I build websites for Belgian businesses and independent professionals from my studio in Hannut, and every first meeting starts with the same questions: where do I begin, how much does it cost, and how do I make sure the website actually brings in customers instead of sleeping quietly on the internet.
This guide gathers everything I explain to my clients, in the order the decisions actually get made. It is long on purpose: it is the page I always wished I could send to every person who writes "I need a website but I have no idea where to start". If you are an expat or an international business in Belgium, it was written with you in mind too.
1. Why a real website rather than a Facebook page
Many business owners tell me they already have a Facebook page or an Instagram account, and that it does the job. I understand the reasoning: it is free, it is quick, and the customers are already there. But a social page remains rented space on someone else's property. The algorithm decides who sees your posts, the format is imposed, and your visibility can collapse overnight.
A website is your own ground. You decide what people find on it, it works for you on Google around the clock, and it builds a kind of trust no social profile can replace. When someone searches for "bakery Hannut" or "electrician Waremme", a website comes up, not a story. I have compared the two options in detail in website or Facebook page: 5 criteria to decide, if you are still hesitating.
The good news: the two work very well together. The website reassures and converts, social media builds the relationship. This guide assumes you have decided to build your own foundation.
2. Clarify your project before talking tech
The first step has nothing to do with computers. Before drawing anything, I always ask my clients three questions. What should the website concretely produce: phone calls, bookings, online sales, quote requests? Who needs to find it: locals from your town, companies across Wallonia, English-speaking clients, foreign visitors? And what sets you apart from the three competitors Google will display right next to you?
The answers reshape the whole project. A caterer who wants booking requests does not need the same pages as a tradesman who mostly wants his phone to ring. This is also what keeps a website simple: every page must serve the goal, everything else is decoration.
My advice before any quote
Write down the five questions your customers ask you most often. Your future website must answer them on the very first visit. That is the most useful brief you can hand a developer, far more valuable than a list of features.
3. Choose the right type of website
In Belgium as anywhere else, most projects fall into three families. The showcase website presents your business, services and contact details: the right choice for most independents and local businesses. The online store adds a catalogue, cart and payment: essential if you sell products at a distance. And the custom build covers specific needs: online booking, client areas, interactive catalogues.
My advice: start with the smallest scope that reaches your goal. A good five-page showcase site, fast and well ranked, earns more than a twenty-page monster that never gets finished. You can always add a store or a booking module later, once demand justifies it.
Two examples from my own portfolio to make this concrete. For Khmissa Events, an event caterer, everything hinged on booking requests: the whole site converges on that form. For Majestic Diadem, an online jewellery store, the need was a real e-commerce build with secure payment and an aesthetic worthy of the products. Same developer, two completely different architectures: the goal decides.
I have also broken this thinking down for the trades I work with most: the 7 ingredients of a restaurant website that fills tables, and the 6 steps of a profitable tradesman website. If that is your sector, those two articles extend this guide onto your exact terrain.
If you are considering selling online, I wrote a dedicated guide: launching an e-commerce website in Belgium in 7 steps. It covers platform choice, Bancontact, VAT and logistics. And to see what I offer concretely, my services page sums up the four families of projects I deliver.
4. The budget, with no sugar-coating
Let's talk numbers, since it is question number one. With me, a showcase website starts at €380, an e-commerce store at €890 and a mobile app at €1490. The final price depends on the number of pages, the features and the content to produce. Every project gets a line-by-line quote, free of charge and within 24 hours. My prices are public, because I dislike "on request only" pricing, which usually hides a price made up on the spot.
Beyond my own rates, compare what each offer really includes. A tempting price that covers neither basic SEO, nor proper mobile design, nor training, usually costs more in the end. I dissected the Belgian market in website cost in Belgium: 7 real budgets, with honest ranges from freelancers to agencies.
Also think about the recurring costs: domain name, hosting, maintenance. They are modest, but they exist. An honest provider announces them in the quote, not on the invoice.
5. Content first, design second
It is the most common mistake I see: choosing colours before a single line of text exists. A website only convinces through what it says. Texts, photos and page structure must exist before the design stages them, never the other way round.
For every page, I work with my clients on three elements. The core message: what must the visitor understand within five seconds? The proof: photos of your work, customer reviews, certifications, everything that shows you deliver. And the action: the button or form that turns a visitor into a contact. A page without a clear action is a dead end.
On photos: authentic images of your business, even taken with a good smartphone in decent light, almost always beat stock photography. Your customers want to see your workshop, your team, your dishes, not American models from an image bank.
6. Design and experience: mobile above all
Most visits to a local website happen on a phone. So I design every site starting from the mobile screen: if the page is clear on a pocket screen, it will be crystal clear on a desktop. The reverse is never true.
