How to Create a Website From Scratch That Sells in 2027: A Step-by-Step Guide

47 min read

Knowing how to create a website from scratch isn't the problem anymore. Today any AI website builder will get a site live in an afternoon, with copy, photos and a contact form. The real problem is a different one: getting that website to bring in customers.

According to Spain's National Statistics Institute (INE), only 37% of Spanish companies with fewer than ten employees and an internet connection have a website. And many of the ones that do use it like a business card: it's there, but it doesn't sell.

When I review a website that doesn't sell, the design is almost never the problem. What fails is everything that should have come before it: nobody decided what had to happen on each page, who it was talking to or what the customer should do after reading it. A beautiful website without those decisions is a shop window with the door locked.

This is the guide I'd follow to create a professional website that sells, built for 2027, from scratch and step by step: goal and offer, pages, copy, trust, speed, SEO, AI, tracking and the legal side in Spain and Andorra. At the end you'll find the three ways to build it (with AI, with WordPress or with an agency), real examples, a checklist and a complete case study.

Definition

What creating a website that sells means

Creating a website that sells means planning, writing, designing and publishing a site built so that a specific type of customer understands what you offer, trusts you and takes the next step (calling, requesting a quote, booking or buying), and then tracking which pages achieve that so you can improve them.

However you phrase it, how to create a website, how to make a website or how to build a website, the process is the same. The difference from simply “having a website” is intent. A website that only informs is judged by whether it exists. A website that sells is judged by the leads, bookings or orders it brings in every month. The technical process is almost identical; the decisions aren't.

Three numbers to set the scene before you start:

Read together, they say something useful: there's plenty of room for the small business that takes its website seriously, and the sites that already exist are losing sales over details that a skilled professional can fix.

What do you need to create a website?

You need five pieces: a domain, hosting, a platform to build it on, the content and the legal pages. You can sort out the first three in an afternoon. The last two are the ones that decide whether the website sells or stays a brochure.

Piece	What it is	What I'd check
Domain	Your website's address (yourbusiness.com, .es or .ad)	That it's registered in your name, not in the name of whoever builds your site. And the renewal price, not just the first-year price
Hosting	The server where your website lives	Speed, backups and support. With website builders, it's included in the monthly fee
Platform	The tool you build it with: a website builder (Wix, Squarespace, Shopify) or a content management system (WordPress)	That you can edit it yourself and take it with you if you ever switch providers
Content	Copy, photos, videos, reviews and case studies	It takes the longest and sells the most. Make it yours, not stock
Legal	Legal notice, privacy and cookies	Required from day one. You'll see it in step 9

If this is your first website, here's a simple way to see it: the domain is your address and the hosting is your premises. You can move to new premises without changing your address, which is why the domain has to be yours. If you sell in Andorra, any person or company can register a .ad domain through an accredited registrar, without having to prove they own an Andorran trademark, according to the registry run by Andorra Telecom.

What types of websites can I create?

For a business, six types cover almost every case. Many websites combine two (services plus a blog, a store plus a blog), and what matters is knowing which one leads, because each one has a different main conversion:

Type	What it's for	Main conversion	Good fit for
Service website (corporate)	Explaining what you do and generating leads	Call, WhatsApp or form	Law firms, clinics, contractors, accounting firms
Landing page	A single offer, usually for ad campaigns	One single button	An ad campaign for one service
Online store	Selling products and taking payment on the site	Purchase	Fashion, food, spare parts
Booking website	Selling places, appointments or tickets	Confirmed or paid booking	Hotels, restaurants, activities
Blog or content site	Attracting visitors with information and guiding them to the service	Visit to the service page or sign-up	Any business that gets the same questions again and again
Portfolio	Showing your work to win projects	Contact	Architects, photographers, creative studios

If you're going to sell products with a catalog, shipping, taxes and returns, that's a different project with its own rules. We cover it on our e-commerce agency in Andorra page, where we explain how we choose between WooCommerce and Shopify.

Step 1

How to create a business website: start with the goal, not the design

A website that sells starts with three decisions: what has to happen when someone visits, who you're talking to and why they'd choose you. Without those answers, any template looks good, and none of them is. This is what I'd put in writing before opening any tool:

This step seems obvious, and it's the one people skip most often. A business with plenty of visits and few sales almost never has a traffic problem: it has a message problem. The website attracts the wrong people, or doesn't tell them what they need to read to make a decision.

