How to build a website: six steps and what each costs

How to build a website has two correct answers, and they differ only in who does the work. You can do it yourself, with a monthly subscription and your own time, or you pay a builder. This guide takes the first route, step by step, and puts a real figure from published price lists against each step.

Step one, the list of pages comes first

How to build a website starts with deciding what goes on it. Before you open any tool, write down which pages the site has. For most companies that is five: home, services or products, about, contact, and one page answering customer questions.

This is the step most often skipped and the one that costs most. When pages are added along the way, the navigation and the layout change with them, so the work is done twice. This step costs nothing but an afternoon.

Step two, the domain

The domain is the name people find you by. The national .rs costs 2,040 dinars a year with tax from 2026, and about 2,100 at a registrar. The international .com is 1,700 dinars at the same registrar.

A domain is leased, not bought, and has to be renewed. We covered the extensions and whose name a domain should be in, in our guide to domain registration.

Step three, hosting or a hosted platform

This is where you decide how much you do by hand. When working out how to build a website cheaply, this step carries the biggest difference. There are two options and they do not mix:

• hosting plus a content system, usually WordPress, where you install and maintain
• a hosted platform on a monthly subscription, already built, where you only add content

The first is cheaper per year and gives full control. The second needs less knowledge and no outlay at the start. For a five page site either does the job.

Step four, the look

Do not build a design from nothing. Take a template and change the colours, the type and the images. When working out how to build a website without a contractor, this is the step where most time is lost for no gain.

A rule that holds: choose a template by how close it is to what you actually need. Not by how good it looks in the demo. A demo is always full of content you do not have.

Step five, text and images

You write the text, because nobody knows the work better. Images have to be yours or under a free licence. Someone else’s photograph is not free simply because it can be downloaded.

Every page needs a heading, one paragraph saying what is on offer, and a clear next step for the visitor. A page without that third part loses the visitor.

Step six, launch and checks

Before you publish, check three things. That the site works on a phone, that the contact form really sends, and that there is a page with company details. After publishing, submit the site to Google Search Console, because without it the site appears in search more slowly.

How to build a website yourself, and when it stops paying off

The line is not a page count but money. While the site only presents the company, doing it yourself is reasonable. The moment it takes payments, calculates a tax rate or tracks stock, a mistake stops being cosmetic.

That is when you pay someone to be answerable for it. At agencies the same five to ten page brochure site starts at 250 to 300 euros. A custom built business website is priced by scope. We set out the full range in our guide to what a website costs.

Should you build an app instead?

For most companies the answer is no. An app is written twice, for Android and for iPhone, passes store review and asks the user to install it. A site adapted to phones does the same job straight away.

An app earns its place when it is used regularly and does something a browser cannot, such as notifications or working offline.