In short and in plain language
You have registered a business. From now on, customers look for you. So you need a website soon.
The imprint is the page with your details as the provider. Much of what it needs is already in your papers. What goes in depends on your legal form.
If you use the small business rule for VAT, put a note under every price.
A few pages are enough to start. These are the home page, contact and the imprint. Everything else can come later. What matters is that every enquiry gets an answer.
Our small package covers just this start. Later you can add more pages.
The trade licence is on the table, the date on it is official, and with it a deadline starts that nobody spells out: from now on, someone is looking for you. In the first half of 2026 around 352,400 businesses were newly founded in Germany (Destatis, press release of 14 August 2026), each of them with the same stack of paper and the same question about what has to be online first. Much of the answer is already in the registration papers: the legal form decides what belongs in the imprint, the small-business status decides the line under every price, and the entry in the register of craft trades decides which professional title you may use. This article walks through those dependencies in order and separates what has to stand on launch day from what may follow four weeks later.
Key takeaways
- The trigger is the trip to the registration office, not the wish for a website: in the first half of 2026 the Federal Statistical Office counted around 352,400 new business start-ups, 8.3 percent more than a year earlier (Destatis).
- The imprint grows out of the registration papers. Section 5 DDG requires name and address, and for legal entities also the legal form and the authorised representative – easily recognisable and directly accessible.
- If you use the small-business rule, say so under every price. Section 19 of the German VAT Act applies as long as total turnover did not exceed 25,000 euros in the previous calendar year and does not exceed 100,000 euros in the current one.
- Three pages carry the launch: a home page with service and area, a contact page with a route that actually gets answered, and the imprint. Four further pages may wait until week four.
- The Fiscal Code sets a one-month deadline for notifying the opening of a business (Section 138 AO). That is exactly the window in which it is decided whether the first prospects find anything at all.
What is already fixed in the founding week
Registering a trade is an administrative act with a date on it. Section 14 of the German Trade Regulation Act puts it plainly: anyone who starts the independent operation of a standing trade must notify the competent authority at the same time – not later, and not once the website is finished. Under Section 15 of the same act the authority certifies receipt of the notification within three days. That gives you the trade licence, and it already carries most of the details that later appear in the imprint: the name, the address, the registered activity. For a small business that is good news, because work on the content does not start from nothing but from a stack of paper that answers half the list of questions.
Trade licence
Name, address and the registered activity. Those three lines become the head of the imprint and the headline of the home page.
Legal form
Sole trader, partnership, UG or GmbH: for legal entities Section 5 DDG additionally requires the legal form and the authorised representative.
Tax registration questionnaire
The questionnaire for tax registration is where you decide whether to use the small-business rule. That answer sets the note under every price.
Craft trade card
A craft trade requiring authorisation presupposes entry in the register of craft trades. That entry carries the professional title you may put on the site.
Address for service
The imprint needs the address at which you are established. A post office box on its own is not enough for that.
Numbers from the tax office
Your tax number does not belong on the website. Section 5 DDG asks only for a VAT identification number, and only where one actually exists.
Sorting this out first saves the two rounds that otherwise happen almost by default: a draft is written, then somebody notices that the company name reads differently than assumed, and everything goes back. Putting the papers on the table before the first line of copy means running through the route from briefing to approval once. That is not a detail: the difference between a website in two weeks and a website in two months rarely lies in the technology.
The imprint grows out of the registration papers
Section 5 of the German Digital Services Act requires service providers to keep certain information permanently available for commercial digital services that are usually offered for a fee – easily recognisable and directly accessible. The act lists eight numbered items; for a newly registered business three to five of them usually apply. Which ones depends on the legal form and on the activity, and that is why the list of mandatory details is not a form you fill in once and then forget.
- The name and the address at which you are established. For a sole trader that is the personal name, not the business designation on its own.
- For legal entities additionally the legal form and the authorised representative. A UG or GmbH therefore names its managing director.
- Details that allow fast electronic contact and direct communication, including the address for electronic mail.
- The commercial register or a similar register in which you are entered, together with the corresponding register number. Without an entry this item falls away.
- For activities subject to official authorisation, the competent supervisory authority; for chambered professions also the chamber, the statutory professional title and the state that granted it.
- A VAT identification number only where one actually exists. The tax number issued by the tax office is not what is meant here and has no place on the site.
In the trades one more question comes up that does not arise elsewhere. Section 1 of the German Crafts Code provides that the independent operation of a craft trade requiring authorisation as a standing trade is permitted only to natural persons, legal entities and partnerships entered in the register of craft trades, the Handwerksrolle. That entry is therefore the basis for the professional title on the site. Using such a title without the entry is not a design problem but a trade-law problem – the website merely makes it visible.
The deadline running alongside the registration
The small-business rule and the line under the price
Section 19 of the German VAT Act governs the taxation of small businesses, and the threshold is stated unambiguously in the text of the law: turnover is exempt if total turnover did not exceed 25,000 euros in the previous calendar year and does not exceed 100,000 euros in the current calendar year. For the website this has a very concrete consequence. Anyone stating prices states them as total prices – Section 3 of the German Price Indication Ordinance requires traders who offer goods or services to consumers, or who advertise with prices, to state the total prices. Where no VAT is shown, the note that no VAT is charged under Section 19 belongs right next to the figure.