A website doesn't sell because it exists. It sells because someone decided what had to happen on each page.

Why do you need a website if you're already on social media?

You need it to have your own space to sell without depending on an algorithm, to show up when someone searches for you on Google or asks an AI, and to measure what works. On social media you rent attention; your website is yours. The sensible setup is for social media to attract and the website to close: every post should have somewhere to send the people who are already interested.

So you don't skip anything, here's the briefing template I'd use. Fill it in yourself, even if you then hire someone to build the site: it's the document that separates a generic website from one that sells.

Briefing template, ready to copy

BRIEF FOR A WEBSITE THAT SELLS

1. Goal
- Main action the visitor should take: [call / request a quote / book / buy]
- Secondary actions: [WhatsApp, subscribe, download…]
- Monthly success number: [for example, 20 quote requests]

2. Customer
- Who buys (and who we don't want buying): […]
- How they describe their problem, in their own words: [verbatim phrases from emails, calls or reviews]
- What worries them before buying: [price, timing, trust, results…]

3. Offer
- Services or products, ranked by margin: […]
- Price or price reference we can publish: [from…, range, what drives the price]
- Why us, in one sentence that can be checked: […]
- Guarantees, timelines and process: […]

4. Proof
- Reviews (where they are and how many): […]
- Case studies with data or before-and-after photos: […]
- Team, professional licenses, certifications, years in business, well-known clients: […]

5. Market
- Areas and languages we sell in: […]
- Three competitors and what they do better or worse than us: […]

6. Contact and tracking
- Channels: [phone, WhatsApp, form, online booking]
- Who replies and how quickly: […]
- What will count as a conversion in Analytics: […]

If you want an AI to help you sharpen it, give it the briefing with this prompt. The key is the last line: without it, the AI will make up whatever's missing.

Prompt, ready to copy

Act as a website conversion consultant with experience working with small businesses. I'm sharing my business briefing.
1. Point out which information is missing or too vague to build a website that sells, and ask me one question for each gap.
2. Suggest three versions of the value proposition (15 words max each), from the most direct to the most differentiating.
3. Rank the customer's objections from most to least frequent and suggest where to answer each one (homepage, service page or FAQ).
4. Tell me which trust signals I should show next to each button.
Use only the data in the briefing. If you need something that isn't there, ask me: don't make up numbers, reviews or clients.

Step 2

Website architecture: the pages you can't do without

A service website needs seven essential pages: home, one page per service, case studies or projects, reviews, about us, contact and the legal pages. The blog comes later, once the pages that sell are live and being tracked.

Here's what the architecture could look like for an employment law firm in Madrid, for example:

Every industry organizes its pages its own way. A law firm needs one page per legal problem and proof of credibility; a store needs categories and product pages. That's why we approach web design for lawyers with a different architecture from any other business. What they all have in common is this:

Page	What it has to answer	Typical mistake
Home	What you do, for whom, where and what the next step is	A slider with phrases that could fit any company
One page per service	The problem it solves, how you work, timelines, a price reference, proof and contact	All your services crammed onto one page
Case studies or projects	What the client had, what you did and what changed	Photos with no context or result
Reviews	Real reviews, with names and linked to their source	Anonymous testimonials or ones nobody can verify
About us	Who's behind the business, their experience and why people should trust them	The company's history since the day it was founded
Contact	Phone, WhatsApp, a short form, address and opening hours	A ten-field form as the only option
Legal	Legal notice, privacy and cookies	Text copied from another website, with another company's details

What are the parts of a website?

Every page has five parts: the header (logo, menu and a contact button), the first screen, also called the hero (headline, subheadline, proof and call to action), the body (services, benefits, process, proof and questions), a final call to action and the footer (company details, legal links and social media).

Of the five, the one that matters most is the first screen. It's the only part everyone sees, and it decides whether they keep scrolling or head back to Google. If that first screen on a phone doesn't make clear what you do and how to contact you, the rest of the page is working for very few people.

One page or several?

