Probably yes, but not for the reason most guides give. You do not need a website because every business has one. You need one when people are going to look for you, and you want to be the one who answers their questions. If that is already happening, or about to, build one. If it is not, there are a few honest cases where you can wait, and this covers them too.
Do I need a website for my business?
Think about what you do yourself. Someone recommends a business, or you see a van, a stall or a post. Before you spend money, you look it up. You are checking it is real, what it does, roughly what it costs, and whether it looks like it will turn up. Your customers do exactly the same to you.
A website is the one place that answers those questions in your words. Without one, the answer is whatever a search happens to turn up: a half-finished listing, someone else’s review, a social profile that needs a login to read. People rarely complain about that. They just go to the next name.
Do I really need a website for my business if I already have social media?
Social media is useful, and it is also rented. The account sits on somebody else’s platform, in their layout, under rules they can change. Posts scroll away, a search for your trade does not reliably find them, and plenty of people will not make an account just to look at your page.
A website is the part you own. It stays put, it can be found by someone who has never heard of you, and it is what your social profiles, your Google listing and a printed card can all point to. Keep the social media. Give it somewhere to send people.
Do I need a website for my small business?
People ask it that way a lot, and the size of the business is the wrong thing to measure. A sole trader and a company with fifty staff face the same test: do strangers look you up before they get in touch? What changes with size is how much the site has to do. For one person it can be a few pages: what you do, where, how to reach you, a few examples of your work. A bigger business may need more, but the question you start from is the same.
When you can wait: the “not yet” cases
A website is not always the next thing to spend on. Here are the situations where we would say hold off.
- You live on word of mouth and it is working. If every customer comes through someone they already know and nobody ever asks “have you got a website?”, the site would mostly sit there. Watch for the day a referral says they checked you out first.
- You are fully booked. If you are turning work away, more enquiries is not your problem. Spend the money on capacity or on keeping the customers you have.
- You are testing an idea. If you have not yet sold anything, find out whether anyone will pay before you build a permanent home for it. A simple page, a social profile or a few real conversations will tell you.
Even then, do one thing now: set up a free Google listing. It costs nothing but an hour, it puts your hours and phone number in front of anyone who searches, and it takes the edge off most of the gaps above. Our Google Business Profile setup guide walks through it in order. Do it in your own Google account, not someone else’s.
Should I have a website for my business now, or later?
Now, if the signs below describe you. Later, if the cases above do. A website starts paying for itself when any of these is true:
- Customers ask for a website, or for details you keep typing out by hand: prices, hours, what you cover, how it works.
- You want work from people who do not know you, and Google is where they will look.
- You are quoting for jobs or contracts where the buyer will check you out before replying.
- You are tired of answering the same five questions in messages, and a page could answer them once.
- You want to take bookings, orders or enquiries outside the hours you are at your phone.
One enquiry that turns into a job is often enough to cover the cost of a site, and a good one keeps producing them. The test is simple. Work out what a single new customer is worth to you, and ask whether you would expect the site to bring in even one.
What a website costs, so you can decide
Cost is usually what stops first-timers, partly because most places will not print a price. Ours is on the label: an Onlineify build starts at £1,950, excluding VAT, paid once. There is no Onlineify subscription. The site runs on free hosting in your own account, so the only thing you are guaranteed to pay for afterwards is your domain renewal, at cost. The full breakdown, including what each size includes and what moves the price, is on what a website costs. Whether to build it yourself or pay someone is a separate question: is it worth paying someone to build a website?
Whoever builds yours, check three things before you pay: what the total is, what you pay after launch, and whether the domain, the hosting and the files are in your name. If they are not, you are renting your website.
A sensible order of work for a first-timer
- Set up and verify your Google listing, so people who search find your hours and number.
- Write down the five questions customers ask you most. They are the pages of your site.
- Decide what you want a visitor to do: ring, book, buy or fill in a form. One main action, easy to find.
- Build the site, in accounts registered to you, and point your listing and social profiles at it.
- Check it on your phone, on mobile data, as a stranger would.
If you already have a site and are not sure it is doing the job, our free website audit shows what a visitor and Google can and cannot see.