Your business has no reflection.

Before someone books a plumber, a physio or a table, they look, usually on a phone and usually in the minute before they decide. Nobody counts that minute. What CBS does count is where it happens: almost everyone in the Netherlands is online every day, and four in five shop online. So the first look happens there.

If your business isn't on the map, that's one problem. If it is on the map but there is no page you control, it's a smaller, sneakier one: the internet fills the gap itself. A directory copies an old opening time. A stranger's review becomes your headline. A search assistant guesses. You never see the reflection being drawn. You only meet the customer who believes it.

Two things to read from that. First, even at the smallest size in the table, most businesses already have a site: 59% of those with two working people, 73% of all with two or more. Second, about four in ten of the smallest still don't. If you're one of them, you're not odd. You're just in the minority.

Social profiles, Google's Business Profile and platforms like Booking.com, Thuisbezorgd or Werkspot are useful. Use them. But each one is somebody else's water: they decide the rules, the layout and who gets to see you, and they can change all three without asking.

A small, concrete example. Google used to give every Business Profile a free website. In March 2024 it turned that feature off, and the old addresses redirected to the profile until 10 June 2024. Google's advice was to pick a website builder and add the new address to the profile (Search Engine Journal).

Notice what Google's own profile has: a box for your website address. One address that connects everything else. Left blank, it isn't neutral. It's a gap.

The internet has a NAP too. Local-search people use the same three letters for Name, Address, Phone. If your name is written three ways, your number changed last year and your hours differ per listing, nothing agrees with anything. Every system that reads you (a map, a search page, an AI assistant) has to guess which bolt is the real one.

A website is your own zero: one page where name, address, phone, hours and prices are written once, correctly. Machines care in two specific ways.

Neither is a promise of a top spot. They are the conditions for being in the running.

A website stands on three foundations. You don't need to understand them. You do need to know who holds each.

A website is not legally required. But once you have one, it counts as business correspondence and a few rules apply. This is general information, not legal advice. Each point links to the official source.

That is the whole list for a simple business page. Put the legal line somewhere logical, like the footer, and you're done.

The first site doesn't need a blog, a shop or a video. It has to answer what a stranger asks in the first minute.

1. What you do, and whereOne sentence a stranger understands, with the place name in it.
2. A phone number you can tapOn a phone, that is the point. Add a WhatsApp button if you use WhatsApp.
3. Address and hoursThe same as on your Google profile.
4. Your servicesWith a “from” price where you can give one. If you can't, say what you need to know to quote.
5. Real photos of real workYours, not stock.
6. ProofTwo or three reviews or projects, with names or places where the customer agrees.
7. The legal lineTrade name, KVK number, VAT ID, privacy statement.

Check the first step before the design. On 11 September 2026 we checked the homepages of 42,421 Dutch business sites (our research, in Dutch):

Read both as ceilings: we looked at homepages only, and our re-check found some false alarms. Even so, they show what to check first: can a visitor reach you from the first screen?

Every page should lift a stranger through those three chambers. Each needs its own answer on the page: what you do, proof, and one obvious button. Offer the routes people really use (a tappable number, WhatsApp, a short form) and test each one yourself.

If you take payments or deposits online, Dutch customers expect iDEAL: more than 1.5 billion iDEAL payments were made in 2025 (Betaalvereniging Nederland). It is changing name. Since the end of January 2026 checkouts show iDEAL | Wero, all Dutch banks connect to Wero in October 2026, and the switch has to be finished by the end of 2027. Customers keep paying through their own bank (update, July 2026).

What changes is the plumbing behind the counter, and that is the work of your payment provider and your builder. Ask them how they are handling it. If you only sell services and take no money online, skip this: a phone number and a form are enough.

Sites rarely break all at once. They drift. In our check, 11.4% still showed a year of 2023 or older in the footer, the small tell of a page nobody has looked at in a while.

Put one person in charge, and put the check in the calendar.

Twenty minutes of preparation saves days of back-and-forth.

Then talk to two or three builders and ask the five questions. If you'd like a fixed price for one page, tell EBYA what you do.

Talk to EBYA ↗