Good professional design is not about fashion, it is about hierarchy. Visitors must find, without thinking: what you do, where you are, how to reach you. Animations and effects come afterwards, sparingly. I also keep a constant eye on speed: every extra second of loading drives visitors away, especially on mobile data in the Belgian countryside.
Speed deserves its own file: I detailed the real impact of loading time and 8 concrete solutions to stay under the fateful few-second mark, even on rural 4G.
Accessibility is part of serious work: sufficient contrast, readable text, keyboard navigation. It is better for all your visitors, and Google takes it into account.
Think as well about reassurance elements, often neglected: your Google reviews directly visible, photos of your premises, a clickable phone number in the header, up-to-date opening hours. A visitor hesitating between two providers will almost always pick the one whose website shows a face, an address and proof of real work.
7. Development, explained simply
You will hear about WordPress, Shopify and custom-coded websites. Remember the essential: the tool must serve your need, not the other way round. A CMS like WordPress fits when you want to edit content yourself, often. Shopify excels at selling online without technical worries. Custom code delivers a faster, safer, precisely fitted site, which is what I favour for showcase sites built for performance.
The tool-versus-tool debate deserves better than slogans: I laid out 6 concrete criteria for choosing between WordPress and custom, with the cases where each option honestly wins. And if you sell products, the 8 rules for selling online in Belgium complete the e-commerce side, VAT and Bancontact included.
What matters more than the technology: the cleanliness of the work. Tidy code loads fast, displays well everywhere, and makes sense to Google. A botched site piles up plugins, slows down, and becomes a nightmare to maintain. Always ask who owns what at the end: your domain name, your content and your access credentials must belong to you, in writing.
The question that reveals a good provider
Ask: "what happens if we stop working together?". If the answer is vague, be careful. With me, you leave with your domain, your website and your content, with no penalty and no technical hostage-taking.
8. SEO from the very first sketch
SEO is not an option you bolt on afterwards, it is a foundation. Page structure, meta tags, speed, structured data, texts that answer your customers' real searches: all of it is decided during construction. A website rebuilt from scratch for SEO costs more than ten pages designed properly from day one.
For a Belgian business or independent professional, the most profitable lever is local SEO: appearing when someone in your area searches for your trade. It matters so much that I devoted an entire guide to it: local SEO in Wallonia: the complete guide to being found on Google. If you read only one other page after this one, make it that one.
Concretely, here is what I set up on every website I build: unique title and description tags per page, a logical heading structure, Schema.org structured data describing your business to Google, a sitemap submitted to Search Console, and pages that load fast even on mobile. Nothing exotic: just the foundation Google expects, laid properly on day one rather than patched up later.
And if you want to see this work applied to a specific town, my field report on website creation in Hannut shows the full process on the ground, from first conversation to launch.
9. Going live and Belgian legal duties
The big day approaches: what remains is choosing a domain name (.be inspires trust with Belgian customers), serious hosting, and installing the HTTPS security certificate. I handle all of it for my clients, with a full pre-launch check: display on every screen size, forms tested for real, speed measured, submission to Google.
Do not forget the Belgian legal obligations: a legal notice with your CBE enterprise number, a GDPR-compliant privacy policy, and terms and conditions if you sell online. Not the glamorous part, but a professional website in good legal standing is part of the job. These pages are part of my standard delivery.
My checklist before every launch
Display checked on phone, tablet and desktop. Forms tested with real submissions. Speed measured on mobile. Legal notice and privacy policy in place. Tags and structured data validated. Sitemap submitted to Search Console. Google Business Profile linked to the website. Initial backup archived. Non-negotiable: every website I deliver goes through this list.
I mainly work with clients in my region: if you are in Liège, Namur, Huy, Waremme or Brussels, I have detailed on those pages how I work with businesses in each area, in person or remotely, in English or French.
10. What comes after: maintenance and growth
A website is never "finished". Browsers evolve, content ages, your business changes. At delivery, I train every client to handle day-to-day content, then offer an optional monthly maintenance plan: technical updates, backups, monitoring and small content changes. No obligation, and I stay reachable either way.
Watch three signals over time: your position on the searches that matter to you, the number of contacts the site generates, and how it looks next to your competitors. When one of the three slips, it is time to act. I listed the symptoms in website redesign: 5 signs it is time to act, along with the method for modernising without losing your rankings.
Finally, keep the content alive. A website whose latest news dates back three summers sends the wrong signal, to visitors and to Google alike. No need to write weekly: a few photos of recent work, a page updated when your services evolve, an article now and then answering a question your customers ask. That is exactly what this blog does for my own business.
And to check that your project, current or future, is not heading into a known wall, I compiled the 10 traps of website creation I repair most often: ten minutes of reading that save months of regret.
My last piece of advice is the simplest: start with a reasonable scope, measure, improve. The best websites I have delivered are the ones that grew with their owner's business, not the ones that tried to do everything on day one.