Several, as soon as you sell more than one service or to more than one type of customer. The rule I use is the same one I use in SEO: one intent, one page. Someone looking for a lawyer after being fired doesn't want to read about inheritance, and Google isn't going to show a generic page for that search either.

The same goes for advertising. If you sell to audiences with different problems, one page per problem converts better than one page that explains everything: each ad leads to the page about exactly what that person just searched for. It isn't an official rule, but it's the first thing I'd test on a website with traffic and few sales.

Step 3

Website copy that sells: what to say and in what order

Copy that sells talks about the customer's problem in their own words, promises something specific and verifiable, and answers objections before they come up. Design catches the eye; copy is what makes someone decide.

What should a homepage say to sell?

Four things have to fit on the first screen: a headline with what you do and for whom, a subheadline with what sets you apart (turnaround, area, specialty), a piece of proof (review rating, years, clients) and a button with the next step. If one of the four is missing, the homepage loses people.

Illustrative example from a fictional business: the timelines and numbers on your homepage have to be your own and you have to be able to prove them.

These are the rules I apply to any copy on a website that has to sell:

• Talk about what the customer gains before you talk about yourself. A store that describes its products with internal pack names and SKUs forces visitors to translate. Let the copy do that work.
• Use your customer's words. The ones that show up in their emails, in their calls and in your reviews. If they say “I got fired,” don't just write “termination of employment.”
• Promise what you control. Timelines, method, guarantees and the way you work. Don't promise results that don't depend on you: they attract the wrong customer and lead to complaints.
• Turn every repeated objection into a section. If three customers ask the same thing before buying, the answer belongs on the website, not on the phone.
• Buttons with a verb and an outcome. “Get your quote” or “Book your table,” not “Submit” or “Learn more.”
• Short and clear beats long and impressive. Short sentences, two- or three-line paragraphs and a headline for each section that makes sense on its own.

AI is a big help with this part if you give it real context. My order of work: first a gray wireframe of each page, then the copy and finally the design. If you design without copy, the copy ends up bending to fit the gaps; if you write without a structure, it won't fit later.

Prompt, ready to copy

Act as a copywriter who specializes in small business websites. I'm sharing my business briefing and the homepage outline (sections in order).
1. Write three versions of the headline (12 words max): what we do, for whom and where.
2. For each headline, write a one- or two-sentence subheadline with what sets us apart, using only data from the briefing.
3. Suggest the main button text: verb + outcome, five words max.
4. Write each section of the outline with short sentences, in the second person and with the exact expressions our customers use.
5. At the end, list the claims that would need proof (numbers, timelines, guarantees) so I can review them.
Don't make up reviews, clients, numbers or awards. If a detail is missing, leave it in square brackets.

And a second prompt to turn real questions into FAQs, which are also the kind of content AI search engines quote most often:

Prompt, ready to copy

I'm sharing [emails, WhatsApp messages or reviews] from customers, with personal data removed.
1. Pull out the questions and objections that come up again and again before people buy, and rank them by frequency.
2. Write each one the way a person would ask Google or ChatGPT.
3. Answer each question in 40-80 words, starting with the direct answer and using only the information about my business that I give you below: [details].
4. Flag the answers that need information I haven't provided so I can fill it in.

Step 4

Website design that sells: trust before looks

Website design that sells makes it easy to understand and easy to trust: clear hierarchy, real photos, visible proof and a contact button always within reach. A polished design with character makes the brand memorable; clarity and proof are what make people call. A professional website needs both.

How do you design a website that builds trust?

By designing it to show rather than tell. Writing “we're the best” convinces nobody; showing who you've helped, how and with what result does. These are the six elements I'd place near every important button:

Pricing deserves a caveat. Many businesses hide it out of habit, and that's understandable when every job is different. But a reference, even just a “from” price, does two things: it saves you calls from people who can't afford it and gives arguments to those who can. AI tools also find it easier to recommend a provider they know something concrete about. It isn't an official rule from any platform; it's what I see working.

There's one last trust element that almost nobody works on: accessibility. In WebAIM's analysis of the top one million websites, 83.9% of home pages had low-contrast text, 53.1% had images without alternative text and 51% had form fields without labels. All three errors are avoided with craft, not budget, and all three make someone with tired eyes or a screen reader leave your website.

