Does my Small Business Really Need a Website?

“…in the future all companies will be internet companies”, so claimed Andrew Grove, CEO of Intel. And he was right. Today, the idea that a business can become successful without being online is at best short-sighted and at worst downright foolhardy. Love it or loathe it, the global super-highway is here to stay and its influence gets bigger with every passing moment.

Take your own experience. How many times in the last month have you searched online for information on a product you were interested in buying. How many purchases have you made in the last year? How many old friends have you looked up? How many times have you reserved library books, booked cinema tickets, ordered flowers or sent someone a funny video? And so on and so on. It is a truth that the internet satisfies the needs that no other medium does.

So what, you might argue. The internet may be useful but it has no relevance to my small business. Being online is a luxury for big businesses with big pockets and is there really any point if you don't want to sell online? Frankly, does your small business really need a website?

The answer is an emphatic yes, and here’s why. The internet is so much more than an online shop. It’s an advertising hoarding, a recruitment company, a PR agency, and the best friend of small businesses. The internet can turn a one man band into a small business, a small business into a large one and, if handled badly, a large business back into a small one. The internet is the last remaining true democracy; it doesn’t care what premises you operate from as long as you get the job done. It doesn’t care where you went to school – as long as your business is sound. And it has absolutely no interest in your accent, your car or what your parents did for a living. The internet enables small businesses to stand shoulder to shoulder with their larger competition and survive or fail on their own merits.

Given all this, why is the internet so under-exploited by small business? If I search for a local window cleaner in my area, Google gives me pages and pages of directory listings - I would be better off dusting down my old Thomson Directory. But if I did that I would have no idea what sort of company I was dealing with, their prices, their company style and whether we could work together harmoniously. A telephone number tells me nothing. Whilst I am unlikely to buy a window cleaner online, having a website can make the difference between making a sale and being invisible to your customers.

It's possible of course that I live in some sort of twilight zone where local tradesmen simply don’t exist, but I don’t think so. The lack of small business on the web has nothing to do with a trade shortage and everything to do with a fear of the unknown, and in our experience the biggest unknown is cost.

Fab Web Design are completely open with all our prices and will give you a tailored and fixed price quote - (see our typical website costs for more information). We won’t blind you with techno-speak but instead will listen to what you want from your site. We won’t try and sell you a 50 page site if all you need is a simple 3-4 page site. And we won’t add any little extras without specific and explicit permission from you.

It's time to start punching above your weight. Fill out our contact form or give us a ring - you'll be pleasantly surprised.