If you are reading this, you probably already suspect the answer is yes. What you actually want to know is whether your business specifically needs one, what it would cost, and whether your Facebook page or Google Business Profile is enough on its own. After more than a decade building websites for small businesses across the Salt Lake Valley, here is the straight version, with the cases where we have told people not to bother.

What a website actually does for your business

Five things, in plain language:

1. It is where people decide if you are real. Most people who hear your name will Google you within hours. If they find no website, or a broken one, or one from 2014, your conversion rate drops before they ever call. A clean, current website is the cheapest credibility you will ever buy.
2. It is the only marketing surface you actually own. Your Instagram followers, your Facebook page, your Google Business Profile, your Etsy shop: all of those live on someone else’s platform. The platform can change its algorithm, suspend your account, or change its rules without warning. Your website is yours. Every other channel should be pointing back to it.
3. It works while you sleep. Booking forms, contact forms, product pages, automated quotes, and AI chat can all collect leads, payments, and information when you are not available. For most service businesses this single shift (capturing the 9pm visitor instead of losing them) pays for the website inside a year.
4. It is how you show up in Google. A Google Business Profile alone can rank you in the map pack for local searches, but it cannot rank you for the dozens of related questions your customers ask before they buy. Articles, service pages, and FAQs on your own site are how you get found for those.
5. It gives you data your competition does not have. Analytics tell you which services people look at, where they drop off, what they search for, and which ads actually convert. Without that, every marketing decision is a guess.

Three things to get right when you build one: it has to load fast (under 2 seconds on mobile), it has to be readable on a phone (most of your visitors will be on one), and it should have one clear next step per page. Multiple competing calls to action on the same page reliably underperform a single clear one.

“But can’t I just use Facebook, Instagram, or my Google Business Profile?”

Honest answer: sometimes, yes, in the very early days. But it has limits, and the limits show up faster than people expect.

If you only have a Google Business Profile

A Google Business Profile by itself can get you ranking in the local “map pack” for searches like “plumber near me.” If you are a service-area business with a small budget and your customers find you almost entirely through Google Maps, this can work for a while. Where it stops working: people who already heard your name and want to research you, anyone comparing two or three vendors, anyone searching for a specific service you offer (not just your category), and Spanish-speaking customers who search in Spanish. None of those people are served well by a profile alone.

If you only have Facebook or Instagram

Social profiles look like websites until you need them to behave like one. They cannot rank you for the questions customers ask. They are awkward to share over the phone or on a printed flyer (“look us up at facebook.com/longhandle.123” is hard to say out loud). Posts disappear in the feed within hours. And if Meta decides to suspend your page, which happens routinely and without warning, you have no backup.

If you only sell on Etsy, Amazon, or a third-party marketplace

You are renting your storefront. The marketplace takes a cut, sets the rules, can change them, and owns the customer relationship. Plenty of successful businesses run there, but the ones that last all have a website too, so they can build an email list, run retargeting ads, and survive a platform change.

When you genuinely might not need a website yet

A few real cases where we have told people to wait:

• You are pre-revenue and not sure what you are selling yet. Build it once the offering is real.
• Your business is 100% referral and you have no growth goals. A clean Google Business Profile and a working phone may be enough.
• You are a side project under $10,000 a year in revenue and your costs need to stay near zero. A free landing page on a platform like Carrd is fine until you are ready.

If none of those describe you, the answer is yes.

How much does a small business website actually cost in 2026?

This is the second question on every reader’s mind. Real ranges, what each tier gets you, and where the hidden costs are:

• DIY on a builder (Wix, Squarespace, Shopify): $20 to $50 per month, plus your time. Works if your needs are simple and you are comfortable trading speed and SEO performance for ease.
• Pay-monthly options: $100 to $300 per month with no upfront cost. Useful if cash flow is tight and you need a professional site now. We offer this for small businesses across the Salt Lake Valley.
• Custom small-business website: $2,500 to $8,000 one-time, plus $30 to $100 per month for hosting and maintenance. A professional build on WordPress or similar, designed for your business, with SEO built in from day one. This is the tier most local service businesses settle into.
• Freelance template build: $500 to $2,500 one-time. A designer adapts a template to your brand. Quality varies wildly. Vet the portfolio.
• E-commerce or complex builds: $5,000 to $25,000 one-time. Custom product catalogs, integrations, multilingual setups.

