Why a website?
It’s a fair thing to ask, and it deserves a straight answer rather than a sales pitch. Here are the ten reasons I think a website earns its keep for a small business. Read them, and if none of them sound like your business, don’t spend the money.
You show up when someone nearby searches
Every day, people a few streets from your door search on their phone for exactly the work you do. Google shows them the businesses nearby that it can find. With a site you're one of them; without one you aren't in the list at all, and the job goes to whoever is. These are customers you never knew you were losing.
Your competitors are already there
When someone is weighing up three local businesses, the decision is usually made before anyone picks up the phone. Faced with that choice, the one with a proper site gets the benefit of the doubt.
They trust you before they walk in
People are wary of being overcharged by someone they've never met. Photos of the place, the names and faces of the people who work there, guarantees, and honest "from" prices settle most of that before any contact, and it's very hard to convey any other way.
Fewer phone calls asking the same things
What time do you open, do you take cards, do you handle this kind of job, roughly what does it cost. Every answer written on the page is a call you don't have to take, usually during your busiest hour.
People check you out before they buy
Even the ones handed your name by a friend will look you up first. If all they find is a Facebook page nobody has touched in two years, some of them quietly go elsewhere, and you never hear about the jobs you were considered for.
Other businesses look harder than anyone
A company choosing a supplier, or anyone placing regular repeat work, checks a website before committing, and if there isn't one, it may not shortlist you at all. These are the accounts worth years of steady work, and they're decided by people who'd never dream of ringing round on a recommendation.
The services nobody knows you offer
Collection and delivery, out-of-hours work, the specialist jobs, the things you'd happily do more of. Customers can't ask for what they don't know exists. Every one of them is margin sitting there unadvertised.
Prices that filter out time-wasters
Put your prices, or "from" prices, on the site and the people who ring already know roughly what things cost. Fewer awkward conversations, better enquiries, less of your day spent on people who were never going to book.
Saves you repeating yourself
Someone asks what you offer: send the link. A customer wants your price list, opening hours, examples of your work: it's all in one place, laid out properly, instead of typed out from scratch in every message.
It's yours, unlike social media
A Facebook or Instagram page rents you an audience an algorithm controls. Your website is owned, not rented: nobody changes the rules under you, buries your posts, or shows your followers someone else's adverts.
Convinced, or at least curious?
The price is two numbers and nothing else. The process is four steps, and the third one is the part where you decide whether to pay.
Tell me about your business
One email is enough to start: what you do, where you are, and whether you’ve already got a website. You’ll get a straight answer about whether I can help, and what it would cost. No obligation, no follow-up pestering.
or write to [email protected]