So You Need a Website: Where a Local Practice Should Actually Start

Most people who email me about a website open with an apology. "Sorry, I don't really know how any of this works." Then they explain that their current site is from 2014, or that they've been meaning to sort one out for two years, or that a nephew built something once and nobody has the login anymore.

You don't need to apologise. You run a dental practice or a law office or a physio clinic. Knowing how websites get built is not your job. But you've clearly reached the point where not having a decent one is starting to cost you, and now you're standing at the bottom of a hill wondering which way is up.

Here's where to actually start. Not the design, not the colours, not which builder is cheapest. The stuff that matters first.

Decide what the website is for

This sounds obvious and almost nobody does it.

Your website has one real job, and it's worth saying out loud before you spend a cent: turn a stranger who's looking for what you do into someone who calls, books, or walks in. That's it. Everything else is in service of that.

For a dentist, the job is "get the new patient to book a first appointment." For a lawyer, it's usually "get the right kind of client to request a consultation." A physio wants the phone to ring. Once you name the one thing, a lot of decisions make themselves. You stop wondering whether you need a blog, an image carousel, or a fancy animation, and start asking the only question that counts: does this help someone decide to contact me, or is it in the way?

A website that looks beautiful and gets you zero calls has failed. A plain one that quietly books three new patients a month has done its job. Judge everything against the phone ringing.

Get your material together before you talk to anyone

The single biggest thing that slows a website down isn't the building. It's waiting on the business to send their content. You can save yourself weeks and a chunk of money by having this ready:

The pages you actually need. For most local practices that's a small handful: a home page, a services or treatments page, an about/team page, and a contact page. Maybe a page per major service if search matters. You do not need fifteen pages. Five good ones beat fifteen thin ones every time.
Real photos. Of your actual premises, your actual team. Not stock photos of a model in a suit shaking hands. People are trying to work out whether you're real and whether they'll feel comfortable walking in. One decent photographer for a morning is worth more than any design trick. If budget's tight, a good phone in good light beats stock.
The plain facts, correct. Opening hours, address, phone number, whether you take new patients, what you charge or don't. You'd be amazed how many sites list the wrong hours or a number that changed years ago.
Your Google Business Profile login. More on this below, but if you can find who controls that listing before you start, you're ahead of most.

If you gather nothing else, gather the photos and the page list. Those two are where projects stall.

Should you just use a website builder?

Honest answer: sometimes, yes.

If you're a one-person operation, you're comfortable fiddling with software for an afternoon, and you genuinely just need a tidy five-page brochure that says who you are and how to reach you, a Wix or Squarespace site will do the job. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise to sell you something. Plenty of small practices are served perfectly well by a €15-a-month builder they set up themselves.

Where the builder quietly costs you is a bit further down the road:

You end up spending your evenings maintaining it instead of seeing patients, and your evenings are worth a lot more than that.
It looks fine but never quite professional, and in fields where trust is the product — law, medicine, dentistry — "fine" leaves money on the table.
Getting found on Google turns out to be a whole separate skill the builder doesn't do for you, and you never get around to it.

That last one is the real divide. A builder gets you a website. It does not get you found. If being visible when someone searches "dentist near me" or "employment lawyer Antwerp" matters to your business — and for most local practices it's the whole game — that's the part worth paying a person for.

How to hire without getting burned

If you do hire someone, the failure modes are predictable. Watch for these:

No plan for after launch. A website isn't a painting you hang once. It needs hosting, updates, the odd fix, and someone to call when something breaks. If a quote is only ever a one-time number and there's silence about what happens in month two, ask about it directly.
Vague SEO promises. "We'll handle your SEO" with no specifics is a red flag. Real local visibility is concrete: your Google Business Profile sorted out, reviews coming in, a few pages that actually answer the questions people search for. If they can't explain what they'll do, they probably won't do much.
Mobile as an afterthought. More than half the people looking for you are on a phone. If the person building your site is showing you everything on a big desktop screen and hasn't mentioned mobile once, that's telling.
Getting locked in. Make sure you own your domain name and can get the keys to your own site. If leaving means losing everything, you don't have a website, you have a hostage situation.

You don't need to become an expert to spot these. You just need to ask "what happens after it's live?" and listen to whether the answer is specific or hand-wavy.

The part everyone forgets: getting found

Here's the thing almost nobody tells local businesses. The website is maybe half the job. The other half lives on Google, and it's mostly free if someone actually does it.

Your Google Business Profile — the box with your map pin, hours, and reviews that shows up when someone searches your name or your service nearby — often does more for a local practice than the website itself. Claiming it, filling it in properly, keeping the hours right, and steadily gathering reviews from happy patients moves you up the local results in a way no amount of pretty web design can. It costs nothing but attention.

This is the work that gets skipped, because a builder can't do it for you and a lot of web designers don't bother. It's also where the actual growth is. When I work with a practice, this is usually the part I'm most keen to get right, because it's the difference between a site that sits there and a site that brings people in.

A realistic place to start

If I had to compress all of this into a starting point:

Write down the one job your site needs to do, and the four or five pages that serve it.
Get real photos and your correct details in one folder.
Find and claim your Google Business Profile — even before the website, this alone can help.
Decide honestly whether this is a "tidy brochure I'll DIY" job or a "get me found and keep it working" job. Both are valid. Just be honest about which one you are.
Then, and only then, worry about who builds it and what it looks like.

Budget-wise, a simple professional site is a few hundred to a couple of thousand euros depending on how much is custom, and if you want someone keeping it visible on Google month after month, that's a modest ongoing cost that tends to pay for itself in a single new client. Anyone quoting you five figures for a five-page practice site is selling you something you don't need.

If you've read this far and you'd rather just have someone handle it properly — build, get you found, keep it working — that's exactly what I do for local practices over on the websites page. And if you only want a second opinion on the site you already have, send me a note and I'll tell you honestly what I'd change. No pitch.

Either way: you're not behind, and it's not as complicated as it feels from the bottom of the hill. Start with the one job. The rest follows.