You have an idea, a business or a project that wants to exist online. The problem is that every time you search for "
This article also mentions Nalu Web Agency, which I have worked with for over 8 years. I know their work closely, which is why I mention them: bear that in mind when reading the comparison.
Before creating the site: the questions to ask yourself
Most websites fail not because of technical problems but because of a lack of clarity about what the site is supposed to do. Before registering a domain or opening WordPress, answer these fundamental questions.
Who will visit the site and what should they do once there?
The site exists for someone. That person has a problem, a question, a need — and the site has to solve it. Define your typical visitor: age, digital skills, the device they use, what they're looking for. The answer changes everything: structure, tone of voice, navigation, the speed required. A site for local tradespeople is different from a creative portfolio aimed at art directors.
What's the site's main goal?
Every site has (or should have) a main conversion: a contact, a sale, a sign-up, a booking, a phone call. All the design has to guide visitors towards that action. If you try to do everything — inform, sell, entertain, collect emails — you end up doing nothing well. Choose one primary goal and build the site around it.
DIY or hire a professional?
The answer depends on three variables: available budget, the time you can dedicate and the complexity of the project. A simple brochure site with a few pages can be built yourself with the right tools. An e-commerce store, a web app or a site that has to generate qualified leads systematically requires professional skills — DIY costs less at the start but almost always more in the long run.
Step 1 — Choosing the right domain
The domain is your website's address. It's the first thing people see and one of the few decisions that's hard to change later. It's worth spending the right amount of time on it.
How to choose a good domain
The golden rules: short (ideally under 15 characters), easy to pronounce and spell, no hyphens or numbers, and closely tied to the brand or business. For a business serving a local market, your country-code domain (such as .it in Italy) is almost always the right choice — it signals local roots and reliability. A .com makes sense if you're targeting an international audience or if your preferred name is already taken on the national TLD.
Where to register the domain
The most reliable registrars in Italy are Register.it, Aruba, and Namecheap for those who prefer an English interface. A .it or .com domain costs between €10 and €25 a year. Avoid registrars offering "free" domains bundled with hosting — tying domain and hosting to the same provider makes it harder to change either one in future.
Step 2 — Choosing hosting
Hosting is the server that stores your site's files and makes it accessible online 24 hours a day. It's the infrastructure everything runs on — a wrong choice is paid for in slowness, downtime and security problems.
Types of hosting: shared, VPS, cloud
Shared hosting is the cheapest: your site shares the server's resources with other sites. Suitable for small sites with low traffic, it costs €3–10/month. A VPS (Virtual Private Server) gives you dedicated resources in an isolated virtual environment: faster, more stable, more control. It costs €15–50/month. Cloud hosting scales dynamically with traffic — ideal for sites with irregular traffic spikes or rapid growth.
What to look for when choosing hosting
The criteria that really matter:
Step 3 — Choosing the CMS or platform
The CMS (Content Management System) is the system that lets you build and manage the site without writing code. Choosing the CMS is probably the most important technical decision — it determines flexibility, costs, the learning curve and future possibilities.
WordPress: the most widespread, but not for everyone
WordPress powers 43% of the world's websites. The advantages are real: total flexibility, thousands of plugins, a large community, excellent for SEO. So are the disadvantages: it requires constant maintenance (updates, security, backups), it can become slow if badly configured, and the learning curve is steep for people without technical experience. WordPress is the right choice if you want maximum control and are willing to learn — or if you have a professional who manages it for you.
Visual builders: Wix, Squarespace, Webflow
Visual builders simplify creation by reducing technical complexity. Wix and Squarespace are the most accessible for beginners: a drag-and-drop interface, professional templates, everything included (hosting, SSL, updates). The limit is flexibility: customising beyond the templates often requires unsatisfactory workarounds. Webflow sits between a visual builder and professional control — powerful and flexible, but with a significant learning curve.
Custom development: when it makes sense
A site developed from scratch in code (vanilla PHP, Laravel, Next.js or other frameworks) makes sense when the requirements are too specific for any available CMS: complex business logic, integrations with company systems, critical performance at very high volumes. For the vast majority of small business and professional websites, pure custom development is an unjustified investment — a well-configured WordPress or Webflow covers 95% of use cases.
- You want maximum control and flexibility
- You have (or will have) someone technical to manage the platform
- The project needs specific features through plugins
- Blogging and SEO are central to your strategy
- You want to manage day-to-day operations yourself
- The site is relatively simple (showcase, portfolio)
- You don't want to deal with updates and security
- Time to launch is the priority
Step 4 — Structuring the site: architecture and pages
Before opening the CMS and starting to build, sketch the site's architecture on paper. Which pages need to exist? How are they connected? What path should a visitor take from their first visit to conversion?
The pages almost every site needs
Almost every site needs: a Homepage (who you are, what you do, why choose you, a clear call to action), Services/Products (one page for each main service, not everything lumped together on one page), About (story, people, values — the page that builds trust), Contact (form, email, phone, address if relevant, map), a Blog (if content strategy is part of the plan) and the essential legal pages: a Privacy Policy and Cookie Policy (required by law in Italy and the EU).
Navigation: the three-click rule
Users should be able to find any information within three clicks of the homepage. If it takes more steps, the structure is too deep and needs simplifying. The main menu should contain only the most important items — adding too many creates confusion, not richness. Consider a structured footer for secondary pages (terms, legal notices, detail pages).
Step 5 — Design: practical principles for non-designers
Website design isn't a matter of personal taste — it's function. Good design helps users understand where they are, where to go and what to do. Confusing design loses users before they even read any content.
