshire and the Cotswolds. If you are a new starter in the area and want to sit down and talk through what you need, we are happy to do that. No charge for a conversation.
A five-page site built properly for a new business starts at £1,499 and goes live in seven days. That includes copywriting, so you do not have to worry about writing everything yourself, plus Google Business Profile setup, mobile-optimised design and hosting sorted. We also offer faster timescales at £1,999 for five days and £2,999 for 48 hours if you need to move quickly.
If you are not ready for a full site and just want to talk through the steps above, drop us a line. There are no strings attached and we do not do hard sell.
We build clear, fast websites for new starters across Oxfordshire and beyond. Fixed price, live in days, no jargon. Based near Faringdon, we can meet in person or work remotely across the UK.
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