Good looks get you noticed. Clarity and proof get you the call.

Step 5

Speed and mobile: your website gets judged on a phone

Google indexes websites based on their mobile version, and the phone is where a customer in a hurry decides whether to call or hit the back button. That's why you design for the phone first and measure speed with Core Web Vitals, the metrics Google uses to assess the loading experience.

How fast should a website load?

According to Google's thresholds, the main element of the page should appear in 2.5 seconds or less, the page should respond to a tap in 200 milliseconds or less, and nothing should jump around while it loads. A page passes when at least 75% of real visits fall within the threshold, measured separately for mobile and desktop:

Metric	What it measures	Good if…	What hurts it most
LCP (loading)	How long the main content takes to appear	2.5 s or less	Huge images on the homepage, slow hosting, background videos
INP (responsiveness)	How long the page takes to react to a tap or a click	200 ms or less	Too many scripts: chats, pixels, plugins nobody uses
CLS (stability)	How much elements move while the page loads	0.1 or less	Banners and ads that load late, images without set dimensions

Thresholds from web.dev (Google). You can check them for free in PageSpeed Insights and, with data from your real visitors, in the Core Web Vitals report in Search Console.

Does a tenth of a second really matter that much? In Deloitte's study for Google of 37 European and American brands, a 0.1-second improvement in mobile speed was associated with 8.4% more conversions on retail sites and 10.1% more on travel sites. Your business isn't a big brand, but the logic is the same: every second of waiting is people leaving.

What I'd do on any website, without obsessing over a perfect score:

• Images in modern formats (WebP or AVIF) and at the size they're displayed, not the size they come out of the camera.
• Decent hosting. It's the line item where cutting costs makes the least sense.
• Few plugins and few third-party tools: every chat, pixel or widget adds weight.
• Call and WhatsApp buttons that are visible and easy to tap with a thumb.
• Forms that open the right keyboard (numeric for phone numbers) and don't ask for anything you don't need.
• Testing the website on a mid-range phone over mobile data, not just on the office computer.

Step 6

SEO from day one: get found by people already looking for you

A new website's SEO is decided before launch: which search each page answers, how the pages are titled, what URLs they have, how they link to each other and whether Google can crawl them. Fixing it later always costs more than getting it right at the start. This is what I'd have in place before going live:

What to have in place	Why
One main search per page	So each page competes for one intent and pages don't step on each other
A unique title and meta description	To win the click over the results next to yours
Short, readable URLs	/bathroom-remodel-valencia/, not /?page_id=123
Descriptive headings	So a person and Google can understand the page just by reading the headings
Internal links	So articles and the homepage push visitors toward the service pages
Sitemap and Search Console	So Google discovers your pages and alerts you to errors. The sitemap should match the pages you planned
Google Business Profile	To show up on the map with the same details as your website
Structured data	Local business, products or articles, where relevant and faithful to what's on the page
One version per language with hreflang	So each market sees its own version (in Andorra, almost always more than one)

How do I get my website to show up on Google?

First, make sure Google knows it exists: add your website to Search Console, submit the sitemap and request indexing for the main pages. Then, make sure it deserves to show up: each page has to answer a real search better than the rest. If you're a local business, complete your Google Business Profile and get reviews. And over time, earn mentions and links from websites in your industry.

A trick I use to review a newly launched website: compare the sitemap with the page map you planned. If a page is missing, it's probably set to “noindex” by mistake; if there's an extra one, like a test page or a tag archive, it's worth removing.

As an SEO agency in Andorra, it's the first thing we set up on every new website, before the first blog post.

Step 7

A website ready for AI search (GEO)

Getting a website ready for AI means doing the basics very well: original, verifiable content, clear service pages, the same details everywhere and a presence beyond your own website. It's known as GEO (Generative Engine Optimization), and it doesn't require any technical tricks.

Google says so in its guide to generative AI features in Search: you don't need to create AI files (like llms.txt, which Google Search ignores), new markup or special schema. To show up, a page has to be indexed and eligible to appear with a snippet. And the factor the guide points to as the most influential in the long run is original, useful content with a point of view, as opposed to repeating what's already on the internet.

How do I get ChatGPT or Google's AI Mode to recommend my website?

