Build and sell websites to local businesses with Claude

What you are actually selling

A house cleaner with 200 five-star reviews and no website is not missing a designer. They are missing one page a customer can be sent to. That page is a few hours of work with Claude, and it is worth real money to them because it does a job their listing cannot do: it lives at a link they own, it shows their reviews in one scroll, and it takes a booking at 11pm when they are asleep.

The reason this converts better than a normal pitch is the order you do it in. You build first, then message. They are not deciding whether to hire you. They are looking at their own business, already built, and deciding whether to keep it.

Find a business worth building for

Do not start with the business you like most. Start with the one that has the most proof already sitting in public, because proof is what makes the page look expensive.

1. 🗺️ Use three sources, not one. Facebook Marketplace under services, Google Maps (search "cleaner near me" and look for listings with reviews but no website link), and local community Facebook groups where people post their trades. Google Maps is the strongest of the three because the "website" field is either filled in or visibly empty, so you can filter in seconds.
2. ✅ Check the four qualifiers. They sell a service, not a product. They have visible reviews or testimonials. They have no website, or one that is clearly a template from years ago. And they are the person answering, not a receptionist at a 40-person firm. All four matter: the last one is what makes a same-day yes possible.
3. 📋 Copy everything into one note. Business name, the exact services listed, prices if shown, service area or suburbs, hours, phone, email, every review word for word, and the image links. The quality of your site is decided here, not in the prompt. A thin note gives you a generic page.
4. 📸 Grab the photos honestly. Use their own published photos for the preview so it looks like their business. If you win the job, ask them to send you the originals, because screenshots off a listing are low resolution and will look soft on a real screen.
5. 🧠 Note the one thing they are bad at. No pricing anywhere, no way to book outside business hours, reviews buried three scrolls down. That gap becomes the first line of your message later, and it is the difference between "I made you a website" and "I fixed the thing costing you jobs".

The build prompt

Paste your note from step one directly under this prompt. Everything specific in it comes from that note, so the longer your note, the less generic the page.

Build me a complete, single-page website for a local service business as an interactive artifact I can preview and share. Everything you need is in the business notes I have pasted at the bottom of this message, so use their real name, their real services, their real suburbs, their real hours and their real reviews, and never invent a fact, a price, a qualification or a testimonial that is not in my notes.

Build these sections in this order: a hero with the business name, a one-line promise in plain language, the suburbs they cover and a primary button that scrolls to the booking form; a services section as cards with the real service names and any prices I gave you, marked "from" if the price varies; a short "why people book them" strip with three concrete trust points pulled only from the notes, for example years operating, number of reviews, insured, police checked; a reviews section showing the real review text with the reviewer's first name only; a simple gallery grid using the image URLs in my notes with descriptive alt text; a booking form asking for name, phone, email, suburb, service wanted, and preferred day and time, with a friendly confirmation message on submit; and a footer with phone, email, service area and hours.

Design rules: warm and trustworthy rather than corporate, one accent colour drawn from their existing branding or photos, a clean web-safe font pairing, generous spacing, and large tap targets. It has to look right on a phone first because that is where every one of their customers will open it, so build mobile-first and then let it scale up. Keep it to a single self-contained HTML file with the CSS and any JavaScript inline, no external libraries or frameworks, and no images other than the URLs I gave you.

Before you build, list any detail you are missing that would make the page weaker and ask me for it. After you build, tell me plainly which parts of the page are placeholder text I need to confirm with the business owner.

Build it and get a shareable link

1. 💬 Open Claude and paste the prompt. Go to claude.ai or open the desktop app. Artifacts (the live preview panel) are supported on Free, Pro, Max, Team and Enterprise plans, so you do not need a subscription to do this (artifacts, official article).
2. 👀 Watch it render on the right. The site appears in a panel beside the chat and you can click through it, scroll it and use the form. This is your proof that it works before anyone else sees it.
3. 🔁 Fix it in single sentences. "Make the hero photo full width." "Move the reviews above the services." "Their brand colour is closer to forest green." One change per message beats a paragraph of edits, because you can see exactly what each one did.
4. 📱 Check it at phone width. Narrow the artifact panel or open the published link on your actual phone. If the booking form is cramped or the hero text wraps badly, say so and let Claude fix it. Every recipient of your message will open it on a phone.
5. 🚀 Publish it to get the public link. Click Publish in the artifact. That creates a public link anyone can open without a Claude account, and it also files the artifact in the Artifacts section of your sidebar so you can find it again (publish and share artifacts).
6. 🧠 Know the one-way door. If you unpublish an artifact you cannot publish that same one again, you have to create a new one. So publish when the page is ready to be seen, not while you are still moving things around.

