How to start a professional website, in the right order

Published on 4 November 2026by Tauro Lab8 min read

In short A professional website starts from its purpose, not its design: one sentence saying what a visitor should do. Then the material (text, photos, company details), domain and email in your own name, legal requirements such as the VAT number on the home page and a privacy notice, and finally the supplier, chosen with precise questions. Results on Google take weeks or months, not a day.

You start with a sentence, not a quote: "Someone who lands on the site should...". People building their first website usually start at the end, with colours and competitors' sites, ask for a price without knowing what to ask, and then stall because the text is missing or nobody knows who decides. The right order for a professional website is different, and shorter than it looks: purpose, material, domain, legal requirements, supplier. Here it is step by step, with a check you can do yourself in five minutes.

How to start a professional website: the sentence to finish

Finish the sentence "Someone who lands on the site should..." with one verb: call me, book, ask for a quote, buy. If three verbs come to mind, pick the one worth most and put the others behind it, otherwise visitors see three buttons and press none. The type of site follows from that sentence:

a showcase site of a few pages saying who you are, what you do, where and how to reach you: for a small business it is often enough, see a website for a small business or tradesperson;
a site with many services to explain, with a page for each;
an online shop, which is a different job, with catalogue, payments, shipping, returns and its own rules: see our e-commerce page;
a single page for a campaign or an event, which lives briefly and has one purpose.

Who decides: one person

This is the step no guide writes down, and it stalls more projects than money does. Decide who approves drafts and within how many days. If three people approve, with a partner who sees the design on Friday and a cousin who comments on Sunday, every round of changes takes two weeks. One person, one week to reply, in the quote.

The material folder

Open a folder on your computer and fill it before you talk to anyone. It does not have to be perfect. It has to exist. The more you bring, the fewer hours you pay for and the less work gets redone.

the text, even as notes or a transcribed voice message: who you are, what you do, for whom, where. Write it as you would say it to a customer on the phone;
the five questions customers always ask you: they are the answers the site must give first;
real photos of the business, the premises and the work, sharp and in good light, even taken on a phone;
company details: registered name, VAT number, address, phone, opening hours, and for companies the companies register details;
two sites you like and one you do not, with the reason in one line;
logo and colours, if you have them; if not, say so at once, because that is a separate job.

On text, Google's guide to helpful content asks one thing: write for the people who read, not for search engines, and say what readers cannot already find elsewhere. Describe how you work, what happens after the call, what costs more and why. Everyone skips the filler.

An invented example: a hairdresser is opening her own salon, and her sentence is "someone who lands here should book". In the folder she puts ten phone photos, the services with timings, the opening hours and the three questions she always gets. By the time she talks to whoever builds the site, the job is almost all building.

Domain, hosting and email: in your name

The domain is the address, like yourbusiness.it. Hosting is the space where the site lives. Email on your own domain is a third thing. All three have a renewal and a holder. If whoever builds your site registers them in their own name, a dispute or a closure could cost you address, site and mail on the same day. The supplier can manage them, but the holder is you.

A five-minute check, even on a domain you already have: for a .it domain, look the name up on the public whois of the Italian .it Registry and read who appears as Registrant, that is the holder. If it is the agency's name and not yours, ask for a change of holder first. For other extensions, check the registrar's panel. Then put the expiry date in your diary.

What Italian law requires of a business website

Guides on starting a website almost always skip this part, and then the fine arrives or the cookie banner is done wrong. This table is a list of things to ask the builder and your adviser, not legal advice: have the texts checked by a professional.

What	Who it applies to	Where it is written
VAT number on the home page	anyone with an Italian VAT number and a website, even a purely promotional one	art. 35 of Presidential Decree 633/1972, in force until 31 December 2026, then replaced by the consolidated VAT code (Legislative Decree 10/2026)
Registered office, companies register office and number, paid-up capital, any liquidation, sole shareholder	limited companies (srl, spa, sapa)	art. 2250 of the Civil Code
Privacy notice	anyone collecting personal data, and a contact form is enough	Regulation (EU) 2016/679, art. 13
A properly built cookie banner	anyone using non-technical cookies, such as analytics or advertising	Garante guidelines of 10 June 2021: scrolling is not consent, users must be able to refuse by closing the banner
Accessibility requirements	e-commerce and other listed services, since 28 June 2025; microenterprises exempt	Legislative Decree 82/2022
Telling people they are talking to a machine	anyone putting an AI assistant on the site that talks with people	EU AI Act, transparency obligations applying since 2 August 2026

If these lines do not appear in the quote, ask who handles them. "The client does" is a legitimate answer, as long as it is written down beforehand and not discovered afterwards.

What to ask whoever builds it

The answers matter more than the website of whoever gives them. Take these questions and listen to how they answer:

will the site look good on a phone? Google indexes starting from the mobile version, so that is the version that counts;
can I see three sites similar to mine, already live, and try the dashboard used to update them?
who writes the text and who chooses the photos, and what happens if I bring them?
who are the domain, hosting and mailboxes registered to, and when do I get the credentials?
what is included after launch, for how long, and how quickly do you respond?
if we ever stop working together, what do I take away and in what format?

Timing is decided mostly by when you hand over material: if the text arrives in pieces, everything stops. Ask for a calendar with your dates. To decide between an agency and a single professional, read web agency or freelancer; to read the quotes, how much does a website cost.

After publication: Google, AI answers and Search Console

A newly published site does not bring enquiries from Google the next day. In its SEO starter guide Google says some changes take effect within hours and others can take several months, and suggests waiting a few weeks before assessing. In the meantime the site works for people who already know you: customers, business cards, social media.

Google now often shows an AI-written answer above the results. Its page about AI features says no special markup or optimisation is needed to appear there: the site has to be indexed and have helpful content, as for ordinary search. Anyone selling a service "to get into AI answers" is selling the same old SEO under a new name.

As soon as the site is live, get access to Google Search Console: it is free and shows whether Google has indexed your pages, which searches you appear for and whether there are errors. The access must be yours, with the supplier added as a user. How we approach the groundwork is on our SEO page.

Half an hour, today

Write the sentence "Someone who lands on the site should...". Open the folder and put in three paragraphs about yourself, the photos you have and your company details. If you already have a domain, check who holds it. Decide who approves. Useful work even if you then wait six months.

When the folder exists, talk to someone. Our websites page shows how we work; for an opinion on what you have gathered, even as notes, write to us.

Frequently asked questions

Can I build the site myself and have a professional fix it later?

You can, but decide first. A site built without a plan is often rebuilt rather than touched up, because its structure and text had no goal. To save money, prepare the material folder yourself: that is where the builder's hours shrink.

Is a .it or a .com domain better?

If you work in Italy and the name is free, .it is the natural choice, and the .it Registry lets you check publicly who holds it. A .com makes sense if you sell abroad or the .it is taken. What matters is that the holder is you.

How long does it take to get the site online?

It depends on the type of site and on how quickly you hand over text and photos. Ask for a written calendar with your deadlines as well as the supplier's. A showcase site takes less than an online shop.

Do I need an email address on my own domain?

Yes: info@yourbusiness.it inspires more trust than a generic address, and it is yours. Ask for it to be part of the project, who it is registered to and where you manage it, so you can add or remove mailboxes without depending on anyone.

Sources

Written by the Tauro Lab team, a web agency and software house in Turin. About us