Typography: readability first
Use at most two fonts: one for headings (it can have personality) and one for body text (it must be extremely readable). The minimum size for body text on desktop is 16px — on mobile, lean towards 17–18px. The contrast between text and background must be sufficient: the WCAG minimum ratio is 4.5:1 for normal text. Using Google Fonts or Adobe Fonts guarantees cross-browser compatibility without technical problems.
Colours: three at most, with a clear hierarchy
A functional brand palette has a primary colour (for buttons and key elements), a secondary colour (for accents and variations) and neutral colours for backgrounds and text. Starting from an existing template and adapting it to your brand colours is much safer than building a palette from scratch without design experience.
Mobile first: mandatory today, not optional
Step 6 — Content: what to write and how
Content is the reason someone stays on the site. A beautiful design with empty content doesn't convert — and doesn't rank on Google. Writing well for the web is a specific skill worth developing.
How to write for the web
Users on the web don't read — they scan. Clear headings, short paragraphs (3–4 lines at most), bullet points for lists, bold for key information. The structure should let people understand a page's content in 10 seconds of visual scanning. The tone should be direct and specific: avoid industry jargon when it isn't needed, and use concrete words instead of abstract terms.
The homepage: the copy that makes the difference
The homepage has 5–8 seconds to communicate who you are and why users should stay. The main headline must immediately answer "what you do and for whom". Don't use generic phrases like "innovative solutions for your business" — be specific: "Websites for local tradespeople who want to find customers online". The more specific you are, the better you qualify the right visitors.
Step 7 — Basic SEO: starting off on the right foot
SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is the process that makes the site findable on Google. It isn't a phase that comes after creating the site — it's something to build in from the start, in the structure, the content and the technical side.
The SEO basics to implement straight away
Every page should have a unique title tag (max 60 characters) with the main keyword, a meta description that invites the click (max 160 characters), a single H1 that clearly describes the content, and readable URLs (e.g. /services/websites instead of /page?id=47). Images should have a descriptive alt attribute. The site must be on HTTPS. Set up Google Search Console from day one to monitor how Google sees the site.
Speed: the factor that's often overlooked
Google treats loading speed as a ranking factor — and users abandon a slow site even sooner. The basic optimisations: images in WebP format compressed under 200KB, caching enabled, minified CSS and JavaScript, and hosting on European servers. Use Google's PageSpeed Insights to measure and get specific recommendations.
Step 8 — Launch: the checklist before going live
Going live with an incomplete site or one with technical errors creates a first impression that's hard to recover from. This checklist helps you avoid the most common mistakes.
Pre-launch technical checklist
Check: HTTPS active on every page, no broken links (use a tool such as Screaming Frog or Broken Link Checker), contact form tested and working, images optimised and with alt text, a custom 404 page, a favicon, Google Analytics or a privacy-first alternative installed, an XML sitemap submitted to Search Console, and a published Privacy Policy and Cookie Policy.
Testing on different devices and browsers
The site must work correctly in Chrome, Firefox, Safari and Edge. On mobile, test on at least one iPhone and one Android phone. Rendering differences between browsers can create unpleasant surprises — especially Safari on iOS, which behaves in its own way with some CSS and JavaScript elements.
If the process seems long and you want to avoid costly mistakes, Marco Bagiacchi builds professional websites for small businesses and professionals with a clear process and measurable results. For a structured approach with a dedicated team, Nalu Web Agency is the complete solution for anyone looking for a single partner for their website, SEO and digital growth.
The real costs of creating a website
Asking "how much does a website cost" is like asking how much a car costs. It depends on everything. Here's a realistic picture of the price ranges.
DIY with a visual builder
Wix or Squarespace on a business plan: €15–30/month, all included (hosting, SSL, a domain for the first year, templates). Annual cost: €180–360. Suitable for simple brochure sites with a few pages and no advanced SEO needs. Time required: 20–40 hours for an acceptable result, allowing for the learning curve.
DIY WordPress
Hosting €5–10/month + domain €15/year + a premium theme €50–80 (one-off) + any plugins. First-year cost: €150–250. But the real cost is time: learning WordPress, configuring security and optimising speed take dozens of hours if you're starting from scratch.
A site built by a professional
A freelancer builds brochure sites for between €800 and €3,000 depending on complexity. A site with a blog, built-in SEO and conversion optimisation starts at €1,500–2,500. An e-commerce store starts at €3,000–6,000. A structured agency has higher starting costs — but often includes integrated services (strategy, copywriting, SEO) that you'd pay for separately with a freelancer.
A website isn't a project that ends at launch — it's an asset that grows over time if you look after it with the same care you give the business it represents.
Common mistakes to avoid when creating a website
Maintenance: what to do after launch
A live site isn't the finish line — it's the starting line. Regular maintenance prevents security problems, maintains performance and lets you improve the site over time based on real user data.
What to monitor every month
The metrics that drive decisions:
Updates and security
If you use WordPress, updates to the core, themes and plugins aren't optional — they're the only way to close known security vulnerabilities. An un-updated WordPress site is an easy target. Schedule a monthly update check, keep automatic daily backups and use a security plugin such as Wordfence or iThemes Security.
When to hire a professional instead of doing it yourself
DIY makes sense in some contexts, but there are situations where hiring a professional isn't a luxury — it's the cheapest choice in the long run.
The signs it's time to call a professional
You're investing time that's worth more than the cost of delegating. The site exists but brings no leads or organic traffic. You need features beyond your current skills. The site is slow or has technical problems you can't solve. You're losing customers to competitors with better websites. In all these cases, the cost of a professional is recovered quickly — often within a few months.
If you want to apply this to your own project, take a look at my website design and development service: clear prices from €300, a free quote and a reply within 24 hours.
