What a $400 website actually includes

Around here, a basic website for a small business gets quoted at $2,500 or more. Most salon and shop owners hear that number and quietly decide a Facebook page is fine. Then someone searches their business name, finds nothing, and calls the competitor who has a website.

I charge $400 for a starter site. When I say that, the natural question is what got cut to hit that price. Fair question. Here is the full list, what is in and what is not.

What the $400 covers

This is the checklist I build against every time:

Your own domain. Not a page on someone else's platform. Your name, registered to you.
A photo gallery of your real work. Photos from your phone, cleaned up and compressed so the page still loads fast on a cheap Android in a parking lot.
Your services with your prices. Listed plainly on the page. People check prices before they call. If they cannot find them, a lot of them never call.
One-tap contact. A button that opens a text or WhatsApp message straight to your phone. No contact form that emails an inbox nobody checks. When someone wants an appointment, they are one tap from talking to you.
A bilingual option. Spanish and English on the same site if your customers speak both. Around Heber City a lot of them do, and most local business sites ignore half their market.
Built for phones first. Most of your visitors are on a phone. I design for the small screen and let the desktop version follow, not the other way around.
You own the code. The whole site is a folder of files I can hand over. If I disappear tomorrow, any developer can pick it up. No proprietary site builder, no monthly ransom to keep your own pages.

My first client is a nail salon in Heber City. Her site went from nothing to live in about a day: gallery of her actual work, acrylic and gel prices listed, WhatsApp booking button, Spanish and English. That is the product.

Why agencies charge $2,500

This part matters, because the agency price is not a scam. It is a different product.

An agency has payroll. A project manager runs discovery meetings. A designer produces mockups and revision rounds. A developer wires up a content management system so your staff can edit pages. That process takes weeks of real hours, and $2,500 is honestly on the low end for it.

I can charge $400 because I am one person, I build from a structure I have already proven, and I compress the work into one focused build day. You are not getting the agency process at a discount. You are getting a smaller, faster product that covers what a local service business actually needs on day one.

What it does not include

Read this part before you text me.

No online store. If you need to sell products with a cart and shipping, this is the wrong product and I will tell you so.
No booking calendar. The one-tap button starts a conversation with you. It does not sync to a calendar or send automated reminders. For a salon that already books by text, that is usually a feature, not a gap.
No logo or branding work. I will use the logo and colors you have. If you have neither, I keep the design clean and simple, but I am not a brand designer.
No copywriting from scratch. The words on the site are your words, tightened up. I am not inventing a brand story for you.
No SEO campaign. You get the basics done right: page titles, descriptions, fast loading, a Google Maps link. Ongoing work to climb search rankings is a separate, longer effort that is not in this package.
Edits are not free forever. Launch fixes are on me. After that, if you want me maintaining and updating the site, that is the $50 per month care plan. Full pricing is on /services.

If your business needs online payments, scheduling software, or a content team, tell me up front and I will say the $400 site is not the right fit. I would rather lose the sale than ship you the wrong thing.

How to know if this is enough site for you

Quick test. If your customers mostly need to find you, see your work and prices, and message you to book, the starter site covers all three. That describes most of the nail salons, dog groomers, landscapers, and small restaurants I have looked at around here.

If you already have a site and you are not sure it does those three things well, start smaller than a rebuild. I do a free 24-hour audit, three real findings, yours to keep either way. Ask at /audit.