01Set a small goal
The goal for tonight is not a perfect website. It is a site that is live, tells people what you do and lets them reach you. You can add and polish later, one page at a time.
Most small businesses need four or five pages to start:
Home: what you do, where, and one clear button such as Call, Book or Order.
Services or Products: what you offer and what it costs.
About: who you are, with a real photo of you or your team.
Contact: phone, email, address, opening hours and how to find you.
A bakery, for example, needs a homepage, a page of breads and cakes with prices, a short story about the bakers and a contact page with the opening hours. That is enough for a first evening.
A simple site that is live tonight helps your customers more than a perfect one next month. Nothing is set in stone: you can change every text and photo whenever you like.
02Prepare before you start
Much of a first evening goes into searching: a photo here, a price list there. Gather everything first, ideally the day before. Then the evening is for building, not for searching.
| What | What it is for | Tip |
|---|---|---|
| Logo | The header of every page | A clear file with a see-through background works best. No logo yet? Your business name in plain type is fine for a start. |
| Real photos | The homepage, services and About | Take 10 to 20 in daylight: your work, your place, your people. Real photos earn more trust than stock photos. |
| A short description | The first lines of the homepage | Two or three sentences: what you do, where, and for whom. |
| Services and prices | The services page | A name, a couple of lines and a price for each. "From 25 EUR" is better than no price. |
| Contact details | The contact page and the footer | Phone, email and address, written exactly as on your other channels. |
| Opening hours | The contact page | Add holiday hours too if they differ. |
Type the texts in a notes app or a document before you open the builder. Writing and laying out at the same time is slow. Copying finished text into place is quick.
03Pick a design and create the site
Husly has 25+ ready-made designs. Pick one by its layout, not by its colours or photos: you will put in your own photos and can change the colours. A hair salon may want a large photo at the top. A bike rental may want prices and a booking button high on the page.
Open the start page. Under How would you like to start? choose Choose a ready-made design.
Answer What's your business called? Husly suggests an address from the name and checks that it is free.
Under Choose a design, look at a few designs and pick one. Press Continue with selected design.
Under What will your site need?, tick what you need and press Create my site. If you pick a paid feature, Husly offers a free trial. To stay on the Free plan, press Continue on the free plan.
Create your account with your name, email and a password, and press Register and start. You can also use Continue with Google.
Husly opens the admin with your homepage already in the builder. Your site is live at once at
yourname.husly.app.
The Free plan costs nothing, has no time limit and needs no card. Your site lives at a husly.app address and shows a small Husly mark. Your own domain and removing the mark come with the Standard plan. The pricing page lists the limits of each plan.
Then choose Bring my old site over on the start page instead. Husly can bring over a site built with WordPress.
04Write texts people understand
Visitors do not read a page word by word. They skim it, and in a few seconds they decide if you can help them. Write the way you talk to a customer at the counter: short sentences, everyday words, no slogans.
The first line of the homepage says what you do, where, and for whom.
Each service gets a name, a couple of lines on what the customer gets, and a price.
One main button on each page asks for one thing, such as a call or a booking.
About is about people. A name, a face and the reason you do this work build trust.
| Weak | Better | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Welcome to our website | Sourdough bread and cakes in Bristol, baked every morning | Says what, where and how fresh |
| We offer a wide range of services | Haircut 30 EUR, colouring from 60 EUR | Gives the facts a customer looks for |
| Click here | Book a bike for Saturday | Tells the visitor what happens next |
The Pro plan writes and translates texts with AI and helps with SEO. The AI plan adds the Husly AI Builder: it fills a design with texts written for your business. You give it a text about your business (up to 10,000 characters), your logo, a tone, a main call to action and your languages. The Free and Standard plans have no AI writing, so there you write the texts yourself. The tips above help either way.
05Fill the pages in the builder
Start with the homepage, which is already open in the builder. Go through it block by block and put in your own texts and photos.
Remove the blocks you do not need with Delete. Change their order with Up and Down.
Need something the design does not have? Open the Widgets tab on the side and click a widget to add it.
Put your logo in the header. Then press Apply to the whole site. The new header reaches every page of the public site in about 30 seconds.
Press Save. Then open the next page from Pages in the sidebar and do the same.
The homepage and the design's pages are published from the start. When you press Save on a published page, visitors see the change at once. Auto-save is off by default, so nothing goes out before you save. If you want to try something big, try it on a new page first: new pages start as drafts.
A new page does not appear in the menu by itself. The Pages and menus help topic shows how to add it.
06Check it and tell people
Before you share the link, look at the site the way a customer will. Many of them will come on a phone.
Switch the builder to Mobile above the canvas and read every page. Long headings and wide tables show their problems here first.
On your phone, tap your phone number and email address on the site and check that they are right.
If the site has a form, send yourself a test answer.
Open
yourname.husly.appin a private browser window and click every link in the menu.Ask a friend to find your prices and opening hours. Watch where they get stuck.
Then put the address where your customers already look: your social media profiles, your Google Business Profile, your email signature and the door of your shop.