What Features Does My Website Actually Need?

The features your website needs depend on what your business does — not what looks good in a portfolio, not what your competitors built, and definitely not everything you've thought of at 11pm before a launch deadline.

Most solopreneurs over-spec. They see a site with a client portal, a booking system, a blog, and an animated hero and assume that's the baseline. It isn't. The baseline is a page that explains what you do and gives people a way to reach you.

Here's how to work out exactly what you need — and what can wait. I've seen solopreneurs stall for months trying to spec a site that should have launched in two weeks. Most of the delay comes from adding features they don't need yet.

The one feature every website needs

Before any module, every site needs a base: a landing page with a clear offer, a contact form, and basic SEO.

That's the Base SPA — €3,000 and ready in 5 days. It's not a starter pack you'll outgrow. It's the foundation that every other feature sits on top of. Most solopreneurs launching a service business start here and stay here for a while. That's fine.

Everything from here on is conditional.

Do you take bookings or appointments?

If your business runs on scheduled time — coaching sessions, consulting calls, hair appointments, physiotherapy slots, personal training — you need a booking system. Not a contact form that leads to a scheduling email chain. An actual page where someone picks a date, sees your real availability, picks a time, and confirms.

The Booking module is €6,000 and takes 10 days. It adds date and time picking, availability rules, admin view of upcoming bookings, and automatic confirmation emails. Your client knows they're booked; you don't have to manually confirm.

If people just need to message you to start a conversation and you schedule manually from there, a contact form is enough. The booking system is for when the scheduling itself is part of the product.

Booking + Base = €9,000, ~15 days

Do you sell products or services online?

If a client or customer should be able to complete a purchase directly on your site — physical product, digital download, a fixed-price service package — you need ecommerce. That means product pages, a cart, a checkout, and a payment processor.

If you invoice clients manually after they contact you, or sell through Stripe payment links or Gumroad, you don't need ecommerce. The contact form gets them to you; you handle payment separately.

The Ecommerce module is €10,000 and takes 20 days. It covers product listings, cart, checkout, and order management — the essentials for a solopreneur selling a product line or digital goods. No warehouse, no marketplace, no plugin stack.

Ecommerce + Base = €13,000, ~25 days

Do clients need to log in?

Authentication is for when part of your site is private. A client portal where customers can track project status. A members-only resource library. A dashboard that only shows the logged-in user their own data.

If your entire site is public and clients contact you by email, you don't need authentication.

The Authentication module is €3,000 and takes 5 days. It adds login, OAuth (sign in with Google), and protected routes. Everything behind the login is yours to design.

Authentication + Base = €6,000, ~10 days

Are you building a product, not a website?

There's a real difference between a solopreneur service site and a SaaS product. A service site is marketing. A SaaS product is software that users pay to access — with subscriptions, usage limits, multiple accounts, and role-based permissions.

If users sign up, pay monthly, and use a dashboard with features that vary depending on their plan — that's a SaaS. It's a different scope entirely.

The SaaS Features module is €15,000 and takes 28 days. SaaS products always need authentication and technical SEO alongside it — the full stack (Base + Auth + SaaS + SEO) comes to €22,500.

If you're not sure whether you're building a product or a site, you're probably building a site.

Do you actually need to pay for SEO separately?

Technical SEO is worth adding to every site. It covers meta tags, Open Graph, an XML sitemap, and JSON-LD schema — the signals that tell Google (and AI search tools like ChatGPT and Perplexity) what your site is about.

Without it, search engines have to guess. They're not bad at guessing, but they're better when you tell them directly.

The SEO module is €1,500 and takes 2 days. It's not optional if search visibility matters to you. If you're running entirely on referrals and direct traffic, you can skip it — but most solopreneurs shouldn't.

What about copy, animations, and tracking?

These are the smaller modules that round out a build:

Copywriting (€2,000): Professional on-page copy for the full site. Worth it if writing isn't your strength or if your current copy is honest-but-dull. A well-written page outperforms a beautiful one.

Animations (€2,000): Framer Motion and GSAP — scroll effects, micro-interactions, the kind of polish that makes a site feel considered. It's atmosphere, not conversion. It earns its cost when brand perception matters.

Sound (€800): Ambient audio with a mute control. Used well, it's a brand differentiator. Used badly, it's the first thing people disable. Think carefully about whether your audience wants to hear your site.

Google stack (€800): GTM, GA4, and Ads conversion tracking. If you're running paid advertising or want to know which pages are actually generating leads, this is necessary. If you're not, it's optional.

What most solopreneurs actually need

Here's the honest breakdown by business type:

Business type	Modules	Approx. cost
Service solopreneur (coach, consultant, freelancer)	Base + SEO	€4,500
Appointment-based business (physio, hair, trainer)	Base + Booking + SEO	€10,500
Selling products or digital goods	Base + Ecommerce + SEO	€14,500
Client portal or protected content	Base + Auth + SEO	€7,500
SaaS product	Base + Auth + SaaS + SEO	€22,500
Brand-led creative business	Base + Animations + SEO	€6,500

These are starting points. Add copywriting if your own writing isn't working. Add extra pages at €1,000 each if your services genuinely need separating. Add the Google stack if you're spending money on ads and want to measure the return.

The full module catalogue — with descriptions, timelines, and live examples — is at /websites.

If you already know roughly what you need, the calculator at /start will give you an exact number in about two minutes. Pick the modules, see the total, and if it makes sense — send it over.