Nobody can guarantee it, but you can make it easy. AI tools recommend with more confidence the businesses they can describe with specific, consistent facts. This is what I'd work on:

• A direct answer under every heading: one or two sentences that stand on their own, before going into detail.
• Specific, verifiable facts: areas, timelines, specialties, opening hours and a price reference.
• The same details everywhere: name, address, phone and hours identical on your website, your Google Business Profile and directories.
• FAQs with your customers' real questions, not the ones you wish they'd ask.
• Signals beyond your website: reviews, industry directories and mentions in media or communities where your customers ask questions.
• Very well-explained service pages: when someone arrives from an AI, they usually land on a service page, not on the homepage.

Is it worth it? The volume is still small, but the quality of those visits stands out. At Ahrefs, 0.5% of visits came from AI search engines and generated 12.1% of sign-ups. That's one company's data, not a market average, but it points to something reasonable: people who arrive from an AI tend to arrive with their mind half made up.

To see it in your own case, check the session source in Google Analytics: visits from ChatGPT, Perplexity or Gemini usually show up with each tool's domain. And if you want to work on it seriously, it's what we do as a GEO agency in Andorra.

Step 8

Tracking and conversion (CRO): a website that sells gets better every month

Tracking a website means knowing how many people do what you expected (call, message, book or buy) and on which page they drop off along the way. CRO, conversion rate optimization, is the method for improving that number with small, tested changes.

Before launch, I'd have this set up:

• Google Analytics with key events: that's what Google now calls what used to be conversions. Form submitted, phone click, WhatsApp click, booking and purchase.
• Search Console: which searches bring you visits and which pages have errors.
• Heatmaps and session recordings: Microsoft Clarity is free and shows where people click, how far down they scroll and where they get stuck.
• Tagged links: the website button on your Google Business Profile, with UTM parameters, so you can separate traffic from the map in Analytics.
• WhatsApp with a prefilled message: if the link on your website opens the chat with “Hi, I'm coming from your website and I'd like…”, you'll know which conversations start there.

With that running, improvement is a cycle that never ends:

• Measure
• See where people drop off
• One hypothesis
• Change one thing
• Measure again

And this is the diagnostic table I use to decide what to test first:

If you see this	What's probably wrong	What I'd test first
Lots of visits from Google and few leads	The page attracts the wrong people or doesn't tell them what they need to read	Check which search it answers and rewrite the headline around the customer's problem
Lots of people start the form and don't submit it	Friction	Fewer fields, plus WhatsApp or a call as an alternative
High bounce rate from ads	The page doesn't deliver what the ad promised	One page per ad or per problem, with the same message
Calls yes, forms no	Your customers prefer to talk	A sticky call button on mobile and visible opening hours
Nobody scrolls past the first screen	The first screen doesn't hook people or isn't clear	A more specific headline and proof next to the button
Abandoned carts	Unexpected costs or too many steps	Shipping shown before the cart and guest checkout

The cart point isn't a hunch. According to Baymard, among shoppers who abandon during checkout, 40% do so because shipping, taxes or fees are too high, 18% because they're forced to create an account and 17% because the process is too long or complicated. Once someone has decided to buy, every extra step only adds doubt.

What is CRO and when is it worth it?

CRO is the work of increasing the percentage of visitors who take the action you want, instead of chasing more visitors. It's worth it as soon as the website gets traffic, because converting better is usually cheaper than attracting more. With little traffic, though, I wouldn't run A/B tests: they take months to give a reliable result. I'd talk to customers, watch recordings and fix the obvious.

For a quick first review, AI helps a lot if you give it screenshots (it can't always open a URL on its own):

Prompt, ready to copy

I'm sharing screenshots of my website's homepage and one service page, on mobile and desktop. My ideal customer is [description] and the action I want them to take is [action].
Act as that customer, in a hurry and a little skeptical, and tell me:
1. What you understand I sell within the first five seconds.
2. What's missing for you to trust me and what would make you leave the page.
3. Whether you can find the main button on mobile without scrolling.
4. The three improvements with the most impact, ordered from least to most effort.
Be specific and don't give me generic design advice.

