Does a small business need a website?

Is a website worth it for a small business?

A website does a handful of jobs that nothing else does quite as well:

• It's yours. Directory profiles, social pages and marketplaces run on someone else's rules. Your own site and domain don't.
• It's there when people search your name. A recommendation usually ends with someone looking you up.
• It answers questions while you work. Prices, areas, hours and what happens next, without a phone call.
• It makes you look established. A clear, current site reassures people who've never met you.
• It collects enquiries. A form that comes straight to you, day or night.

A simple way to decide: put a value on one new customer, then compare it with what a site costs you in a year. If the site would need to win you one or two customers a year to pay for itself, and you think it would, it's worth it. Our website cost guide has the yearly figures for each way of getting one.

Is a Google Business Profile enough?

A Google Business Profile is free, and it's how you appear on Google Maps and in local results, so every local business should have one. But it isn't a website. It lives on Google's platform, on Google's rules, with room for only so much detail about your services.

Google used to let businesses make a simple website from their profile. It turned those off: from 5 March 2024 they redirected to the Business Profile, and from 10 June 2024 visitors got a “page not found” error. Anyone still relying on one lost it. The answer is to use both: a profile that sends people to your own website.

Is a Facebook page enough?

A Facebook page is a good extra. It isn't a replacement for a website: not everyone uses Facebook, posts scroll out of sight within days, and the page runs on Facebook's rules. A website gives people one tidy place with your services, prices, areas and contact details, and your Facebook page can link to it.

What should a small business website contain?

Most good small business websites have all of these:

1. What you do and where, said plainly in the first screen.
2. How to contact you: a phone number that taps to call on a mobile, a short enquiry form and an email address.
3. Your services, each explained, ideally with a page of its own.
4. Prices or a price guide, if you can share them.
5. The areas you cover, or your address and opening hours.
6. Proof: real reviews, the memberships and accreditations you hold, and examples of your work.
7. About you: who's behind the business.
8. Answers to common questions, so they stop being phone calls.
9. A privacy notice. An enquiry form collects personal data, and the Information Commissioner's Office says you must tell people how you'll use it at the time you collect it.
10. Company details, if you're a limited company. GOV.UK says your website must show the company's registered number, its registered office address, where it's registered (England and Wales, Scotland or Northern Ireland), and that it's a limited company.
11. Fast pages that work on a phone, because that's where most people will see them.

For examples laid out for different trades, see our small business website examples.

When you might not need a website

• You're fully booked through referrals, with a waiting list, and don't want more work.
• All your work comes through one platform you're happy with, and customers never look further.
• The business is winding down.

Even then, a one-page site with your name, what you do and how to reach you stops people assuming you've closed.

How to get a website

There are three routes, each with honest pros and cons:

• Build it yourself on a website builder: cheapest in money, dearest in time.
• Pay a designer once, then pay for hosting and changes: a bigger bill upfront, and you manage it afterwards.
• Pay monthly for a site that's built and looked after for you: no upfront bill, and changes are handled. That's what Upkept does, for £99 a month. See how pay monthly websites work.