Make the booking form actually send

This is the step that turns a demo into a deliverable, and it is the reason you can charge for this rather than showing off. It takes about ten minutes and costs nothing on a free plan.

1. ⬇️ Get the code out of the artifact. In the lower right of the artifact panel you can view the underlying code, copy it, or download it. Save it as index.html in a new folder on your desktop.
2. 📨 Ask Claude to wire the form. Tell it: "Add the netlify attribute and a name to the booking form so Netlify Forms captures submissions, and add a hidden honeypot field for spam." It is a two-attribute change to your HTML form (Netlify Forms setup).
3. 🌐 Drag the folder to Netlify Drop. Open app.netlify.com/drop, drag your folder in, and you get a live URL in seconds. Free, no card, no build step.
4. ✅ Turn form detection on. In the Netlify dashboard go to Forms and select Enable form detection, then redeploy the site so it scans your HTML. Submissions then land in the dashboard and can be emailed to the business owner.
5. 🧪 Send yourself a test booking. Fill in the form on the live URL like a customer would and confirm it lands. Never hand over a form you have not submitted yourself once.
6. 💰 Know the cost honestly. Netlify's free plan is free forever with hard monthly limits that cannot be exceeded or bill you, and a shared credit allowance covers deploys, bandwidth and form submissions. A one-page local business site sits comfortably inside it (Netlify pricing). If they want their own domain, that is on them and it is usually somewhere around $15 to $30 a year.

The outreach message

One message, sent as a person, to the business you actually built for. Not a template blast.

Write me a short first message to send to a local business owner whose website I have already built as a free preview. Here is who they are and what I noticed: [paste the business name, what they do, and the specific gap you spotted, for example "no way for anyone to book outside business hours" or "their 90 five-star reviews are buried inside a listing"]. The link I am sending is: [paste your published artifact link].

Write it the way a real person messages another real person, not the way an agency writes. Under 80 words. Open by referring to something specific and true about their actual business so it is obvious this was not sent to fifty people. Say plainly that I built them a page and that the link is already live so they can look at it right now on their phone. Do not use the words opportunity, solution, leverage, elevate or reach out, do not use exclamation marks, and do not compliment them in a way that sounds like flattery.

Do not ask for a call, do not attach a price and do not describe my process. End with one low-pressure question that is easy to answer with one line, for example whether they want me to change anything on it. Then give me two alternative versions: one slightly warmer and more casual, and one shorter and more direct, so I can pick based on how they write in their own listing.

Then the part almost everyone skips, which is what you say when they reply and go quiet, or reply with a question about price:

They replied to my message. Here is exactly what they said: [paste their reply word for word]. Help me answer it well.

First tell me what they are actually asking underneath the words, because "how much" often means "is this a real thing or a scam" and "let me think about it" often means "I do not know what happens next". Then write my reply in the same casual register they used, under 70 words, answering the real question directly and without hedging.

If they asked about price, quote it plainly with what is included and what is not, and do not apologise for it or pad it with justification. If they went quiet, write a single follow-up I can send about a week later that adds something genuinely useful rather than checking in, for example that I noticed their listing does not show their hours and I have added them to the page. If they raised an objection, address the specific objection and nothing else, and tell me honestly if the right answer is to let this one go.

How to price the first ones

Price on what the page does for them, and keep the first few low enough that saying yes is easy. Your first job is not revenue, it is a screenshot of a real business using something you built.

Hand it over so it is really theirs

1. 🌐 Put it on their domain. If they own one, add it as a custom domain in Netlify and point the DNS. If they do not, buy one in their business name and register it to them, never to you. The site living at a domain they own is the difference between a favour and an asset.
2. 📨 Route the form to their inbox. Set the form notification email to their address, not yours, and send one final test booking so they see it arrive.
3. 📄 Give them the file. Send the index.html and the images in a folder. They will almost certainly never open it, and handing it over is what makes you the person they call again rather than the person holding their business hostage.
4. 🧠 Write the one-page handover note. Ask Claude for a plain-English note covering where the site lives, how to see new bookings, what to email you for, and what it costs each year. Two paragraphs, no jargon.
5. 💌 Ask for the testimonial while they are happy. The day it goes live, ask for two sentences about what changed. Ask then, not in a month.

Proof

• Artifacts, what they are and which plans have them: support.claude.com
• Publishing an artifact to get a public link: publish and share artifacts
• Facebook Commerce Policies, the services clause: facebook.com/policies/commerce
• Free hosting by dragging a folder: Netlify Drop, and GitHub Pages if you would rather use Git
• Making the booking form send: Netlify Forms setup and Netlify pricing