What the founding statistics show
The Institute for Mittelstand Research (IfM) in Bonn counts differently and arrives at the same picture: in 2025 there were around 395,000 start-ups in Germany, more than in any of the preceding ten years. The start-up intensity – start-ups per 10,000 people of working age – rose to 78.1; in the city states of Berlin and Hamburg it stood at more than 100 per 10,000 inhabitants of working age. For the website that means one thing above all: the cost frame has to be settled early, because a new business has no buffer. Spending on the site counts as business expenditure and can be written off, but a sum that is only known at the end cannot be planned in advance.
| Legal form at registration | What additionally belongs in the imprint | What else differs on the site |
|---|---|---|
| Sole trader without register entry | Personal name and an address for service; no legal form, no register | The business designation may stand alongside but does not replace the name |
| Registered merchant | Company name with legal form suffix, commercial register and the register number | Write the company name identically everywhere, including quotes and invoices |
| Civil-law partnership (GbR) | All partners by name and a joint address for service | The partnership name on its own is not enough in the imprint |
| UG (limited liability) or GmbH | Legal form, authorised representative, commercial register and register number | The liability suffix belongs in the company name, not only in the imprint |
| Craft trade requiring authorisation | Chamber of crafts, statutory professional title and the state that granted it | The professional title presupposes entry in the register of craft trades |
Three pages on launch day, the rest four weeks later
A website with seven pages takes longer than one with three, and in the first week those four extra pages bring in not a single additional enquiry. That is why the split is worth making. Of the most important pages of a small site, three are indispensable on launch day, because without them either a mandatory detail or the route to an enquiry is missing. Everything else is expansion and may wait until the first orders show which service is actually in demand.
- Home page: what you offer, for whom and in which area – in the first two sentences and without a welcome phrase.
- Contact page: phone number, email address and the hours during which somebody genuinely picks up.
- Imprint: the mandatory details under Section 5 DDG, matched to the registered legal form and activity.
- Services page: from week two, and then with the services that really came up in the first enquiries.
- References: only once an order is complete and the mention has been approved in writing.
- Prices or packages: as soon as the costing stands; where a price appears on the site, the minimum term stands next to it.
That is exactly the cut of the starter website: a few pages that are complete, instead of many pages that look half finished. The expansion comes later and does not cost a second round of groundwork, because structure, domain and mailbox are already in place.
Three mistakes that repeat themselves in week one
Reachability decides the first order
Section 5 DDG requires details that allow fast electronic contact and direct communication, including the address for electronic mail. That is the legal floor. The commercial floor is higher: an address on your own domain reads differently from a free webmail address, and it survives when other things change. In the first weeks that is not a question of style but of recognisability: quote, invoice and website carry the same name.
A number that gets answered
One phone number with honest hours beats three channels of which none is staffed. Whoever promises to call back has to do it the same day.
Address on your own domain
A mailbox on your own domain stays put even when the provider or the device changes. Setting it up takes minutes and works for years.
Hours instead of promises
Write down when you are reachable. Weekdays from 8 to 16 is a statement you can keep; a promise about response times rarely is.
Location and catchment area
Enquiries are often decided by distance. Name your base and the towns you drive to, rather than a map without borders.
A form with few fields
Name, message and a way back are enough. Every extra mandatory field is a hurdle you cannot yet judge in the first weeks.
Privacy note alongside
Anyone offering a form explains in one sentence next to it what happens with the data, and links to the full version.
A contact form with few fields is worth more in the first weeks than an elaborate enquiry system. Someone who has only just registered does not yet know what a typical enquiry looks like; every mandatory field born of an assumption may filter out the first order. Name, message, a way back – that is enough until fifteen enquiries have told you what you really need to ask.
The website of a newly registered business does not have to be complete. It has to be findable, correct and answerable – it becomes complete with the third order.
A schedule for the first four weeks
Four weeks is not an arbitrary frame. It matches the one-month deadline that the Fiscal Code sets for notifying the opening of a business, and it is enough for a site that carries. The Google Business Profile belongs in the same window, because confirming the entry takes a few days and those days are otherwise missing at the end.
- Week 1: sort the papers, secure the domain, set up the mailbox. Derive the imprint text from the trade licence and the legal form, not from a template.
- Week 1: publish the home page, the contact page and the imprint. Three complete pages are worth more than seven drafts.
- Week 2: describe your services the way you explain them on the phone. The first enquiries deliver the wording for free.
- Week 2: create the business profile and start the confirmation, so that postal delivery times do not hold things up at the end.
- Week 3: add prices or packages once the costing stands, with the total price and – where applicable – the note under Section 19 of the VAT Act.
- Week 4: add the first reference as soon as an order is complete and the mention has been approved in writing.
The cut shifts by sector. A home care service needs a recruitment page earlier, because staff are scarcer than demand. A trades business needs references earlier, because the decision is made on photographs. What stays the same is the sequence: correct and reachable first, complete afterwards.
How to approach the first weeks
Lay the trade licence, the tax registration questionnaire and – if you have one – the craft trade card side by side before the first line of copy is written. The imprint then almost writes itself, and the home page gets its headline. If your customers are older, it is worth looking first at what a site aimed at customers over 65 has to do differently: type size, phone number and form length are not side issues there.
Decide the cost side after that, not before. Whether you work at a fixed price or by the hour changes more in the founding phase than any design question: an amount known in advance can be entered into the costing that is being drawn up anyway. An hourly rate requires an estimate that you cannot seriously give in week one.
The next step
Sources and legal basis
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