What You'll Build
- A professional consulting website with:
- Contact form that captures leads to a database
- SEO-optimized pages (meta titles, descriptions, sitemap)
- Custom domain with SSL
- Mobile-responsive design
- Ready for Google and AI search engines
Tool: Lovable (no coding needed) Time: ~30 minutes Cost: $25/month Lovable + ~$10/year domain
Step 1: Why NOT WordPress
WordPress requires hosting setup, plugin management, security updates, and a developer when things break. Lovable gives you:
The result looks identical to a WordPress site. The experience is completely different. And you own the code — export to GitHub anytime.
Step 2: Write Your Founding Prompt
Go to lovable.dev → New Project. The most important rule: describe everything at once. Don't say "make me a website."
Copy and customize this:
Build a professional consulting website for [Your Name / Company Name]. Pages needed: - Home: Hero section with headline, subheadline, and a 'Book a Call' CTA button - Services: List of 3-5 services with descriptions - About: Bio, photo placeholder, credentials - Case Studies: 2-3 client result examples with metrics - Contact: Form with name, email, company, message fields Design: Clean, professional, minimal. Dark navy and white color scheme. SEO: Add proper meta titles and descriptions to every page. Include an XML sitemap. The contact form should send submissions to [your@email.com]. Mobile responsive. Fast loading.
Replace the brackets with your real info. Mention your industry, target clients, and tone.
Checkpoint: Lovable generates a full preview with all pages visible in the left sidebar.
Step 3: Refine with Follow-Up Prompts
After the first generation, fix specific things. One change at a time:
"Change the hero headline to: [Your headline]" "Make the Services section use card layout with icons" "Add a testimonials section after Services with 3 placeholder quotes" "Make the nav sticky so it stays at the top when scrolling" "Change the primary color to #1a1a2e"
If Lovable changes too much, be more specific: "Only change the headline text, do not modify anything else on the page."
Checkpoint: You're happy with how it looks in the preview.
Step 4: Connect Contact Form to Supabase
Click the Supabase icon in Lovable → Connect → Create new project.
Then tell Lovable:
"Connect the contact form to Supabase. When someone submits the form, save their name, email, company, and message to a 'leads' table in Supabase. Show a success message after submission."
Checkpoint: Submit a test form. Go to Supabase Dashboard → Table Editor → leads. Your test submission appears there.
You can set up email notifications in Supabase so you get an email for every new lead.
Step 5: SEO Setup
Tell Lovable to add meta tags:
"Add SEO meta tags to every page: Home page: - Title: [Your Name] | [Your Service] Consultant - Description: [2 sentence description of what you do and who you help] Services page: - Title: [Services] | [Your Name] - Description: [What services you offer] Add an XML sitemap at /sitemap.xml Add a robots.txt file that allows all crawlers. Add Open Graph tags for LinkedIn and X sharing."
AEO: Get Cited by AI Search Engines
Add an FAQ section that AI models (ChatGPT, Perplexity) can cite:
"Add an FAQ section to the home page with these questions and answers: [paste your 5 most common client questions] Use FAQ schema markup (JSON-LD) so search engines and AI models can read and cite these answers."
Checkpoint: View source on the preview. Search for meta name="description" — it should show your description.
Step 6: Deploy to Vercel
Lovable → top right → Deploy → Vercel. Sign in with GitHub if prompted. Vercel deploys in 60 seconds.
Checkpoint: Open the Vercel URL on your phone. All pages work. Forms submit.
If deploy fails, go back to Lovable: "Fix any build errors so the site deploys to Vercel." See build error fix.
Step 7: Connect Your Domain
Vercel Dashboard → Your Project → Settings → Domains → Add your domain.
Add these DNS records at your registrar:
Type: A Name: @ Value: 76.76.21.21 Type: CNAME Name: www Value: cname.vercel-dns.com
DNS takes 5-30 minutes. Vercel shows green checkmarks when live.
Checkpoint: yourname.com loads your consulting site with SSL padlock.
See domain setup guide for detailed instructions.
Step 8: Submit to Google
Go to Google Search Console → Add property → enter your domain → verify ownership.
Once verified: Sitemaps → Add sitemap → type sitemap.xml → Submit.
Google indexes new sites within 1-2 weeks. Share on LinkedIn immediately — social signals help Google find you faster.
Checkpoint: Search Console shows your sitemap as "Success."