Hidden costs to watch for at every tier: domain renewal, hosting upgrades when you outgrow the cheap plan, SSL certificates (should be free, sometimes are not), email hosting, plugin or theme licenses, content writing if you do not write it yourself, and translation if you serve a bilingual market. None of these are huge alone, but they add up. A good builder will tell you about them upfront.

For a full breakdown of what goes into a price, see our website design cost guide.

How to get a website without overthinking it

Most people stall here. The steps are simpler than they look:

1. Get clear on one thing. Before you talk to anyone or sign up for anything, answer: “What is the one thing I want a visitor to do?” Book a call, buy something, request a quote, sign up for a newsletter. Pick one. Your website’s job is to make that one thing easier to do than not to do.
2. Get a domain. Buy it directly from a registrar (Cloudflare or Namecheap) for around $10 a year. Use your business name, no hyphens, .com if available. Avoid registering through your future host; it makes moving harder.
3. Decide if you are building it or hiring it out. If you are technical and have weekends, DIY on WordPress, Wix, or Squarespace is fine for v1. If your time is worth more than $50 an hour and you want the site to actually pull leads, hire a professional. Get quotes from at least two builders. Ask to see three sites they have built in the last 12 months that are still live.
4. Make sure these five things are in place before launch: a clear phone number and contact form, your services listed with prices or price ranges, fast load time on a phone, a Google Business Profile linked from the site, and basic analytics installed. Skip the rest of the bells and whistles for v1.
5. Plan to update it. A website is not a one-time project. Plan on 1 to 2 hours a month minimum keeping content fresh, or hire someone for ongoing maintenance. Sites that never get updated visibly age, and Google notices.

The bottom line

If you have a business that has customers, takes money, or wants to grow, you need a website. The exceptions are narrow and we covered them above. The question is not really “do I need one” anymore; it is “what kind, and how do I do it without wasting money or months.” Both have real answers, and most small businesses can be fully launched with a professional site in four to six weeks.

Unlike social media profiles or marketplace listings, a website is a platform you own. This autonomy means you control the narrative, aesthetics, and functionality, and you aren’t beholden to shifting algorithms or terms of service. It also provides a hub where all your marketing activities; email campaigns, social media, and online ads, can drive traffic and convert visitors into loyal customers.

If you are in the Salt Lake Valley and want to talk through what would actually work for your situation, in English or Spanish, we are happy to give you a straight answer. No pitch deck. Just a conversation about whether a website makes sense for what you are trying to do.

Frequently asked questions

Do I need a website if I already have a Google Business Profile?

For very small, very local, referral-driven businesses, a Google Business Profile alone can carry you for a while. For everyone else, no, it is not enough. A GBP gets you found in maps; a website gets you found for every other kind of search, gives you a place to publish content, and gives you control over how you are presented. The two work together, they do not substitute.

Can I use a free website builder like Wix or Squarespace?

Yes, especially for a v1. Both are real products that produce working sites. Tradeoffs: they get slower as you add content, customization options are limited, SEO performance lags behind custom WordPress builds, and you do not own the underlying code. If you are launching and need something today, they are fine. Plan to migrate when the business outgrows them.

How long does it take to build a small business website?

For a professional build, four to six weeks is normal: a week or two on planning and content gathering, two to three weeks of building and revisions, and a week of testing and launch. Faster is possible (a single landing page can be built in days) but compresses the parts where most sites get worse, not better.

Do I need a website in both English and Spanish?

If you serve Utah and the Salt Lake Valley, yes, very likely. Spanish-speaking customers in this area search in Spanish, ask their networks in Spanish, and compare options in Spanish. A bilingual site is one of the highest-leverage things a local business in Utah can do for visibility and trust, and very few competitors are doing it well.

What is the difference between a website and a landing page?

A landing page is a single focused page built for one campaign or one offer. A website is your full digital home: multiple pages covering your services, your story, your contact info, and your content. You can have one without the other, but most businesses need both eventually. Start with a small website (3 to 5 pages); add landing pages later for specific campaigns.

Will a website actually bring me customers, or is it just for credibility?

Both, but credibility is the bigger short-term win. Most websites that “do not bring customers” were not built to. A site without clear calls to action, without SEO, without anywhere to capture leads, will sit there. A site built with conversion in mind, paired with a Google Business Profile and basic marketing, regularly becomes the largest single source of new customers within 6 to 12 months.