Your first website, from request to online

Before you start: you need a domain

A website needs a domain, the address people type to find you. Add or register yours first under Domain and DNS. If you do not have one yet, see Domains and DNS. Only the account owner can request a website.

1. Choose a plan

Open My Websites and start a new website. First you pick a plan. Every plan has two prices:

• a setup fee, paid once, which pays for building the website: the design, your sections and getting it onto your domain
• a monthly fee, which keeps it running: hosting, security, support and whatever else the plan includes

What separates the plans is the list on each card, so read those rather than the price. If you are torn between two, take the smaller one. You can move up or down later from your Subscription page.

2. Sign the service agreement

Next you read the service agreement and sign it on the screen, then tick to confirm. Everything is in writing from day one.

3. Tell us about your business

A short questionnaire follows:

• your business name and which domain the site should use
• the kind of work you do
• a short description of your business
• the sections you want on your site, such as About, Services, Gallery or Contact
• your colours, and your logo if you have one

For the description, write it the way you would say it to someone who asked what you do: what the business does, who you do it for and the area you cover. Add anything that makes you the one to call, like a qualification, a guarantee or how long you have been going. We rewrite it properly for the page, so the facts matter more than the polish.

Your website is one page that scrolls, with a link to each section in the menu. Nothing here is final; you can ask for changes while we build.

4. Pay the setup fee

Check the summary and submit. Your setup fee invoice is ready straight away, and you pay it securely through PayFast. Nothing recurring starts yet: your monthly fee only begins once you have seen and approved the finished website.

Once the payment clears, the build starts. You do not need to do anything else to kick it off.

5. Follow the build

Open your website in My Websites to see the build page. It shows each stage as we work through it:

• Setting Up Your Hosting
• Designing & Building Your Website
• Testing & Polishing
• Ready for Your Review

The build page also has one conversation with our team. Use it to send your photos, ask questions or add details you thought of later. We email you as things move along.

6. Review your website

When the site is ready, the status changes to Ready for Review and you see it before anyone else. Open the preview and look through every section carefully.

This is the moment to be fussy. Before you approve, revisions are free: ask for them in the build conversation and we keep going until you are happy. After approval, small corrections can usually still be done through a support ticket, but bigger work may be quoted.

7. Approve it

When you are happy, click Review & Sign Agreement and sign the approval. You are confirming that you have looked through the site and that it is what you asked for. You can download the signed copy from your website page at any time afterwards.

Signing does not publish the site by itself. It tells us the site is ready to launch.

8. Activate your subscription

To launch the site you set up the monthly subscription, through PayFast. You see the monthly amount and tick to agree before you continue. There is no charge on the day; your monthly payments then run automatically, and you can cancel from your portal at any time.

9. Go online

Click I'm Ready, Go Live! to tell us you are ready, and our team does a final check before publishing. We email you the moment your website is online.

• Your domain starts showing your new website. If you had an older site elsewhere, we do not delete it; your domain simply stops pointing at it.
• Your email keeps working. The records we change only decide where your website traffic goes.
• The change takes a few hours to spread around the internet, so for a short while some people may still see the old site. That is normal and settles by itself.

Website statuses explained

Most statuses just show how far along we are: Getting Started, Setting Up Your Hosting, Being Built and Publishing Your Website need nothing from you. Three need you:

• Payment Required: pay the setup fee so the build can start.
• Ready for Review: your site is finished and waiting for you to look at it.
• Activate Subscription: you approved it, and the last step is setting up the monthly payment.

Go Live Pending and Going Live mean we are putting it onto your domain, and Live means it is up. If you ever see Build Problem, we already know and are working on it.

After launch: changes and statistics

Need something changed on your website later? Open a support ticket and choose Change Request. Your plan includes a set number of small changes each month, such as wording, prices, opening hours or photos. Bigger work, like a new section or a redesign, gets a quote first.

On the Professional and Premium plans, Analytics on your website shows your visitors over 7, 30 or 90 days:

• Users: how many different people came.
• Sessions: how many visits they made between them.
• Pageviews: every page opened.
• Avg. Session: how long a typical visit lasted.
• Bounce Rate: the share of visitors who looked and left. On a one page site with your number on it, that is often someone who found what they needed and called you, so a high number is not automatically bad.

You also see your top pages, where visitors came from and which devices they used. Watch the trend over weeks rather than any single day.