Plan the pages and content for a real local business or your own brand

Everything you've learned has been practice on your own pages. The capstone is different: you build a real website for a real local business (or your own brand), put it on the internet with a link anyone can open, test it on a real phone, and write up how you did it.

When you finish, you won't have "done an HTML course". You'll have a live site, a business owner who can vouch for you, and a case study you can send with a job application or show a client. That's what this module is for.

It starts with the part beginners skip and professionals never skip: planning, before a single tag.

Words in this lesson

What you're building

Three pages, the shape you set up at the end of Module 6:

Three pages is deliberate. A small business doesn't need twelve, and a finished three-page site beats an abandoned ten-page one.

Choosing your business

The best capstone subject is a real small business you can actually talk to: a relative's shop, a friend's catering business, the tailor, barber, salon, phone repairer, bakery or POS agent you use. Look for one that:

• has no website, or a poor one, and currently relies on WhatsApp and word of mouth
• will answer your questions and give you real information
• has, or will let you take, real photos of their work

If you truly can't find one, build for your own brand: a freelance service you'd genuinely offer, or the portfolio you'll use to find work. It must still be real. No invented business, no lorem ipsum.

Get permission first

A published website is public. The business's name, photos, phone number and address will be visible to anyone. Ask the owner before you publish any of it, and tell them plainly what will be online. If a photo shows a customer or a staff member, they need to be happy with it too.

If the owner wants to try the site before putting their real details on it, build with placeholders clearly marked as such, and swap in the real details once they've agreed.

The conversation

Sit down with the owner, in person or on a call, for twenty to thirty minutes. Write the answers down. These questions give you almost everything the site needs:

About the business

1. In one sentence, what do you sell or do?
2. Who are your best customers?
3. Where are you, and which areas do you serve or deliver to?
4. How long have you been doing this, and how did you start?
5. What do customers say makes you better than the others?

About what customers need 6. What are the three questions customers ask you most often? 7. What prices are you happy to show publicly? ("From ₦…" is fine.) 8. What are your opening hours, and how quickly do you reply to messages?

About getting in touch 9. How do customers contact you now: WhatsApp, calls, walking in? 10. Which number and email should go on the site, and are you happy for them to be public?

About the site 11. If this website works, what happens? More WhatsApp enquiries? More bookings? People finding the shop? 12. Do you have photos of your work, your shop and yourself, and may I use them?

Question 11 matters most. Its answer is the site's one job.

Define the one job

Write it down in a single sentence:

This site exists to get people in Aba who need a suit made to send Ndidi a WhatsApp message or an enquiry.

Every decision from here gets checked against it. Does the home page make that easy within five seconds on a phone? Does every page lead there? If a section doesn't serve the one job, it's a candidate for cutting.

Plan every page before building it

For each page, write the heading outline (Module 2), then the real content under each heading. Do it in a plain document, not in HTML. Words first; markup is easy once the words exist.

A home page plan might look like this:

HOME — index.html
Title:       Bespoke Suits and Alterations in Aba - Ndidi Tailoring
Description: Bespoke suits cut to your measurements from ₦85,000, plus
             alterations and aso-ebi for groups. Ngwa Road, Aba.

h1  Ndidi Tailoring
    One-line promise: Suits cut to fit you, made in Aba since 2014.
    Main action: Chat on WhatsApp / Send an enquiry
h2  What We Make
    h3  Bespoke suits      — from ₦85,000, 3 weeks
    h3  Alterations        — from ₦2,500, 2 days
    h3  Aso-ebi for groups — from ₦18,000 per person
h2  How It Works
    ol: message us → measurements → fitting → collect
h2  What Customers Say
    two short real quotes, with permission
h2  Visit or Message Us
    area, hours, link to contact page

Do the same for About (story, people, gallery with alt text drafted for every photo) and Contact (form fields from Module 5, address, map, hours, every contact link).

A content checklist

Before you write any HTML, you should have:

• The one job, in one sentence
• A title and meta description for each page (Module 6)
• The heading outline for each page
• Real text under every heading, with no placeholders you can't fill
• A list of photos, each with drafted alt text (Module 3)
• Every contact detail confirmed by the owner: phone in local and international format, WhatsApp link, email, address, hours
• The owner's permission to publish all of it

Anything unticked is a gap you'd otherwise discover halfway through building.

Photos

Real photos are the single biggest difference between a site that feels trustworthy and one that doesn't. Stock photos of smiling models are the fastest way to look fake.

• Ask for the photos they already have. Many businesses have dozens on WhatsApp Status or Instagram.
• Take your own if needed: good daylight, a clean background, the phone held steady, landscape for wide shots.
• Keep the originals in your -working folder (Module 6) and put only resized, compressed versions in images/ (Module 3).
• Name them by content as you go: agbada-navy-lace.webp, not IMG_4821.jpg.

Protect the scope

Owners get excited, and that's good. You'll hear: "Can it also have online payment? A blog? A login for customers?"

Write every idea down in a "later" list, and say honestly: "Those need more than HTML. This version does the one job well, and we can plan the rest after." Then build the three pages. Finishing is the skill.

Common mistakes

The short version

• The capstone is a real site for a real business, published, with the owner's permission.
• Get permission first, and be clear about what you're doing and what they get.
• Decide the one job the site must do — usually "make it easy to contact us".
• Collect the content before you build. Waiting on text and photos is what stalls real projects.
• Photos are almost always the bottleneck. Ask early, and be ready to work with what a phone camera gives you.
• Protect the scope. Three pages, finished, beats eight pages half-built.

Try it yourself

1. Choose your business, and get the owner's agreement to take part.
2. Have the conversation, using the twelve questions. Write the answers down.
3. Write the site's one job in a single sentence.
4. Write the full plan for all three pages: title, description, heading outline and real content.
5. Collect the photos, get permission for every one, and put the originals in your -working folder.
6. Confirm every contact detail with the owner, in writing if possible, such as a WhatsApp message.
7. Start your "later" list.
8. Show the plan to the owner and ask one question: "If a stranger read this, would they know exactly what you do and how to reach you?" Fix whatever they say.

Next lesson turns the home page plan into HTML.

You'll know you've got it when you can state the site's one job in a sentence, and you have the content in hand before writing any markup.