Step 9

Legal basics: legal notice, privacy and cookies

Every business website needs, at the very least, a legal notice saying who's behind it, a privacy policy if it collects data and a cookie banner that makes rejecting as easy as accepting. In Andorra, the website also needs a Catalan version. This is the basic setup in each country:

What	Spain	Andorra
Who's behind it (legal notice)	The LSSI, Spain's e-commerce law, requires the name or company name, tax ID (NIF), address, email, registration details and, for regulated professions, the professional association	The electronic contracting law requires identification, contact details, registration and tax details and, for regulated professions, the professional association
Privacy	GDPR and Spain's data protection act: every form has to say who processes the data and why and, where applicable, ask for consent	The qualified law on personal data protection, with the APDA as the authority
Cookies	AEPD guide: a reject button on the first layer, at the same level as the accept button. Cookies that need consent aren't loaded until the user accepts	APDA guide: the banner must let users accept all, reject all or configure them
Language	No general requirement for private websites	Catalan: according to the Government of Andorra, an Andorran website without a Catalan version may breach the language law
Accessibility	The law transposing the European Accessibility Act covers e-commerce; microenterprises that provide services are exempt	The European rule isn't Andorran law; if you sell to EU consumers, ask your advisor whether it applies to you

Laws: Ley 34/2002 (LSSI), article 10; GDPR and LOPDGDD; AEPD cookie guide, updated in July 2023; Llei 20/2014, article 6; Llei 29/2021; APDA guide (version 4, January 2024); Government of Andorra FAQ on the Llei de la llengua pròpia i oficial; Ley 11/2023, whose title I has applied since June 28, 2025. This is a practical guide, not legal advice. If your business is in the US or elsewhere, the rules are different: check with your advisor.

Step 10

How to make a website today: with AI, with WordPress or with an agency

There are three ways to make a website: build it yourself with a website builder or an AI tool, set it up on WordPress (yourself or with a professional) or hire an agency. There's no best platform to create a website in the abstract: the tool matters less than what goes into it, which is why I choose it last, once I know which pages, copy and features the website needs.

1. With AI or a website builder. Wix, Squarespace and Hostinger generate a first site from a description: you tell them what you do, who it's for and what style you want, and within minutes you have pages with copy, images and a form. Shopify includes an AI assistant in its plans, Sidekick, that helps design the store and write product descriptions, and WordPress.com offers WordPress Agent on its paid plans. Tools like Figma Make turn a description into a prototype and code. More than website-building software, these are now online platforms: you don't install anything. It's the fastest and cheapest way to get started.

2. With WordPress. According to W3Techs, WordPress powers 39.6% of all websites in the world and 58.3% of those that use a known content management system. Its advantage is control: the code, the hosting and the data are yours, there are plugins for almost everything (languages, a WooCommerce store, SEO, bookings) and you can switch providers whenever you want. Its drawback is that it needs maintenance: updates, backups and security.

3. With an agency. You pay for a project where someone is accountable for the whole thing: strategy, copy, design, SEO, tracking, languages and legal. It makes sense when the website has to sell from the first month, competes on Google with very similar sites or needs several languages and integrations.

	AI or website builder	WordPress	Agency
Who it suits	Testing an idea, a freelancer starting out, an event	A business that wants to grow and has someone to maintain the site	A business that needs to sell now, competes on Google or sells in several languages
Time to launch	Hours or days	Days or weeks	Weeks
Your time	A lot: you do everything	Medium or high	Little: meetings, materials and approvals
What you pay for	The platform's monthly fee	Domain, hosting, licenses and, if you don't do it yourself, a professional's hours	The project and, if you want it, maintenance
Control and ownership	Limited to what the platform allows	Full: code, hosting and data	Full, if the contract leaves the domain, hosting and access in your name
SEO and speed	Solid baseline, with less room to improve	Lots of room, depending on who builds it	Built into the method
Copy and strategy	Written by you or the AI (generic unless you rewrite it)	Written by you	Included
Main risk	A website identical to a thousand others	A website nobody maintains, slow or insecure	Choosing the agency on price rather than method
When I'd switch	When the website starts bringing in business and outgrows the platform	When you don't have time to maintain or improve it	When it doesn't measure results or won't hand over the access

Comparison based on my own judgment. Each platform's AI features were checked on its official website; plans and prices change often.

