Should I Get a Website for my Small Business?

It’s crossed your mind. Maybe it’s because you’re just starting out and you’re wondering where do I invest my money into? You might have pushed it off because business has been going well. Or maybe you’re just curious. Whatever it was that brought you hear, it’s fair enough – websites are a decent investment. In this article we’ll look at whether or not you should invest in a website for your small business.

Why Should I Care?

Let’s first talk about why you should care about a website at all. You might already care, and if so – you can skip this section. If you’re the type to rely on cold, hard data to believe, according to Clutch (2025, 72% of all small businesses around the globe have a website. Now you might think to yourself –

Just because everyone’s doing it, doesn’t mean it’s the right thing to do…

And I’m actually right there with you. According to that same source, it says that only 16-18% of these businesses are maintaining their websites and are considered active. There’s really two ways to look at this.

Websites are a waste of time and most businesses don’t even use them well.

OR

Most businesses are underusing their websites and this is a golden opportunity for me to get ahead in the market.

So, it’s up to you. Here’s some supportive data for those in the second camp.

• Dominance of “Near Me” Searches: Searches for “near me” have increased by over 500% in recent years, with over 1.5 billion such queries occurring monthly.
• Local Intent: 46% of all Google searches have local intent.
• Action-Oriented: 76% of people who conduct a local search on their smartphone visit a business within a day.
• High Conversion: Local searches result in a purchase 28% of the time.
• Direct Contact: 70% of users use the “click to call” feature to connect directly with a business from search results. 

How hard is it to get a website up?

Pretty easy. There’s really two ways to do it. You do it yourself, or you get someone else to do it (an in-house employee, or a separate company).

Both routes are absolutely viable, and the principle I usually teach people is that it’s a simply pay now or pay later transaction.

If you choose to make the website yourself, there’s some great tools out there that can help you. Wix is one of the obvious choices, with a lot of its intuitive features. Squarespace is also another one, loved by a lot of boutique businesses. Whatever software you use, it’ll probably be just fine if you’re new to business. I mentioned the whole pay now or pay later thing, and here’s what I mean –

As your business scales, you will likely outgrow the website builder used to make the initial website. This could be for a few reasons –

• Limited Functionality
  The site can’t handle new features like online sales or bookings.

• Outdated Design
  The look and feel no longer reflect your brand or professionalism.

• Poor Performance
  Slow loading, mobile issues, or broken pages frustrate visitors.

• Content Struggles
  Adding new products, services, or resources is difficult.

• Missed Opportunities
  You can’t capture leads, integrate marketing, or optimize for search.

If you either don’t want to or aren’t able to scale to this point, then you might not have to worry about it.

Why should I get someone else to make my website for me?

Lack of time to either learn how or build out a full scale website are definitely big drivers. Another reason could just be that you in fact do have the money to invest, and you’d much prefer spending your time making money by doing your business.

Whatever your scenario is, it’s usually pretty reasonable to get someone who knows what they’re doing to do it right the first time and avoiding any awkward fixes in the future.

Website agencies, companies and designers (like us) of course have had a lot more time and experience in the industry to know what works.

There are aspects to building a website that might not cross your mind at first, such as conversion focused design, user experience, high-intent CTAs, SEO, connecting-hosting-and-domain-without-ruining-all-the-emails-in-the-business… Yeah that last one was a hard lesson to learn for me when I was starting out.

Can you do all this on your own? Absolutely! I mean we’re all just humans at the end of the day, we’re capable of anything.

It’s up to you though to decide which route you’d like to go, and if you do choose to go the route of getting someone else to do it, consider our affordable solutions here at Webberly 🙂