What should a startup website include at launch?
The best first website for a startup is smaller than most founders expect. It needs to do three things: explain what you sell in one sentence, show that you are real, and make it easy for an interested person to contact you or join a waitlist.
Everything else, the blog, the careers page, the detailed pricing matrix, can wait until customers and investors start asking for it.
Why small? Because your message will change. Early customer conversations in Bangkok, whether with Thai SMEs or regional buyers, often reshape the pitch within weeks. A five-page site is cheap to rewrite. A 30-page site built around a positioning you have already dropped is expensive to maintain and confusing to visitors. For the full build process from domain to launch, our guide on how to make a website walks through every step; this post is about priorities.
The first five pages
Five pages cover almost every startup at launch. Each one has a single job.
1. Home
One headline that says who the product is for and what problem it solves, a short explanation, a product screenshot and one call to action. If a visitor cannot repeat your pitch after ten seconds, the headline needs work, not more sections.
2. Product or how it works
Three or four steps showing what the customer does and gets. Use real screenshots or photos of the actual product, not stock images of people pointing at laptops.
3. About
Why the company exists and who is behind it. Name the founders only if they are happy to be named, and link to their real LinkedIn profiles. B2B buyers in Thailand often check who they would be dealing with before replying.
4. Contact or waitlist
A short form, a WhatsApp or LINE button, an email address and, if you have one, a registered office address.
5. Privacy notice
If you collect names, emails or phone numbers, Thailand's PDPA applies, so you need a privacy notice and consent wording on forms from day one.
Sketching these five as rough wireframes, mockups and prototypes before design keeps the team arguing about content rather than colours.
Language choices for a startup
Pick the language of the people who will pay you first. That sounds obvious, yet many Bangkok founders launch in English because the pitch deck is in English, while their first customers are Thai restaurant owners who read Thai on their phones.
- Thai only suits a startup selling to Thai consumers or local SMEs. Write it natively; a translated English page reads as foreign.
- English only suits a product sold to regional or international buyers, or to expats and foreign-run firms in Bangkok.
- Both makes sense when you sell to Thai customers and pitch to foreign investors or partners at the same time. It doubles the content work, so plan it as a multilingual website: separate URLs for each language, a visible language switch, and one person responsible for keeping both versions current.
If you are unsure, launch in the customer's language and add the second one once the message is stable. Translating a pitch that is still changing means paying for the rewrite twice.
Credibility and lead capture
A startup has no track record yet, and visitors know it. Do not fill the gap with invented logos, borrowed customer quotes or vague claims such as "trusted by thousands". People notice, and it undoes the trust you are trying to build. Use proof that is true:
- screenshots or a short screen recording of the working product;
- real founders and advisers, with their consent;
- a pilot customer quote, only with written permission;
- a physical address, a real phone line and a named contact.
Capturing leads
Give people more than one way in. A short form (name, email, one question) suits B2B. A WhatsApp or LINE button suits Thai customers who would rather chat than fill in fields. A waitlist form works before launch. Whatever you choose, test that every submission actually reaches an inbox someone reads.
Analytics from day one
Install Google Analytics 4 (see our GA4 setup guide) or a similar tool before launch and track form submissions and chat button clicks as events. Without it you cannot tell which message is working. Analytics cookies are not strictly necessary cookies, so under PDPA practice they are usually set only after the visitor consents: put the cookie banner in place at the same time.
How much does a startup website cost, and how long does it take?
For a five-page launch site, our Starter package starts from THB 10,000 as an indicative one-time price. It covers up to five pages with a custom design, WordPress built mobile-first, contact, WhatsApp and LINE buttons, on-page SEO basics and PDPA cookie consent. The final price for your project is set in the written quote. A typical project takes about 15 days from the agreed brief to launch, and the part most likely to slow it down is not the build but waiting for the founder's final copy and screenshots.
A DIY website builder can be cheaper in cash and fine for a test. The trade-off is time: a founder spending weekends fighting a template is not talking to customers. If your product is a service or a B2B offer, a professionally built small site usually pays back through fewer questions on sales calls. See our page on website design for small business for what a small build includes, and compare the packages against other website prices in Thailand before you decide.
Before go-live, run through a website launch checklist: forms, redirects, analytics, the privacy notice and mobile checks on a real phone.
What to add after traction
Traction changes what visitors need from the site. Add pages when there is a reason, not on a schedule:
- A pricing page once sales calls keep opening with "how much?". Even a "from" price filters out poor-fit leads.
- A blog or resources section when you have real answers to questions customers ask repeatedly. Two useful articles beat twenty thin ones.
- Customer stories once customers agree to be named and you can show real results.
- A careers page when you start hiring, so candidates see the company and not only a job board listing.
- The second language when a new customer group or investor round needs it.
- Industry or use-case pages once you know which segments actually buy.
Plan for this at the start by choosing a platform and page structure that can grow. A WordPress site with a custom theme can take new page types without a rebuild. When the brand or product changes so much that the old structure no longer fits, our website redesign guide explains how to rebuild without losing what already works.
Mistakes founders make
- Overbuilding. Twenty pages, three languages and an animated hero before the first paying customer. Most of it gets rewritten.
- Template bloat. A theme bought for its demo, loaded with sliders and plugins you never use, that takes several seconds to load on a mobile connection.
- No clear call to action. Five different buttons on the home page, or none. Pick the one action you want and repeat it.
- Talking about the technology, not the customer. Buyers want to know what changes for them, not which framework you use.
- Nobody owns the site. Decide who updates it, who receives form leads and who renews the domain.
Many of these apply to any young company. Our small business website tips go further on layout and content once you have a customer base to design around.
Further reading
Sources
- PDPC Thailand: Personal Data Protection Committee
- Google Analytics Help: Set up Analytics for a website
Builds and ranks the websites: the systems behind the 17 client sites whose Search Console numbers we publish. This guide was written by the Website Development Bangkok team. More about us