Can ChatGPT or another AI build a website?

Yes, and for a draft it's excellent: in minutes you have the structure, copy, images and a form. ChatGPT can draft the copy and even the code for a simple page, and AI website builders go one step further and publish it. The problem is what the AI doesn't know: which services leave you a margin, how your customers talk, what proof you have and what sets you apart. Without that, it writes what it would write for anyone. And Google considers mass-producing content with no added value to be abuse, “no matter how it's created,” according to its spam policies.

Wix or WordPress: which is better?

Wix is better for getting started quickly with no maintenance: everything lives on the same platform and there are no updates to keep an eye on. WordPress is better for growing with control: more features, the hosting you choose and the ability to take your whole website with you. For a business that wants to compete on Google and sell in several languages, my choice is usually WordPress. It isn't a rule: there are Wix sites that sell a lot and badly built WordPress sites that sell nothing.

How do you make a website with WordPress?

To make a website with WordPress, you need your domain and WordPress-compatible hosting. Then you pick a lightweight theme, add only the essential plugins (SEO, backups, caching, forms and cookies), create the pages on your page map and connect Analytics and Search Console before going live. The hard part isn't installing it: it's keeping it up to date.

When is it worth hiring an agency?

It's worth it when not selling costs more than the project: if the website has to bring in customers from the first month, if you compete with businesses that already take their websites seriously, if you sell in several languages or if you need to connect bookings, payments or your management software.

Examples

Website examples that sell (Spain, US and Andorra)

Websites that sell have less in common in their design than in three things: they make the next step clear, they show proof and they remove friction. These five do it well, each in its own industry, and each one has something a small business could copy tomorrow:

Website	Country	What it does well	What a small business would copy
A chain of eye clinics	Spain	A book-online button in the header and in a sticky bar; a toll-free number; a form so they call you instead; a 4.8/5 rating from more than 30,000 reviews; a free first consultation on every treatment and a clinic finder	Offering two or three ways to get in touch and putting the review rating next to the button
An HR software company	Spain	A single button that keeps repeating across the site (request a demo), the customer count front and center (more than 17,000 companies), video testimonials of customers telling their story, messages by role (leadership, finance, HR and IT) and FAQs	Talking to each type of customer about their problem and always asking for the same action
A project management software company	US	Published pricing across five plans, including a free one, a trial with no card and no automatic charge when it ends, and the message that it doesn't charge per user on paid plans	Publishing the price or a “from” price and removing the fear of commitment
An online sneaker store	US	Free shipping above a set amount, announced in the banner at the top of the site; the cart reminds you that if you spend a little more, shipping is free	Showing shipping costs before the cart, not at the end
A ski resort	Andorra	A button to start your purchase in the header, a search tool that combines lift pass, hotel, lessons and rentals, a season pass at a reduced price until a set date and interest-free installments, in four languages	Packages that solve the whole trip and a real deadline to decide

Real websites, checked on October 20, 2026. What matters is the pattern, not the brand, and these elements may change at any time.

They all have polished design, but strip away the colors and you're left with what sells: a clear button that keeps repeating, proof right next to it and no surprises between the click and the purchase. If you're looking for ideas for your industry, take a look at our 13 real websites designed with AI.

Checklist

The perfect website checklist

Before launching, and every few months after that, I'd run through these checks. It isn't an official rule, but if more than three fail, I wouldn't consider the website ready to sell:

Check	How to know it's right
It's clear what you do within five seconds	Show the homepage to an outsider for five seconds and ask them what you sell and to whom
Every page has a goal	You can say which button you want the reader to click
The main button is visible on mobile without scrolling	Check it on a real phone, not on a computer
There's proof next to every button	Reviews, case studies, your own numbers or recognizable clients
The photos are yours	Not a single stock photo for services, team or premises
There's a price reference	A “from” price, a range or what determines the price
Contact takes one tap	Call, WhatsApp and a form that only asks for the essentials
You promise a response time and keep it	“We'll reply within 24 business hours,” and someone makes sure it happens
It loads fast on mobile	LCP of 2.5 s or less in PageSpeed Insights
Nothing shifts while it loads	CLS of 0.1 or less
One main search per page	The title, the main heading and the URL reflect it
Google knows it exists	Search Console set up, sitemap submitted and pages indexed
Details match everywhere	Same name, address, phone and hours on the website, the Google Business Profile and directories
The FAQs are real	They answer the objections you hear before every sale
What matters gets tracked	Key events for forms, calls, WhatsApp, bookings or purchases
You can see how it's used	Heatmaps or recordings switched on
Legal pages complete	Legal notice, privacy and cookies with “Reject” at the same level as “Accept”
Basic accessibility	Good contrast, alt text on images and labels on form fields
Languages done right	Each language with its own URL and hreflang; in Andorra, a Catalan version
The website is yours	Domain, hosting and access in your name, with backups and updates up to date

