Do I actually need a website?

When you probably do not need one yet

We will say this plainly, and it costs us work: plenty of small businesses do not need a website. If all of the following are true, spend the money elsewhere:

• You are as busy as you want to be, on word of mouth and repeat custom.
• You have a complete Google Business Profile with genuine reviews.
• You are not trying to grow, enter a new area, or add a service.
• Your customers find you through a channel that already works — a trade body, a marketplace, a referral network.
• You genuinely have nobody to keep it updated.

When you genuinely do

These are the situations where the absence of a website is actively costing you:

• You want work from people who have never heard of you. A Business Profile gets you found; a website is what convinces them.
• You are competing on anything other than price. There is nowhere else to show why you are worth more.
• You sell something that needs explaining, comparing or picturing.
• You want to reach a specific area or a specific trade. Local and niche pages are the mechanism.
• You are asked "have you got a website?" and have to say no, which reads as smaller than you are.
• You want to sell online, take bookings, or stop answering the same question forty times a week.

Is social media enough instead?

A Facebook page is not a website, for three practical reasons. You do not control it — reach, rules and format change without notice, and an account can be suspended with no appeal that reaches a human. It is poor at search — people looking for "emergency electrician Mansfield" are on Google, not scrolling a feed. And it is chronological — your prices and services scroll away, while a website has a page that stays put.

Social is genuinely valuable for staying visible to people who already know you. It is weak at being found by people who do not, and that is usually the job you actually need doing.

The minimum that is worth having

If you decide yes, the smallest useful version is smaller than most people think. Five pages, clear about what you do and where, a phone number that is one tap away on a phone, honest prices or at least a range, and some proof you exist and are competent.

That is a £250 job with us and it will outperform a great many £3,000 sites that are slow, vague about pricing and bury the phone number. Start there and add to it when the enquiries justify it.