Does Every Business Need a Website?

Think about the last time you needed a supplier, a doctor, or any other business you had never used before. Before you picked up the phone, you probably looked them up online first.

Your customers do the same thing when they hear about your business. If they find a website that shows what you do, where you are, and how to reach you, they get in touch. If they find nothing, or an outdated listing with a phone number that no longer works, many of them will move on to the next name. You'll never know they were there.

Why does a business need a website at all?

Because people need to trust a business before they call, visit, or place an order, and a website is where that trust begins.

The details change from one business to another. A buyer comparing suppliers wants to know what you make and what your minimum order is. A patient wants to know your opening hours and who the doctors are. Someone hiring an advisor wants to see who you've helped before. Underneath, though, they're all asking the same few questions, and a good website answers them.

It keeps answering at 2 a.m., on weekends, and in every time zone, without anyone on your team picking up the phone.

That doesn't mean you need something big or complicated. Whatever your business is, a sensible first website answers five simple questions.

How you answer them depends on your business. A factory leans on product details and a quote form. A clinic leans on its hours, location, and doctors. A consultant leans on past work and an easy way to book a call. The questions stay the same.

If you run a factory, we wrote a longer guide for you: Does Your Factory Need a Website?

If you run a clinic or a hospital, there's one for you too: Does Your Clinic or Hospital Need a Website?

And if you're a consultant or run an advisory practice, this one is for you: Does a Consultant Need a Website?

What if I'm already on Instagram, or my customers find me by word of mouth?

Both are real strengths, and a website doesn't replace either one. It backs them up.

Word of mouth gets people to your name. The website is where they go next to check you out. A friend says "you should call them," and the first thing the person does is look you up. If your site is there and clear, the recommendation turns into a call.

Instagram pages and Google listings are worth keeping too. They drive your marketing and bring people to your name. But they only show a small slice of your business, on someone else's platform, and that platform decides what people see and how it looks. Your website tells everything about your business, inside and out, and it's the one place online that belongs to you.

Some established businesses run entirely on referrals and feel no pressure to change. That can work. It also leaves your growth in the hands of whoever happens to recommend you.

So, does every business need a website? If you run a small stall and every customer is a regular, probably not. For any other business that wants new customers to find and trust it, the answer is yes.

What does it cost to keep a website running?

It costs less than most people expect. A few years ago, even a simple website meant a monthly bill just to keep it online. For a business website, that's no longer true.

We recommend building on Cloudflare, a well-known company that helps websites load fast and stay safe. It's our recommendation, not a requirement. We build on other platforms too, and the right one depends on your business. The cost varies from one platform to another. Cloudflare has a generous free plan, and a simple business website fits comfortably inside it. Its own documentation says that showing a site's pages and photos to visitors is free and unlimited no matter how many people visit.

The free plan also covers the basics every site needs: a secure connection, so visitors never see a "Not secure" warning in their browser, protection against attacks, and fast loading for visitors wherever they are.

Several other useful extras are free too. You can have a business email address like info@yourcompany.com that lands in the inbox you already use. Your contact form can block spam without asking visitors to click on traffic lights. And you can see how many people visit your site, using a tool built to respect their privacy.

Our own website runs this way. We'd rather you spend your money on things that bring in customers than on a monthly bill for keeping the site online.

So the honest answer is "almost nothing to run," not "free forever." Even the web address is cheap, because Cloudflare sells web addresses at cost, with no markup. Free plans can change over time, so we check the current terms with you before launch.

A few details are worth knowing, so nothing surprises you later. The free plan has limits, but a business website is unlikely to come near them. The site itself can hold up to 20,000 files, each up to 25 MiB (roughly 26 MB), which is plenty for your pages and everyday images. You can see the full list on Cloudflare's limits page.

Larger collections, such as product photos, brochures, and downloadable files, don't need to sit inside the site. We store them in Cloudflare R2, a separate file storage service. The first 10 GB is free each month, and Cloudflare doesn't charge for sending those files to your visitors.

Your contact form needs a small piece of code running behind it to pass each message on to you. Cloudflare's free plan allows 100,000 of those requests a day, and a small business form will use a tiny fraction of that.

Email works the same way. The free business address receives mail and forwards it to your personal inbox, or whichever one you already use. Sending email from that address is a separate service, so we'd talk through the options with you.

If your site grows to include things like customer logins, bookings, or online payments, a paid plan may start to make sense. That's a good problem to have, and you'd only pay for it when you need it. Either way, the accounts your site runs on belong to you from day one, so you're never stuck with us.

Will it really be faster than a WordPress site?

WordPress is popular, and it's a good choice for some websites, especially content-heavy ones. The difference is in how it works. Each time someone opens a page, WordPress puts that page together on the spot. It's a bit like a kitchen that cooks every order fresh.

A custom-built website works differently. Nothing is put together while the visitor waits. Every time a page is opened, it's delivered straight from Cloudflare's network, from a location close to the visitor. That's why it opens quickly, even on a phone with a weak signal.

We build with Astro on Cloudflare, since that suits most business websites well. But we're not tied to it. If your business needs something else, we'll use whatever fits.

Public data shows how often WordPress sites struggle with speed. The HTTP Archive's 2024 Web Almanac found that only 40% of WordPress sites passed Google's speed checks on mobile phones, compared with 51% across the whole web.

That's an average, of course. A well-kept WordPress site can be fast, and we're not saying otherwise. But a custom-built site starts fast and stays simple, with fewer add-on programs to keep updated and fewer places for things to go wrong.

Does speed really matter? Google's own guidance recommends good scores on its speed and stability checks and says they line up with what its ranking systems reward. It doesn't promise a better ranking. But a slow site gives visitors a reason to leave before they've read a word.

One worry we hear is that a faster site must be harder to change. It isn't. Your site comes with an admin panel, a private screen where you update text, photos, and prices without writing any code.

Can you also help with the logo, marketing, and photos?

Yes, through trusted partners. We build websites, and we won't pretend to be a branding studio or an advertising agency on the side. For that kind of work, we'd rather bring in people who do it every day.

The most common extras are a logo and brand look, photos and short videos of your products, premises, or team, writing and translation for your pages, and digital marketing such as search ads, social media, and email newsletters.

These are separate from the website and cost extra. You agree on the scope and price directly with the partner, so you always see what each one charges.

We stay involved the whole way. We tell the partner what the site needs, such as image sizes and brand colors, check that their work fits, and get it onto your site. That way you don't have to pass messages between two companies.

The order matters, too. A logo, photos, and written text go straight onto your pages, so it helps to sort them out before or during the build. Marketing such as ads and newsletters comes after launch.

On that last point, here's some advice: wait until your site is ready before you spend on marketing. Sending paid visitors to a weak page, or to no page at all, is one of the quickest ways to waste money.

Where do I start?

Start small. A simple site that says what you do, shows you're a real business, and makes it easy to get in touch is enough to begin with. Booking, a product catalog, or online payments can be added later without starting over.

It helps to bring a few things to your first conversation with us:

• A short description of what you do and who you do it for
• Photos of your work, your team, or your premises, even rough ones
• Your contact details and opening hours
• A few kind words from happy customers, if you have them
• Websites you like, so we can see what appeals to you

Don't worry if you're missing some of these. A logo, photos, or writing are exactly the things our partners can help with.

If you're ready to talk, our Website & E-commerce Development service covers business websites with or without online payments, contact and inquiry forms, an easy admin panel you can update without writing code, and search engine basics built in. Tell us how your business works, and we'll tell you what you need and what you can skip.