Mistakes

Common mistakes when creating a website

The mistakes that cost the most sales aren't technical: they're about order. Starting with the template, talking about the company instead of the customer and launching without tracking. These are the six I see most often:

Summary

How to build a website from scratch: the 10 steps

The steps to create a website that sells follow an order: first the business and the pages, then the copy and the design, and underneath it all, speed, SEO, AI, tracking and legal.

Example

Full example: a veterinary clinic website in Seville

This is the complete plan for a neighborhood veterinary clinic in Seville, with two vets, grooming and emergency care with extended hours. It's a made-up case to illustrate the method, but every decision is the kind you make on a real project:

Step	Decision	What gets delivered or measured
1 · Goal	Main conversion: booking an appointment, by phone or online. Secondary: emergency calls	One success number: weekly appointments coming from the website
1 · Customer and offer	Dog and cat owners in the neighborhood and nearby. What makes them choose: emergency care with extended hours and a team they know	The value proposition in one sentence
2 · Pages	Home, emergencies, vaccines and checkups, surgery, grooming, team, reviews, guide prices, contact and legal. The blog comes later	The page map, approved before writing
3 · Copy	A headline with the neighborhood and emergency care. The questions the front desk gets, turned into FAQs: how much the first visit costs, whether they treat exotic pets, what to do at night	Copy approved before the final design
4 · Trust	Photos of the team and the clinic, names and license numbers, linked Google reviews and guide prices for visits and vaccines	A block of proof next to every button
5 · Mobile	Sticky “Call” and “Book an appointment” buttons. Map and hours at the top of the contact page	LCP of 2.5 s or less on mobile
6 · SEO	One page for emergency vet care in Seville and another for each service. A Google Business Profile with the same details as the website	Search Console, sitemap and a consistent profile
7 · AI	A direct answer in every section, verifiable hours and guide prices, and the same details on the website, the profile and directories	FAQs with the questions people ask ChatGPT
8 · Tracking	Key events: call click, online booking and WhatsApp. UTM tags on the Google Business Profile link	A monthly report of appointments by page
9 · Legal	A legal notice with the professional association, privacy information on the booking form and cookies with “Reject”	Texts reviewed by the clinic's advisor
10 · Approach	WordPress, built by an agency, with training so the clinic can update hours and prices on its own	A website the clinic owns, with the domain in its name

Notice what's missing: not a single word about “quality” or “professionalism.” Everything the homepage says can be verified. If you run a veterinary clinic, our veterinary website design page explains how we apply this method to the industry.

What I wouldn't do

• Choose the template before knowing which pages the website needs.
• Publish AI copy without rewriting it with my own data.
• Show reviews, case studies or numbers I can't prove.
• Hide the phone number so everyone has to go through the form.
• Ask for ten details just to send a quote.
• Leave the domain and the access in the name of whoever builds my website.
• Machine-translate the website into four languages and not review any of them.
• Launch without Analytics, without Search Console and without knowing what counts as a conversion.
• Redesign every few years for looks, without first checking which pages sell.

The bottom line

If I had to create a business website from scratch tomorrow, this would be my order:

• Goal and offer
• Pages
• Copy
• Design and trust
• Speed, SEO and AI
• Legal
• Measure and improve

AI, WordPress or an agency are ways to travel that road faster. None of them travels it for you. A website built in an afternoon can sell if the decisions are good, and a very expensive website can sell nothing if nobody made them.

The tool comes last. What sells is decided first.

Frequently asked questions