The website you have been meaning to make
Every step in the order it actually happens — including the ones you can skip, which is most of the ones you were dreading.
A real Clay site — built from a Google listing
The reason it has not happened is not that website builders are hard. It is that the first screen is empty, and filling it means finding forty photographs, retyping your opening hours and writing a paragraph about yourself, on a Sunday.
Clay starts at the other end. Search your business name, and about a minute later there is a finished site at name.clay.site with your photographs, your hours, your map and your reviews already on it. Then you change the parts that are wrong. Nothing is typed in before you see it, and no account is needed to look.
How it works
-
1
Search your business
Type your name — Clay pulls your photos, hours, reviews and contact details straight from your Google listing.
-
2
Pick a style
Choose a look and Clay builds a full site around your content. Change anything with a tap — no code, no templates to wrestle.
-
3
You're online
Publish to your own name.clay.site in minutes. Add a custom domain and connect your own tools whenever you're ready.
Almost none of it is preparation
The part people spend a weekend on is already done. Your name, your address, your opening hours, your photographs and your reviews are sitting on your Google Business Profile, and that is the whole of what a first version needs.
So the honest preparation is half an hour on Google rather than an evening on a website. Fix the hours, delete the photograph from four years ago, add the one you took last week. Whatever is wrong there will be wrong on the site, because the site is built out of it.
There is nothing else to gather. No logo file, no colour, no copy written in advance, no domain and no account — a model looks at your photographs and picks the design before you have decided anything.
Four pages, not fourteen
A business site is a home page, a way to see what you do, a way to reach you and a way to find you. A menu, a shop or booking each earns its own page once you have one, and a feature with nothing in it is not on the site at all — no empty band, no dead link in the bar.
What does not go on it: a blog, an events calendar, a mailing list you send from, a photo gallery page, a second language. Clay has none of those on purpose. The pages that get somebody through the door are the four they actually open.
And you do not arrange it. The navigation holds four links and your one main button; whether a picture sits left or right is decided by what is in the band and by the theme, never by you. That is the trade — no blank canvas, and no evening lost to one.
What you get
Your listing is the first draft
Name, photographs, hours, map, rating and reviews come off your Google Business Profile, so the first page you see is about your business.
Editing is standing on the page
Tap the band you want to change and its panel opens beside it. There is no Save button, and there is undo.
The address now, a domain later
It is live at name.clay.site for nothing. A domain of your own comes with Pro, and the clay.site address keeps working after you connect it.
Questions
What do I need before I start?
A Google Business Profile with your real hours and a few decent photographs on it. Nothing else — no logo, no domain, no copy written in advance, no account. If you have no listing yet, make that first; it is the page most of your customers already see: a website from your Google listing.
How long does it actually take?
The generation is about a minute, measured. The part that takes a real half hour is reading it afterwards — every price, every opening time, the paragraph about you — because the words are written from your reviews and your listing, and some of them will be slightly off.
Can I move things around?
No. You pick one of four themes and get two dials on it, an accent colour and light or dark, and the arrangement follows what is in each band. There is no drag-and-drop canvas, no font picker and no custom CSS. That is exactly why there is no weekend to lose.
How do I know when it is done?
When the hours, the prices and the phone number are right, and the one button at the top does the thing you most want a stranger to do. That is the whole test. Publishing asks for an email and a password of at least eight characters, and it goes live with a small badge on it: what free covers, and what it does not.
What if I have no good photographs?
Start with the ones on your Google listing — they are usually better than people remember, and they are already the pictures customers see. Where there is nothing usable the page is drawn without pictures rather than filled with stock: a stranger's kitchen on your site is worse than a plain page.
Real sites, made with Clay
Open one. It is the live site in a frame, not a screenshot — so what you see is what it looks like right now.
The website you have been meaning to make
Search your business name. What comes back is a real site at a real address, and you have not typed anything in yet.