Do I really need a website for my business? For almost every business that sells to people who search before they buy: yes, and a small one, five pages, is enough. For a business that gets all its work from referrals, a marketplace or a single platform, and has more work than it can take, no, or not yet, and a Google Business Profile plus a social profile will do the job a website would. The honest answer depends on three questions rather than on the year: do your customers look you up before they contact you, does anyone else own the channel your customers currently find you on, and would a stranger who found you tonight be able to decide and act. This post works through those three, what a site actually does that the alternatives do not, what the minimum useful site costs, and the cases where I tell people not to bother yet.
Do I really need a website for my business? Three questions
| Question | If yes | If no |
|---|---|---|
| Do customers look you up before contacting you? | You need a site; the lookup is happening whether you have one or not, and without one they find a competitor or a stale directory listing | A profile may be enough for now |
| Does someone else own your main channel (Instagram, Etsy, Upwork, a franchise site)? | You need a site; an algorithm change or a suspended account can end the business overnight | Less urgent, but the answer rarely stays no |
| Would a stranger who found you tonight be able to decide and act? | If not, a site with prices, proof and a booking or contact route fixes that | You already have that route somewhere; make sure it is yours |
What does a website do that a Google profile or Instagram does not?
- Answers the questions that lead to a sale: what exactly you do, for whom, where, what it costs, what happens next. A profile has a bio field; a site has a page per question.
- Ranks for what you sell, not only your name. “Emergency plumber [town]” or “brand photographer [city]” can only be won by a page you control; local SEO for small businesses explains how a profile and a site work together.
- Belongs to you. Platforms change rules, throttle reach, suspend accounts and shut down. A domain and a site move with you.
- Takes the booking or the order at 11pm without you, with a form, a calendar or a checkout.
- Carries the proof: reviews, case studies, the portfolio, the before-and-after, arranged so they persuade rather than scroll past.
- Makes everything else work harder. Ads, flyers, QR codes, email signatures and social posts all need somewhere to send people.
Showit’s take on the question and Wix’s both land on yes, unsurprisingly for website platforms; the aluminium supplier Wix quotes attributes half his sales to the site’s shop and the other half to leads that also came through the site. The more useful evidence is your own: ask the last ten customers how they found you and what they looked at before calling.
When do you not need a website (yet)?
- You are fully booked from referrals and do not want to grow. A Business Profile with reviews keeps the name findable.
- You sell only through a marketplace (Etsy, Amazon, eBay) and are not yet ready to build a direct channel. Register the domain now anyway; it costs $15 and stops someone else taking it.
- You are testing an idea and do not know yet what you sell or to whom. A landing page or a coming soon page with an email box is enough until you do.
- A single social channel genuinely is the business (a creator, a local community group) and the audience lives there. Even then, a one-page site with a link list you own is cheap insurance.
- You cannot maintain it. A site with a wrong phone number and 2023 prices is worse than none; if nobody will update it, choose a platform that needs no maintenance and keep it to five pages.
What is the minimum website that is worth having?
| Page | Content | Time to write |
|---|---|---|
| Home | What you do, for whom, where, one button | An hour |
| Services (or one page per service) | What is included, who it suits, a starting price | An hour each |
| About | Who you are, a photo, why you | An hour |
| Proof | Reviews, work, results | Collect over a week |
| Contact | Form, phone, email, hours, map | Twenty minutes |
That is the five-page site, and it does the whole job for most service businesses. How to organise website pages covers the structure and why design matters covers the five decisions that make it convert. A shop adds a catalogue; a content business adds a blog; nobody needs twenty pages on day one.
What does it cost?
| Route | Upfront | Ongoing | Suits |
|---|---|---|---|
| DIY on Squarespace or similar | $0 plus your weekends | $16 to $50 a month | Owners with time and a clear offer |
| Template plus a designer to set it up | $500 to $1,500 | $16 to $50 a month | Most small businesses |
| Custom design | $2,000 to $10,000+ | Hosting plus maintenance | Businesses where the site is the main sales channel |
| Free builder on a subdomain | $0 | $0, with ads and no domain | Testing an idea, nothing else |
Whether $1,500 is a good price for a website breaks down the middle row, and custom design versus a theme the decision between the second and third.
What happens to businesses without a website?
They keep trading on referrals and stay invisible to everyone else. The customer who searches “[service] near me” finds the competitor with a site. The customer who was referred looks the business up, finds only a Facebook page last updated in spring, and calls the competitor instead. The supplier or partner who wants to link to the business has nowhere to link. None of that shows up as a loss on any report, which is why businesses without a site rarely feel the cost; it arrives as the growth that did not happen. Most of the clients I build for come to me at the point where referrals stopped being enough, and the first thing we build is the five-page version above, on whichever platform fits.
Frequently asked questions
If your customers look you up before contacting you, if someone else owns the channel they find you on, or if a stranger could not decide and act from what is online now, yes. A five-page site covers most businesses. If you are fully booked from referrals and do not want to grow, a Google Business Profile can be enough for now.
For a business that lives on that platform, temporarily. It cannot rank for what you sell, you do not own it, and it answers few of the questions customers have before buying. Most businesses outgrow it within a year.
The profile wins the map pack for your name and category; the site wins searches for your services and holds the detail, proof and booking route. They work together, and the profile links to the site.
Five: home, services, about, proof and contact. One page per service if you offer several. Add a shop or a blog only when there is a reason.
From free (DIY on a builder plus the monthly plan) to $500 to $1,500 for a template set up by a designer, and $2,000 upwards for custom design. Ongoing costs are $16 to $50 a month on a builder or hosting plus maintenance on WordPress.
Customers who search for your service find competitors, referred customers who look you up find nothing current and hesitate, and partners have nowhere to link. Nothing shows on a report; the referrals simply stop being enough.
