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Does a small business need a website?
Not always, and a website company saying so is the point of this page. Here is when you can skip it, when not having one is quietly costing you work, and the free way to find out which you are.
Does a small business need a website is a question that gets a different answer depending on who you ask. Ask a web designer and the answer is yes before you finish the sentence. Ask the plumber with a full book from referrals and the answer is a shrug. Both are right about their own case, so the useful answer is to work out which case you are in.
When you do not need one
Three businesses that can honestly skip it
A one person operation with a full book
If every job comes from the last job, you turn work away, and you have no plan to grow, a website is a cost with no return. Keep your Google Business Profile accurate and get on with it.
A business that sells to a handful of known clients
A subcontractor working for the same three builders, a bookkeeper with a settled list. Your customers are not searching for you, so being findable changes nothing.
A business about to change
Selling up, retiring, moving suburbs or changing the name next year. Wait, then build the right one once.
When you do
The signs that not having one is costing you
People search for you and find a competitor
If someone types your trade and suburb into Google and you are not there, the job went to whoever was. That search happens whether or not you have a site.
You are asked the same questions every day
Hours, prices, do you do this, where do you go. A site answers them while you work. Without one, every answer is a phone call you have to take.
A new customer wants to check you are real
Word of mouth gets you the name. The customer still looks you up before they ring, and a name with nothing behind it reads as a risk.
You want to charge more
A site with real photos of real work, a licence number and clear prices lets you be chosen on quality instead of on the cheapest quote.
A Facebook page is not a website
What a page cannot do
A Facebook page is useful and it is free. It is not a website. It is not in your name, it shows your competitors' ads next to your posts, it does not come up for a search like plumber Manly on Google in the way a page on your own domain does, and the day the platform changes its rules you have nothing to move. A website on your own domain is the one place online that is yours, and the page can point at it. Keep the page, and give it a site of your own to point at.
The cost of not having one
Framed without made up numbers
We are not going to quote a statistic about what percentage of customers look you up, because those figures get copied from site to site and nobody checks them. Here is the honest version. Count the enquiries you got last month. Now think about how many people searched for your trade in your area and rang someone else because you were not there to find. You cannot see that number, which is the point. A site costs a few hundred dollars once. One job it brings in usually pays for it.
The free way to find out
See your own site before you decide
Tell us the business name and what you do. We build a mockup of your own site and send it over. If you look at it and think it would not bring you a job, that is the end of it and it has cost you nothing. If you look at it and think yes, that is the one, a 25% deposit starts the build and the rest is due when it is live. Prices are on the websites page, and the examples show what a finished one looks like for your trade.
Fair questions
What people ask before deciding
Do small businesses need websites if they are on Google Maps?
Is a website worth it for a sole trader?
What is the cheapest way to get a website for a small business?
How many pages does a small business website need?
Free mockup
See whether it is worth it, for free
Tell us the business name and what you do. We build a mockup of your own site and send it over. If you do not like it, that is the end of it and it has cost you nothing.