Do I need a website for my business?
For most businesses, yes — but not for the reason you'd expect. A website isn't there to look nice. It's there to be the one place you own, working for you around the clock, where a stranger decides whether to trust you.
Here's the honest version, though: if you're a sole trader who fills the diary by word of mouth and referral, you can get a long way on a good Google Business Profile and an active page or two on social media. Plenty do.
What a website does that the rest can't
The catch with social media is that you're renting the ground you stand on. The platform owns the audience, sets the rules, and can change both tomorrow. Your website is yours. Nobody can throttle it, restyle it, or switch it off.
And it works when you don't. Someone finds you at eleven on a Sunday night, reads enough to trust you, and leaves an enquiry while you're asleep. A social post can't be found six months later by the person searching for exactly what you do. A website can — that's the whole point of being findable.
When it genuinely earns its keep
The moment being chosen matters — when a customer compares you against two others before they call, when the job's worth enough that they do their homework first — a considered website stops being a nicety and becomes the thing that wins the work. It's the handshake before the hello.
The honest bit
A bad website is worse than none — a slow, confusing, dated site can lose you the customer a blank page never would have. So the question isn't really "do I need a website," it's "do I need one that actually works." That, we'd argue, is always yes.
See where you stand
Already have a site and not sure it's pulling its weight? We'll tell you, plainly, and for free.