What you need to start a business, from registering it to getting online

Starting a business comes down to two sets of decisions people tend to put off. How you register the thing, and how it shows up online. Neither is hard. Both matter more than they look, and getting them roughly right early saves a lot of unpicking later.

This is a plain walk through both. We build the online side for a living, so we’ll be straight about what actually needs doing and what can wait.

Sole trader or limited company

The first fork is how the business exists on paper. In the UK it’s usually one of two.

A sole trader is you, trading. You register as self-employed with HMRC, keep records of what comes in and goes out, and pay tax through Self Assessment. It’s the simplest way to start. The catch is that there’s no legal line between you and the business, so if it owes money, you owe money.

A limited company is a separate legal thing that you own and run. You set it up at Companies House, and the company’s finances are its own, so in most cases your personal money is protected if things go wrong. In exchange there’s more admin. Annual accounts, a confirmation statement, a business bank account of its own, and your details on the public register.

Which one fits depends on what you earn and how exposed you’d be if it went wrong. Some clients will only deal with a limited company. Some trades carry enough liability that the protection is worth the extra paperwork. Plenty of people start as a sole trader and incorporate later when it makes sense. We’re not accountants, and this is the one part we’d tell you to run past one before you decide. An hour with an accountant early is cheap insurance.

Check the name is actually free

Before you fall for a name, check you can use it everywhere it counts: the domain, Companies House if you’re incorporating, and the social handles you’ll want. There’s nothing worse than printing cards for a name whose domain turns out to belong to someone holding it for four figures.

If the exact domain is gone, it’s usually better to tweak the name than to settle for a worse web address. The name and the domain should match, so someone who hears one can find the other.

Buy the domain early

Buy the domain the moment the name is settled, before there’s even a website to put on it. It’s cheap, it stops anyone else grabbing it, and your email hangs off it too. Register it in your own name, on your own account, not through whoever ends up building the site. We’ve written separately about setting a domain up so you actually own it, because this is where a lot of new businesses hand over control without noticing.

Get email on your own domain

A business emailing customers from a gmail.com or outlook.com address looks like a side project. Email on your own domain, [email protected], looks like a business, and it runs a few pounds a month through Google Workspace or Microsoft 365.

There’s a trap worth knowing on day one. Email set up carelessly lands in spam, because the domain hasn’t been told to prove its mail is genuine. That’s fixable, and it’s worth doing right from the start rather than wondering months later why your invoices never arrive.

Put up a website, even a small one

When someone hears your name, they search for it. If nothing comes up, they quietly assume you’re not real yet. So a website earns its place from day one, and it doesn’t need to be big. A few pages that say what you do, who it’s for, and how to reach you will do more than a sprawling site you never finish.

Lead with the thing you want people to do, whether that’s getting in touch or buying, and put it where they can’t miss it. Keep your contact details out in the open. Make it quick on a phone, because that’s where most people will meet it. You grow it as the business grows.

Wire in analytics and get found

Once the site’s up, connect analytics and Search Console so you can see who’s visiting and what they typed to get there. It’s free, it takes a few minutes, and it turns hunches into facts about your own customers. If you sell to a local area, a Google Business Profile is the other half of being found nearby.

The order that works

If you want a running order: settle the name and check it’s free everywhere, buy the domain, decide sole trader or company with an accountant’s steer, put email on the domain, get a small honest website up, then wire in analytics. Most of it you can do yourself over a couple of weekends.

The reason people hand the online half to us is that the mistakes are quiet and they add up. A domain sitting on someone else’s account. Email that slips into spam. A site that loads slowly and turns visitors away before they read a word. None of it throws an error. It just costs you customers you never knew you had.

That’s what our Business essentials service and our wider small business services are for. The domain, the email, the website and the accounts, set up properly and in your name, with someone to call when something needs changing. If you’re getting started, tell us where you’re up to and we’ll tell you what to sort first.