Professional website: 10 things that make it trustworthy

What makes a website look professional?

It’s the details customers notice: a real address, a page without warnings and content that is clearly about you. Here is the checklist with the price of each point:

As a business, you generally have to give your name, address, email and CVR number on your website. Check the rules with the Danish Business Authority (Erhvervsstyrelsen), and read more in website requirements.

What does a professional website cost?

A professional eight-page website costs DKK 15,000–38,000 from a freelancer and DKK 42,000–108,000 from an agency to build, excluding VAT. Over three years that becomes DKK 29,000–84,000 and DKK 69,000–210,000. On a website builder there’s no build fee, and the number of pages doesn’t change the price.

All amounts exclude VAT and come from our website cost calculator, built on Danish hourly rates: about DKK 500–900 an hour for freelancers and DKK 900–1,400 for agencies. Running costs are hosting, a domain, licences and a service agreement. Striive is DKK 99 a month incl. VAT for the first 4 months, then DKK 249 a month incl. VAT, plus your domain.

Which mistakes make a website look unprofessional?

Most mistakes are about content that has gone stale, not design. These are the ones customers see most:

• Old prices, opening hours or a news post from years ago.
• A Gmail or Hotmail address instead of one on your own domain. Email on your own domain comes from an email provider.
• Stock photos of smiling people who don’t work for you.
• Placeholder text or empty pages that were never finished.
• Buttons and text too small for a thumb on a phone.
• An address without HTTPS, so the browser warns visitors.

Does a professional website need a web agency?

No. You can get all ten points on the checklist on a website builder. An agency gives you a bespoke design, strategy and help with bigger integrations, and that can be worth the money for a larger business. But it isn’t what makes a small business’s website trustworthy. See what you get for the money in web agency.

How do you make your website professional, step by step?

Take the points in this order, so the most important come first:

1. Buy the domain in the business’s name and connect it, so the address is yourbusiness.dk with HTTPS.
2. Say in one sentence at the top of the front page what you do, and where.
3. Swap stock photos for your own photos of your work, premises and staff.
4. Put phone, email, address and CVR number in the footer, so they’re on every page.
5. Check that prices and opening hours are the ones that apply today.
6. Open the site on your own phone, and fix anything hard to read or tap.
7. Turn the cookie banner on if you use analytics, pixels or embedded videos.

How do you check whether your website looks professional?

Look at it the way a new customer does: in Google, when it’s shared, and on a phone. Three of our free tools help. The SERP preview shows how your page looks in Google’s results, the social share preview shows how a link looks on Facebook and LinkedIn, and the cookie banner checker tells you whether you need a banner.